Simone shocks and a psychic underwhelms on The Bachelor

Roses are red,

Carnations are white,

And gluten-free donuts

Are small, brown, and tight.

It’s a casual morning at the Womansion, with the girls lounging by the pool, exhausted after a long night of singing ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ after Jen’s departure. When Osher arrives to pull a single date card from his dark place, everyone is quite sure it’s for as-yet dateless Simone, who would very much like you to know she hasn’t spent any time with Matty yet.

The single date card is for Laura.

The date card hints “Do you believe your destiny is written in the stars?”, and I would hope not because that would mean your destiny is several billion kilometres away and on fire, but that doesn’t stop Laura having a guess at what it means.

“Are we going to see a psychic?” she asks Matty. “Are we going to a conservatorium?” she adds. Not many people know what a conservatorium is – including Laura – so here’s a clue.

Matty tells Laura her guesses are boring, and they head off in a stretch limo to something much more exciting: a quick visit to a psychic followed by a look around the observatory.

“I GUESSED RIGHT!” exclaims Laura. “WE’RE AT THE CONSERVOBSERVATORIUMORY!”. It’s like she’s psychic or something.

It is not, however, like the psychic they visit is psychic.

She starts by asking Matty and Laura to hand over their jewellery for her to read, as she practices ‘psychometry’.

The jewellery and sweet goth stylings of the psychic reveal some stunning observations that could definitely not have just been gleaned from observation, and can be summed up as “you don’t know each other very well yet”. On a second DATE no WAY.

The date is quickly redeemed by the admittedly smooth move of squinting through a telescope at Jupiter and legitimately naming a star together. Surprisingly things aren’t spoiled when Matty and Laura decide to name their star ‘Mataura’, but they’re tarnished a bit when Matty weirdly keeps insisting that Laura is guarded and doesn’t show her feelings.

“I’m so excited!” squeals Laura, cleverly hiding her feelings of excitement. “I really loved today” she adds, beaming through her impenetrable wall of obvious happiness.

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The date ends with a couch, a pash, and a rose, which everyone except the psychic sees coming.

Sure, astronomy is one thing, but Matty wants to know about the girls’ pasts, so he invites them to a mock children’s party to play games instead of just asking them.

All the classic children’s party accoutrements are there. Cake! Bouncy castles! That lame lemonade stand from Matty and Elise’s cliff-top hockey date! T-shirts printed with pictures of the girls when they were children but not in a creepy way!

The girls have to play a number of different games that will help Matty decide who he’d like to spend six to eight minutes on a couch with later, talking about feelings. And you guys? Simone really wants some time with Matty, because you guys? She hasn’t had any yet.

GAME ONE: in which Matty must guess which t-shirt photo belongs to which adult. There are varying degrees of cuteness from the eternally excellent Tara to the cute ugly monkey Laura.

Aaaaand then there’s Simone.

Despite her protestations to the contrary, Simone was a juvenile Fanta-pants.

GAME TWO: in which the girls must race to devour a donut on a string, which makes many puns and this photo possible:

Aaaaaand then there’s Simone, whose donut is weirdly shrivelled, dense, and brown. “I’m gluten-free, wheat-free, egg-free, dairy-free, yeast-free” she explains. Due to a considerable lack of viable ingredients, she finishes first, scraping the last crumbs off the grass with her teeth and claiming she nearly died to win as it stuck in her throat. “It’s blockin’ me hole” she complains, giving Matty a glimpse into their possible future.

GAME THREE: in which the girls must write down a defining childhood moment, put it in a balloon, swap it with another girl, bust a balloon against Matty with their bodies, and see if Matty can guess whose memory is whose. YOU KNOW. INSTEAD OF JUST ASKING THEM.

The memories are routinely adorable, including fishing trips and primary school paintings.

Aaaaand then there’s Simone, whose treasured, defining childhood memory is “I used to get called pancake face through school and now pancakes are my favourite food”. You know pancakes – those things made with flour, milk, and eggs.

GAME FOUR, YES THIS IS STILL GOING: Each girl must stick a heart on the part of a blindfolded Matty they’re most attracted to so he can guess who stuck it where. Elise chooses his brain, Flo his smile, Lisa his arms, Tara his buttocks.

Aaaaaand then there’s Simone. “Piss off” she says of everyone else’s choices as she strides forward to make her own.

GAME FIVE, AND THIS IS NOW OFFICIALLY LONGER THAN THE OLD TESTAMENT: in which Matty has procured a childhood memento from each of the girls’ parents, and wants to hear the story behind each of them.

Flo had a teddy bear, Cobie won a singing competition, Elora medalled in horseriding, and Laura used to be Strop in the Paul Hogan Show.

Aaaaand then there’s Simone, whose mother sent in some ballet shoes that Simone doesn’t recognise, either because Simone’s mum is the most devious prankster in the world, or because Matty contacted the wrong parents. “I don’t know anything about ballet, I never did it. The whole conversation was a lie” reveals Simone to us after just making some ballet sh*t up to Matty on the spot. It is, as they say for all Logie-worthy moments, champagne television.

Eventually Elise wins some alone time with Matty, which we’re all pretending isn’t going to end with Elise getting her heart broken in this bizarre, cruel, ridiculous charade we’ve agreed to participate in. Isn’t this fun?

Of considerably less fun is any attempt to create cocktail party drama without Jen present to pull the diabolical drawstrings. There’s individual girls trying to snatch some Matty chats, there’s Elora struggling to answer a question about her visa status, aaaaand then there’s Simone, who blames the post office for the fact she hasn’t had a single date card yet.

Best we just get on in to the Rosatorium, where candles now outnumber the girls by five hundred to one.

Osher enters in his synthetic porpoise-pelt suit and introduces Matty, who ricochets roses at the girls one by one to let them know they’re staying.

Aaaaaaaaand then there’s Simone. Who isn’t.

Bye, Simone. We’ll miss the way you whinged about everything with a hard ‘g’ and the way you always had sideboob and the way you put a heart sticker on Matty’s wang.

She steps wistfully and philosophically into the limo, and it snakes slowly and elegantly down the driveway and out of sight.

“THE ELIMINATED CONTESTANT WILL BE SIMONE!” shouts the psychic from Observatory Hill, probably tomorrow.

You can follow Jo Thornely on Twitter for some more brilliant Bachelor commentary.

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