Elora's awkward kiss and a phallic vase: Jo recaps Thursday's Bachelor

Roses are red,

And violets are blue,

Give Matty some wood

And then break it in two.

FINALLY.

We’re twelve episodes into The Bachelor, and so far a fundamental element has been missing. Something that we’ve been led to believe is vital in the development of any meaningful relationship. A lynchpin of romance. An essential tool of seduction.

Yes. Tonight, for a single date with Florence, at long last, Matty gets his chopper out.

But a helicopter is more than just a great way to drown out conversation, it also allows young couples to visit outdoor pottery studios inaccessible by car.

“I used to do a lot of pottery when I was younger” says Matty, which is such a coincidence because there were also heaps of kids at my school that used to do pots.

The pair decide to make gifts for each other – Matty starts work on a bowl for Flo’s morning protein smoothies, while Flo slowly and vigorously fashions a vase.

A vase to put penises in.

I’m sensing a pattern here: for their first date, Matty and Flo jumped off a building and then made a plaster cast. For their second date they flew in a helicopter and then did pottery. This is an entirely new dating category, and I’m calling it DANGERCRAFT.

They’ve even taken the normal dating staple – the couch - and made it marginally more dangerous by sticking it on the edge of a cliff.

One of the reasons Flo is a grouse sheila is that she doesn’t even pretend she’s not on a date with a guy who’s currently seven-timing her with six other girls.

“If you’re in for the experience, then top 7 is a massive achievement, but if you’re here because you want to be that girl in the end, then it’s still seven girls. So I feel like top seven is not that impressive” she says, cutting through all the bullsh*t. It’s glorious. No wonder Matty keeps doing his trademark Matty J Kissy Face at her.

Still, if you think DANGERCRAFT is a great theme for a date, wait until you see: METAPHOR DATE.

For this fantastic date that is one hundred percent not lame, the girls have to write what scares them about falling in love on a wooden board and then smash the board under the careful of a tutelage of a boxing coach.

In a scene commonly known in Bachelor circles as Preparing The Audience For Outcomes Via Foreshadowing, Matty sits with Lisa while she writes on her board and asks what she’s afraid of. “Being pressured to fall in love with someone after one game of tennis five weeks ago” is essentially her answer, but it’s clear Matty doesn’t think she’s falling in love with him fast enough.

Once the boxing starts, Lisa further cements her favour by “giving Matty a little love tap” as Elise calls it, or “punching Matty square in the pudding” as those with a more advanced biological vocabulary call it.

Each girl writes a four-page essay on her plank, and most say the same thing: that they’re scared they’ll get themselves in the kind of situation where, oh I don’t know, the guy they’re dating will cheat on them with – and let me just pluck a number out of the air here – six other girls and then not pick them.

When it’s Cobie’s turn to try for the rooftop-dinner-with-Matty prize, she runs through all the emotions:

However it’s the world’s greatest magical unicorn lady, Tara, who really cuts through, saying she doesn’t want to be anybody except herself. Dude, nobody wants that. You’re perfection.

The resulting dinner is an utter delight. Tara pre-games with a glass of bubbles in her room while she changes into the absolute queen of all plunging-neckline dresses, and for the entire two seconds Matty isn’t looking at her boobs, he’s saying things like “When Tara laughs, I can’t help but laugh at the same time”. US TOO, MATTY, US TOO.

In return Tara, who is incapable of being anything except genuine and incredible, tells Matty how much she likes him and if you’re not grinning like a drunk idiot right now you’re clinically dead. There’s nothing else for it, Matty. Time for the Matty J Kissy Face.

Matty says that when he’s with Tara, she’s the only girl in the world and OH MY GOD MATTY IF YOU HURT HER WE WILL COME AFTER YOU WITH GARDENING SHEARS I SWEAR.

Sorry. I’m sorry. I just get so emotional when sweet baby angel Tara is on screen. Let’s just get to the cocktail party and take a breath.

But nope. No time for breaths. We have to keep up with cocktail party stuff like Cobie losing her biscuits over the fact that Matty J gives her a rose just like he’s done for other girls roughly six hundred times this series.

And we have to keep up with genuinely shocking cocktail party things like Elora trying to kiss the man she’s dating without the other six girls he’s dating seeing it, and Matty calling it ‘disrespectful’. Come on, Matty. It was in Tahiti of the moment.

By the time we get to the Rosatorium in this late-series world of any-excuse-will-do, we all know exactly who the bottom two will be.

You can’t fight foreshadowing though, and Lisa is sent home for her weird habit of needing more than one date to fall in love with someone. Freak.

Bye, Lisa. We’ll miss the way we all thought you were the winning wife when we first met you in your red jumpsuit, and then how you like. Weren’t.

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

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