James Weir recaps The Bachelor 2018 episode 9

AFTER forging a connection with Nick Cummins and firmly lodging her place as a frontrunner, one Bachelor contestant has hesitantly dropped a bombshell she fears could cost her the competition.

Is she a murderer with a peg leg? Maybe she’s responsible for global warming. The revelation is teased as something destructive. It’s not. What actually saddens us is the burden and guilt she felt before revealing it to the man she may love.

“I’ve been honest with Nick … about most things. But there is something I want to share with him that I haven’t yet. It’s definitely a big part of my past,” she confides in us.

“I’m worried what Nick might think of me.”

Revelations like this require an uncomfortable build up. So of course we’re made suffer through a single date littered with sponsorship opportunities.

This date with Brittany sucks more than usual. It feels like we’re watching one of those local free-to-air travel shows that plays at 4 o’clock on a Sunday arvo.

The tension reaches an unexpected high when these two horny lizards call Nick and Brittany frigid. This has never happened to Catriona Rowntree.

Lizards are so cocky. Going into alpha mode, Nick gets all defensive and attempts to prove the reptiles wrong by showing Brittany his python.

“I quite liked it,” Brittany gushes. Don’t we all.

Once pythons get involved, things are never the same. The adrenaline is released, pheromones are activated. The option of fight or flight has been proposed. You have stayed. You’re now in.

“I want to have babies and move to Byron Bay,” Brittany confides in Nick. He wants to move there as well.

What a coincidence. I, too, have the desire to move to the shire — mainly so I can have easy access to a Hemsworth and also live out my fantasy of being Sigrid Thornton in Seachange.

Starry eyed, we move to a cordoned off crocodile enclosure and stare at the still water. A beast lurks beneath the glassie turquoise surface — figuratively and literally. Primal, raw feelings are present but unacknowledged — provoked, they could lash out and rip apart everything. But also, there’s literally a massive crocodile one metre away.

Nick and Brittany’s hearts pound in unison. They don’t wake the beast. Instead, they just stare. And while they revel in the thrill of sedated danger, they, too, are watched.

This week’s group date is a little different. The zorb balls are still on the rack and the humiliating thong-back bikinis remain on their hangers. In there place is a straight, grey haired FBI agent.

If you’ve ever lied about having an unclassifiable STI, he’s here to reveal all.

The dark room, metal chairs and fluorescent lights are intimidating for the girls but exhilarating for us. Pretending to be Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, we change into a baggy pants suit and tie our hair in a practical ponytail before running behind the one-way mirror.

First up, Jamie-Lee lumbers in, dragging her moon boot across the polished concrete.

Thud. Draaaaag. Thud. Draaaaag.

Our giggling is so loud the FBI agent hears it from behind the one-way mirror and shoots us a perturbed look.

Next up is Deanna, and she treats the whole thing with way too much seriousness. Channelling Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, she sees this as a challenge — and she’s determined to win.

But the FBI agent wants to crack her.

“Deanna, are you an emotional person?” he says, spitting out his toothpick and loosening is tie.

Her face says it all.

“What’s you biggest flaw,” he probes. He’s searching for any kind of emotion.

“I’m competitive in yoga. And yoga’s not competitive. That could be a flaw,” she says, stone-faced.

She’s right. Yoga isn’t meant to be competitive. Nothing’s more threatening than some fit bitch in head-to-toe Lululemon death staring you while you attempt the Happy Baby pose.

Cass is walked in next. And of course she talks non-stop about how she knew Nick outside this competition.

“I met him in a bar. And literally saw him from across the room. And, this sounds so lame, but I thought there was this moment there,” she reveals. “I think it was, like, a few months later I was at a football event and he was there and he was like, ‘I know you’, and I was like, ‘I know you as well …’ And we hung out a few times and stuff and yeah I really got to know him and we went on a couple of dates.”

After hearing this endless narrative, the FBI agent confirms Cass is a total clinger.

“I think she’s absolutely infatuated with Nick,” he says.

Hours have passed and Brooke is getting anxious. She’s been wanting to tell Nick something all day. Something about her past. Did the FBI agent pick up on it? Who knows. Night falls and as we wait around on the patio at the cocktail party, her anxiety becomes too much. She decides she has to tell Nick.

Brooke pulls Nick by the arms and drags him into the cabana. She pokes her fingers through his endless ringlets and looks into his eyes.

“I’ve had four relationships,” she blurts out. “I was with a guy for three years … this is really uncomfortable for me to tell you about …”

She pushes her hair back and feels the cool night breeze against her face. Will her revelation be too big for Nick to handle? There’s only one way to find out.

“ … I’ve also had two … relationships with women,” she says.

It’s at this point producers play that weird psychotic wind-up chainsaw background music and it gets louder as each second passes.

“But I’m a big [believer] of who you are inside … for me, when I was in those relationships I looked beyond what they were as female. I really loved them for who they were as people. I’m not a bisexual or a lesbian or anything like that. I’m a big lover of people of who they are. And I just really don’t want to be judged on that.”

Nick isn’t disappointed in the slightest.

“I … want to be with a male. I want to have children. And that’s not the only thing, I feel more sexually attracted to men,” she says.

We hug her and tell her it’s totally cool. Who hasn’t had relationships with a whole bunch of different people?

Nick says something lovely about souls and universes and, to show her there’s nothing to worry about, he gives her the first rose of the night.

Throughout the rose ceremony, Deanna still thinks she’s Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde — a spy on a secret mission. She shows no emotion. The mission fails and she doesn’t get a rose.

Prepare to be death stared by her in a yoga class soon.

For more observations on unclassifiable STIs and the Happy Baby pose, follow me on Twitter and Facebook: @hellojamesweir

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