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'I fell in love," reads a coverline on the latest issue of That's Life magazine, "with A ROBOT." The likelihood is that it's also about to happen on The Bachelorette , the show about two hotties pursued by clones manufactured at not all that great an expense in a robotics laboratory.
As clones, the contestants all have matching tattoos, the same half-beards and identically ripped bodies. One or two are blond to set them apart but most were put on the conveyor belt which dispenses dark hair. Cost-cutting means they're programmed to respond at the beginner's level of English: "All good", "Sweet", "Chur", etc.
But they're actually very nice clones. Gentle. Sweet. Vulnerable. And — okay, this might be going too far — human.
Five episodes in, we began to see a softer, more heartfelt side to the contestants. Even the show's resident satirist, commentator Jodie Rimmer, softened her mocking and sledging in last night's episode. Rimmer is always good for a few LOLs but she picked up on the mood and said a few nice things.
A shout-out, too, to editor Todd Columb. The guy isn't exactly working with gold. He's working with junk and is doomed to wander around the edges of a show where nothing ever happens but he does his best, finds the comedy, keeps things moving. Give that man a rose.
Nothing happened to the point last night where the clones played a game of golf. George Bernard Shaw famously quipped that golf is a nice walk ruined but the clones didn't even seem to enjoy the walk. The Bachelorette is a study in ennui and the futility of existence redeemed by the chance of a really good kiss.
Hottie Lesina and Clone Marc shared a really good kiss on last night's show. It wasn't a chaste kiss. It was a long kiss but not as long as the second kiss which wasn't as long as the third kiss. If there's a fourth kiss, Columb will have to fade to black.
Hottie Lily and Clone Terence shared not such a really good kiss. It was a chaste kiss. She pecked him on the cheek, and that was that. And yet there was something romantic about those two crazy kids. The possibility of a hook-up curled in the air like smoke from the candle on their table.
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Advertise with NZME.Well, this is the risk and drama of The Bachelorette — an epic fail awaits the unlucky in love. The nation will watch as one hapless contestant after another is told to pack their things and leave the mansion. They'll head towards darkness, rejected, weeping, a clone alone.