Steve Braunias: The lord of the bros in the Bachelorette

Hottie Lesina and Hottie Lily, Photo / Matt Klitscher

Week 17,034 of the world's longest-running TV show, The Bachelorette, returned to our screens tonight in a 90-minute dramatic meltdown in which quite a lot happened and many interesting things were said.

There's a first time for everything. Up until now the dating show has played out as a kind of existential crisis. It's a study in the futility of life.

Contestants idly sit around with each other in prolonged periods of limbo while two of them are chosen, seemingly at random, to spend time getting to know either Hottie Lesina or Hottie Lily.

But week after week, the show asks: how well can you ever get to know anyone? And the contestants return to idly sitting around with each other for all eternity.

Last night, though, was full of incident. The Bachelorette went up a gear. It had psychological depth, and an under-current of rage and desperation.

The show is being filmed on location in Buenos Aries, evidently one of the most beautiful and charming civilisations on Earth. But you can sense the tug of something wild and savage at the edges.

The show is travelling to a jungle of the mind. It's becoming a study of what happens when society is broken down and old rules no longer apply. It's turning into an update of that classic thesis, The Lord of the Flies.

Just like William Golding's great novel, The Bachelorette presents the male of the species in a kind of captivity. The same themes play out. Leadership is paramount. Brotherhood is an ideal, but war is a necessity. Blood must flow.There was even an exact parallel between the book and the never-ending TV series.

In Lord of the Flies, the poor, doomed Piggy discovers a seashell conch, and announces that whoever holds it has the right to address the assembly. In The Bachelorette, Liam held up glass bottle, and announced that whoever holds it has the right to address the assembly. Like Piggy's conch, Liam's bottle was an empty vessel to pour words into. Like Piggy, his analysis of the situation was greeted with scorn and derision. Piggy was killed. Liam, too, is surely doomed.

We revert to language when actions fail and Liam, like Piggy, is all talk. He's failed with the hotties and you can tell that his days are numbered, that he'll be voted out, killed off.

Liam tried to address the damage that five new contestants have made to the community formed by the original nine contestants. He's half-right. It's torn down the community.

But the community itself is at each other's throats. It's Terence vs Jesse. It's everyone vs Aaron. It's no one on Liam's side. He's alone. You don't want to be alone in the jungle among primitive hunters and gatherers.

"Kill the pig," they chanted in The Lord of the Flies. "Kill the pig!"

As for Hottie Lesina and Hottie Lily, their presence was neither here nor there in last night's drama. The Bachelorette was mano o mano, bro vs bro. It's a guy thing. It's going to end in tears.

It's got interesting.