The debut episode of Australia’s first season of The Bachelorette begins with a replay of Blake Garvey’s infamous proposal to “winner” Sam Frost on last year’s The Bachelor. “No!” screams my housemate, jabbing her finger towards the television, as I hide behind a cushion. We’re pitched headfirst into the psychic agony Frost endured after Garvey dumped her for second runner-up Louise Pillidge.
Frost discusses her recovery from the Great Dumping as she takes a pensive walk along a beach. The poor lamb seems to be exhibiting post-traumatic stress disorder after her Bachelor experience, which makes her instalment as Bachelorette a little confusing. Her sister wants to know what will be different this time, clearly still reeling from providing a small country’s GDP worth of Tim Tams and aloe vera tissues as she guided Frost through the breakup mire.
“I’m in the drivers’ seat,” Frost replies, probably mentally replaying a fantasy where she mows Garvey down behind the wheel of a monster truck.
Alas, from there, nothing seems to distinguish The Bachelorette from its Bachelor cousin. The contestants seem nice enough, but from fashion model David and “rope-access technician” Richie, to Sasha the dim but cheerful builder and carpenter Davey (who worries aloud his suit is giving him “nipple rash”), they are almost universally bland.
There are some exceptions, carefully calibrated to provide a touch of colour. Take sleep technician Drew, who arrives wearing a falconer’s glove. “Where did it come from, Hogwarts?” exclaims Frost, as an owl lands on his hand. The bird delivers a scroll bearing an excruciatingly-insipid quote about love, then flies off, presumably in embarrassment.
Drew and musician Will are clearly The Bachelorette’s Heathers; the ones who seem wacky and edgy compared to the other cardboard cutouts, but are, after all, still “normcore” enough to be on The Bachelorette.
Once all the dudes have arrived and go off to mingle in the mansion, I’m surprised to find how hard it is to watch; I keep my eyes lowered on my notes, occasionally looking up only to find myself blushing with embarrassment. Why did we have to see so many of them in the shower or with their tops off? The Bachelor’s bachelorettes never leapt about in lingering bikini shots or allowed the cameras into their bathrooms.
Those hoping for a repeat of the theatrics offered in The Bachelor by contestant Sandra and her turbo-charged cattiness will also be disappointed. The guys keep going on about “bro codes” and patting each other on the back. They give one another so many furtive glances and compliments I half expect one of them to lead off a sentence with “I’m not gay or nothin’, but ...”
In the end it is lovable boofhead Sasha who gets the first rose. “Devvo,” groans one of the dudes (at this point I can barely tell them apart), and two suitors are sent packing. In Bachelorette land the roses are pinned to the men’s lapels, not handed out on long stems, a fact that will surely lead to at least 13 earnest essays about heteronormativity in floristry.
Though I endured this year’s season of The Bachelor out of some perverse desire to watch psychological torture set among a sea of roses and candles, my expectation of Australia’s first iteration of The Bachelorette was different. When Frost was announced as the star, to the honking strains of Michael Bublé’s Feeling Good, I thought we were in for a ripsnorting thrill ride as the spurned woman putting her hot stuff suitors through the wringer; a kind of karmic payback for Garvey’s misdeeds.
But as I discovered last night, along with the rest of Australia, The Bachelorette is about as camp as a ream of white printer paper (a doubly useful simile when you consider the beige-on-beige spectacular of this year’s suitors). Let’s face it, there are community access shows about boat maintenance that have more chemistry than this dreary get-together.
Considering it could have been a Man O Man-esque rave up with Frost holding court à la Mae West, as a parade of bohunks jousted for her hand, or squeezing the biceps of passing studs like Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, what’s remarkable about The Bachelorette is just how boring it is.
Where the women of The Bachelor, already “old maids” at 25-34, had you believing if they didn’t find a husband their lives were over, these blokes seem to treat the idea of marriage and “ever after” as something nice they vaguely hope will happen, someday. Immune to the marriage industrial complex, the show is not the guilty bloodsport that makes its stablemate such a glorious slow motion car crash to watch.
If the “bro code” endures, and the season is little more than a string of affable blokes effectively stepping aside and saying “No, after you, I insist”, then The Bachelorette will be about as racy as a microwaved Milo.
At least I have my Mae West DVDs.
