Before they jet off to the Blue Mountains, Xavier is doing something with tape. What he's saying in the scene (above) doesn't really matter.
Clare packs her bag and then lets her dog roll around in her crap. I'm gonna say it: this (along with the fact she listens to Journey's Don't Stop Believin' on a constant loop) is one of the reasons her love life is in the toilet.
All the couples arrive in the mountains and excitedly check out their fancy cabins. Erin and Bryce are literally staying in a cave.
Their shower also has boobs. Don't even ask me where the water comes out.
In another bathroom, with a less anatomical motif, Christie has come around to her relationship with Mark and says her feelings are getting stronger and stronger by the day. She also points out she never falls for guys too quickly, but if she did her puffer vest would lessen the impact.
Clare and Jono arrive separately. It's the first time they've seen or spoken to each other since Jono left. Locking them in a small stone outhouse in the middle of the woods is the perfect way to end the silence.
"Where are you at with it all?" Jono says, breaking the silence.
"Where are you at with it all?" Clare says, not moving the conversation forward.
"I think we were getting on incredibly well and we were having a really great time and the second we disagreed on something, your walls went absolutely up," she says. "You gave me nothing from that point on. And that really hurt me. I don't just leave as soon as sh*t gets hard. And as soon as sh*t got hard, you bailed."
They crap on a bit with more disjointed statements and pauses before Clare decides to pull the pin.
"I would say this isn't working," she says. "And I was kind of hoping some things would've changed a bit. But obviously your opinion is your opinion and it is what it is and this isn't gonna work. So I might just leave you here and I might go and find somewhere else to stay."
Clare then walks off aimlessly into the woods in search of a hollowed out tree trunk to spend the night in.
At nightfall, the dinner party begins and all the couples gradually rock up to a dark park and stand around drinking like it's grade 10. Jono arrives by himself and everyone awkwardly goes out of their way to not ask why he's alone. Clare then scampers down the hill and out of the bushes and they refuse to acknowledge each other.
I don't want to make any unfair allegations, but I'm pretty sure Clare's drunk:
Like all couples who've just had an argument before meeting their friends for a barbecue, Clare and Jono leave their maturity at home and let the group fester in the tension.
They then take it indoors to the dinner table where an hour-long, slow-burning, passive aggressive argument begins to unravel. It's part two of their break up. For those who haven't had the privilege of a two-part breakup, this is the beautiful time where you get to say all the snarky nitty-gritty things you forgot to say the first time.
Christie decides it's the perfect time to ask Jono and Clare what the go is.
Jono takes the reigns and Clare eyerolls all the way back to Melbourne.
"Honeymoon was awesome and we were getting on like a house on fire," he tells the others, explaining they clashed a lot once returning to Melbourne.
They bicker and then Clare tells her side.
"I'm 32," she says. "For me I'm looking for something real. I want family, I want children and this entire week I've spent one night with Jono. Because he is a ghost husband."
She craps on. He craps on. Tiny, specific details are dredged up about what the other did at 3.35pm on Thursday last week. From my experience, this is actually just a normal relationship.
Jono keeps admiring how happy the other couples look and says he's jealous of what they have.
This makes Clare's blood boil so much she feels compelled to get her rage out in a post-production voice over: "You are an absolute prick," she spits.
"I'm actually gonna go to the toilet," Clare blurts out, getting up from the dinner table and clomping off.
Struggling to get down the stairs in her heels, she then feels the need to yell back up to the dining room: "You see I'm 32 so I actually care!"
In the bathroom, Clare's upset. So upset she doesn't even try to fix the giant clump of fringe that's gone rogue.
Back at the dining table, Xavier decides to lift the cloud of resentment with an oddly-phrased question about sex.
"Do you think that in such an intense relationship straight up ... and I don't know if this is the right question to ask ... the sexual aspect of things, like the attraction and physical side ... well, how important is the physical, sexual side of things in something so intense?" he says.
"I'll speak up on this," Clare says, as everyone clenches their butt-cheeks in anticipation of what's about to roll out of her mouth.
"I'm a sexual being so it's very hard to have sex with someone who's not there," she says. Sidenote: People who feel the need to describe themselves as a "sexual being" probably aren't having a lot of sex.
Afterwards, in a piece to camera, Jono candidly explains their lack of action: "Why should I have to justify not sleeping with her? I DON'T WANT TO. Like, I don't know how to say that any other way."
His point is, the stone boob shower in Erin and Bryce's villa has had more action than he and Clare.
After dinner, the guys and the girls are split up and go off to have more personal chats. And Erin decides it's time to give Clare some real talk.
"Clare, no offence, like, can I be totally honest with you?" she asks. "I'm not trying to be rude in any way to you whatsoever but I feel like perhaps you're more hurt than anything else."
"I'm really hurt," Clare says, thinking Erin's acknowledgment of her pain is a show of sympathy. Then Erin slaps her down like a toilet seat.
"Honestly the way that you talk about your situation and the way Jono talks about your situation are polar opposites," she begins. "You use words like, 'Oh he threw a temper tantrum'. And then you roll your eyes. Honestly, he's been very, very respectful of you and he's never said one ill word of you since the second he got here. But you seem to have a lot of negative things to say about him."
Erin nailed it and she's feeling high on authority. Then she tells Christie she thinks she has Botox.
Jono heads back to his cabin. It's been a long night. Sinking into the spa bath, he marinades in his failures and regrets.
"I hope that she finds someone," he says. "But it's not me. It's never gonna be me."
He plays with the wedding band on his now-pruned finger and remembers the days-worth of memories it symbolises. But he's made up his mind.
He takes the ring off, holds it in his palm, and tosses it into the water of the spa bath like that old lady in Titanic.
- news.com.au
