We start at the mansion where everyone has crowded into a tiny kitchen like people do at parties when they don’t know where to go. Except it’s the morning and no-one seems festive. We have last night’s Savvy B to thank for that.

In bursts Osher and you can hear some of the ladies thinking “well I guess he might do”.

But it’s West Wollongong’s own Laura who’s off on a solo date with Bachelor Matty J and she celebrates like she’s won the show. That’s because she knows she only needs one chance to get close and it’s over. She’s lit from above like an angel just in case we don’t get it.

Matty has arrived in a boat – a little boat, Laura says, a couple of times. All the better to make you wobble and lose your balance and need my strong arms to catch you with, my dear. Particularly if I’m standing so close. Matty gives his mark, um, partner, some kind of modern underwater bondage gear which is disguised as a life jacket.

They putt-putt around until they arrive at a much bigger boat. Laura is suitably impressed. Not that size matters but she certainly prefers the big, big rig to the little, little runabout which brought them from the shore. Of course Laura, an authentic and spiritual gypsy, is not taken by such material trophies. “Look at that big black boat …” she gushes. “It was phenomenal. It was a big, man’s boat!”

Meanwhile back at the drama cabana ladies are being chosen one by one to join a group date. We get a narrative that makes us feel so much for Simone who seems like a really lovely person. Sure she really does. But she gets included and we have to watch her pout and sulk a bunch more.

On the big, man’s boat Laura does plenty of talking and then talks some more about how she’s talking a lot. Then she reflects from somewhere later on about how she talked a lot.

This is good because outside of the wooden scripted stuff Matty hasn’t really shown he can talk at all.

They park the throbbing black boat out front of another mansion because Matty is keen to impress this one.

“The fact that I can incorporate something she's really passionate about … it shows I'm listening,” he says. Waterfront real estate – always a sure thing.

But no it’s art and they set up on the lawn for a portrait drawing session. Speed drawing. Laura says last time she drew someone it was a “40-year old naked lady” because as you know anyone past 40 is a freakshow.

She draws Matty as a young version of That Other Guy From Wham! and the ruse that she's an artist is up. He draws Laura as an ugly old scarecrow and he’s negging her because he gets his moves from one of those pick-up merchants who get banned from countries as uber-progressive as Australia.

[Glossary: A “neg” is an invalidation or criticism which a pick-up merchant will use early in a conversation, designed to make a woman want his approval. Drawn from some terrible assumptions and easy to spot.] 

“You have incredible features,” he tells her. Swing from an ugly picture to a compliment and keep her chasing the next one.

Laura finds the picture “offensive” which is perfect. Matty raises a glass. “To beautiful drawings and first dates”, which is a reminder that he always might see her as a scarecrow and she’d better get some work done.

It’s worked and she’s gone all gooey. “My feelings have progressed throughout the day,” she says and we marvel that’s fast even for reality TV.

On to the smooch which happens now. As far as kisses go it's closed-mouth enough to make it onto American daytime television without offending anyone. But it goes on and on and then they come back for more. Fireworks explode and Laura is catapulted into favouritism to win the show by those bookmakers who think we journalists are silly enough to give them a free ad by naming their company.

At any rate these two seem to really like each other so maybe the series can finish early. Matty reaches for a rose and starts off the long run-up.

“Laura ... will .... you ... accept .... this ... …” Mate when you're holding a rose in front of her it kind of takes the tension out of where the sentence is going.

Meanwhile it’s back with the also-rans who will now be a colourful sideshow while the rest of the series can concentrate on Matty and Laura. 

It’s medieval time and the ladies once more have to humiliate themselves – chasing pigs and playing soccer in a gown – to win, this time, a seat at dinner. “If you want dinner, you need to catch a pig”.

“I feel like I'm on the chopping block and we're in the appropriate time,” says someone, perhaps not identifying a stake and pyre waiting nearby alongside the iron maiden.

Lisa's still smiling but it’s a brave face as she’s headed fast for friends-with-benefits status. Michelle, the cop, didn’t get a chance to catch a pig and she’s disappointed she doesn’t get dinner.

At the “banquet” we get to see some of Austinmer’s Alix, who starred in the soccer match but her bitch game is not very polished. Alix is making the tragic mistake of being a normal person on television. She allows someone to cut in on her private convo and we think it’s curtains for her. But it pays off for Alix who scores a rose and maybe the good guys win something sometimes.

No they don’t, and Leah has devoted her life to proving it. She mistook the “rose ceremony” for a “rosé ceremony” a necked a bottle of the stuff. Now she corners Matty and gives him some made-up sob story about some rubbish which a sullen-faced Matty appears to be not buying at all. Until he later says he was “taken back” by it. Taken back to BS 101 at marketing college, yeah.

Now it's down to the rose ceremony; Matty arrives dressed for a Salem witch trial and goes looking for Goody Proctor to burn. He hands out some roses and we are all shocked Leah is included, because We Saw Goody Leah With the Devil. I have no tongue for it.

Matty is left with a choice between Simone and Akoulina and asks off camera if he can give the rose to Osher instead. Sorry.

So Akoulina's gone and that will change things. No longer will we see her twirling her ribbon around the yard, or being in some part of the room, or saying something like she may have said, or just being her, with her name, which her parents got from an Ouzo bottle.

Tune in again tomorrow, as Albion Park’s Jen has been back at the house away from the action without any cameras or any drama. She’ll be keen to make up for lost time and she is drama’s MacGyver. Will she manage to make some out of just a piece of foil and some sticks? Will anyone be left alive?

The Bachelor Australia screens at 7.30pm Wednesday and Thursday on WIN.