Jo Thornely recaps Episode 5 of The Bachelor

It’s evening in the Womansion and our Bachelorettes are relaxing after a stressful cocktail party, but NO. NO RELAXING OR FAKE CUPS OF TEA FOR YOU. There’s no time to waste as a bespectacled Osher pulls not one, but two items from his dark place – a date card and a bottle of sponsorship obligation whisky.

The undeniably likable Dutch Florence gets a single date, and you know what time that makes it? You do. Is it time for our favourite new segment? It is.

“Am I looking forward to her coming back and telling me how Dutch his outfit was, or how Dutch the koalas were?” asks Jen. “No, no I’m not looking forward to it” answers Jen, making an astoundingly small amount of sense.

Flo is pleased to have some single date time so she can figure out if she actually likes Matty, a refreshing change from the girls who feel quite certain they’re in love with him from the outset and then just wait for their major organs to catch up. She meets Matty on top of a tall building in Sydney’s cultural and social heart, Olympic Park, and he tells her they’re about to get in a harness and jump off.

Waxing philosophical for a moment, Matty compares jumping off the side of a building to falling in love, saying “you just have to give in to it”. Plus if you sh*t your pants when you fall in love or jump off a building you should pretend nothing happened until you get some paper towels so yeah. Y’know. They have that in common too.

Flo also has a philosophical moment to camera, shouting “ABORT MISSION YOU STUPID BITCH, RUN AWAY”.

There’s just something about this girl I like.

The pair hold hands, kiss on the cheek for luck, gasp some desperate obscenities, misquote Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ and then leap like good-looking lemmings into the post-Olympic atmosphere.

They did it! They survived! There’s no possible way anything on this date could be as terrifying as jumping off a building.
Unless, of course, anyone suggests making a plaster cast of Matty and Flo holding hands.

Look, nothing good can come of making a plaster cast of your hands. Unless, of course, you get the camera at exactly the right angle when you’re trying to pull your hand out of a bucket.

From here on in, it’s a pretty standard date. Boy and girl sit on couch, eat nothing, stare at each other, check that nobody’s visa requires them to suddenly return to Amsterdam, have a pash, get a rose.

It’s… good? I guess it’s good.

Also good? SUDDEN DEATH DATE.

You know the sudden death date: two girls go on a date and only one comes back. A bit like a Game Of Thrones trial by combat, except 40% more about love and 10% less about eye-gouging. Okay, 8% less about eye-gouging.

Contender 1 is Liz, who doesn’t do, say, or smile much. Her main weapon is her ability to irritate Jen without actually doing anything, and seems utterly fine with the situation.

Contender 2 is Jen, who is in the middle of baking brownies (not a euphemism). Her main weapon is pretending to cry.

The sudden death double date has all the hallmarks of any other date. It has a Bachelor looking off into the distance.

It has a couch and whichever candle lanterns were in the middle aisle at Aldi this week.

And most of all, it has two girls being nice to each other through clenched teeth.

Matty has to choose between Liz and Jen, which is lucky because they’re as different as chalk and a bag full of screeching spiders.

Liz tells us she doesn’t want to jump through any hoops to impress Matty, whereas Jen is more WHERE ARE THE HOOPS I WILL ANNIHALATE THE HOOPS DEATH TO HOOPS.

Jen wants to be here because her brother has a baby so she has FOMO, whereas Liz wants to be here because it’s where the latest update to her software tells her to be.

Jen loves love because of a long list of every cliché she can think of, like waking up next to someone and passion, passion, PASSION, whereas Liz thinks love is reasonably fine as long as there’s no children and it’s exactly like banking.

Jen has facial expressions visible from space, whereas Liz… Liz does not.

Purely to stay awake, Matty picks Jen. She seems okay with it.

The other girls are delighted to see her back at the Womansion brandishing a rose.

Making the mistake of asking how the date went, Jen tells them a complete fiction about how Matty sat her down and listed all of her fine, fine qualities. When asked if she and Matty kissed, she’s coy and elusive, completely fooling everybody into thinking she might have like the spooky manipulation wizard she is.

Best we get ourselves to the cocktail party, where Sian is increasingly upset about how invisible she seems to Matty and the show’s producers despite how much she has to offer.

She feels like the romance equivalent of green eggs and ham.

She does not like it to the crew.

She does not like it in the loo.

She does not like you in her way.

She does not like it, Matty J.

Sian tells Matty she wants to leave. And he’s like ‘nah’. And she’s like ‘okay’.

It’s just really beautiful how a really meaningful conversation can totally turn your night around.

Everything’s fine now! We can just go to the Rosatorium and pretend nothing happened! See, all the girls are here, Matty!

Osher’s there in his deconstructed ox hoof suit, Matty’s there handing out roses, the candles are there burning through the budget, all is as it should be.

Nothing could possibly go wr…

RELATED: Jo Thornely recaps Episode 4 of The Bachelor
RELATED: Jo Thornely recaps Episode 3 of The Bachelor

Want more celebrity, entertainment and lifestyle news? Follow Be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram