The Bachelor recap: time is running out to win Blake's heart

We begin in the living room where the girls sit around wearing their best five-inch heels, skinny jeans and casual glam knitwear, as you do when you hang with your besties. I'm doing it right now with my friend Soraya, who is watching The Bachelor with me.

Osher - who keeps being autocorrected to Usher on my iPad - appears and reminds the girls that time is running out to win Blake's heart. He then appears to pull the date card out of his bottom, to gasps of amazement from the girls. He talks about a very special date with a very special person. Who could it be? A) Kim Kardashian? B) Christopher Pyne? C) Blake McBlakester?

The person picked for the single special date is Sam. She gets a sparkly, peach-coloured gown with a see-through bodice to wear on the date, personally chosen by Blake and delivered by a child actor wearing fairy wings. Blake says that Sam is a T-shirt-and-jeans kind of girl and he really loves seeing her in the dress. Given the amount of cleavage the dress exposes, both Soraya and I suspect an ulterior motive.

Blake takes Sam to a fancy jewellery store and says that she needs some accessories to go with her dress, but then ruins the mood by adding that the jewellery is only on loan for the night. This is the equivalent of getting your girlfriend her favourite romantic movie on DVD and then saying, "it's due back on Monday at Blockbuster". Thanks Blake, killer of romance and destroyer of dreams.

We get various shots of Sam trying on bits of hideous, oversized jewellery. Overwhelmed by the ugliness of one particularly large opal, she starts to cry. Sad music plays. "Is that the Jurassic Park theme song?" asks Soraya. It is! Blake is touched by Sam's display of emotion. "It was raw, it was natural and it was open," he says, momentarily confusing women with freshly shucked oysters. They embrace to the sound of violins and runaway dinosaurs. "I don't know how this could be any better," says Sam, trembling. I don't know, there could be actual runaway dinosaurs?

Back at the house, the rest of the spurned girls are binge-eating low fat yogurt and drinking tea and complaining about Sam, who has been on so many single dates she should get a loyalty card. "It's tough to watch other girls fall in love with him," says one. But don't worry, it's group date time! The girls are told to prepare for an exotic evening, which in Jess' mind apparently means one thing: "teppanyaki?"

Back to the single, cheapo date. Blake is now taking Sam to the Queen Victoria building where all the candles left over from last week have lived to fight another day. There are flowers. There's a tiny pianist. There is a macaron tower and several value packs of Lindt chocolate balls. Blake proposes a toast to Sam. We get a soft focus close up of the pianist.

They dance and then Blake moves in for the kiss but disaster strikes. Sam, who lives in fear of a mysterious ailment called "champagne breath", fishes around in her boobs for some emergency mints that she had stashed there. To her horror, they have taken the elevator to the ground floor and appear to be wedged in her underpants. "That's what I love about her," says Blake, earnestly. He gets on one knee and offers her a stray mint that fell out of her dress. She takes it. Five second rule, right?

"One of the things I want in my partner is for him to be a role model for my brothers," says Sam. How many people are going be involved in this relationship? Given that their sister clearly believes that true love is to be found on a reality TV show involving rogue breath mints, those boys may indeed require some setting straight. "I would be privileged to have you in my brothers' lives," she continues, sobbing. Blake is confused and starts to speak but his voice is so low it just sounds like a subway passing sexily nearby.

There's a pash. Blake reaches behind him and grabs something — perhaps it's Christopher Pyne? Nope, it's just a rose. Sam accepts the rose on behalf of her brothers. Blake finally mans up and presents her with a necklace in a chocolate box which she is permitted to keep permanently. This wins him another champagne breath pash. At home, sitting before the family television, Sam's brothers watch on impassively. This is all for their benefit.

After the ad break it's group date time. The exotic evening has been revealed to be a faux Middle Eastern affair with belly dancers and jewelled silks. Usher challenges the girls to FIGHT, sorry, "make the most of their time with Blake".  Jess limpets her way to Blake's side, earning massive stink eye from the rest of the girls. We are then treated to the most passive aggressive belly dance battle in the history of Australian TV as the girls warily shake what their mothers gave them while trying to look sexy for Blake and keeping a weather eye on the competition. Louise wins the battle and is whisked away by Blake. She spends a lot of time talking about "opening up" and her journey of discovery. "It's like a personal development course in self improvement," says Soraya.

Jess is also whisked away and she immediately starts blurting out the contents of every Hallmark card she's ever read. "Being around you is exciting, you light up a room when you walk into it," she gushes. Then she starts laying everything on the line for Blake. She wants babies! Travel! Family! She built a secret shrine to him out of sticks and human hair in her bedroom! Jess tells us that Blake agrees wordlessly with everything she says because "we communicate through our eyes", like Children of the Corn. However, when he finally resorts to using words, Blake reveals that he's actually not that into Jess. "I have a deeper connection with others."

Laurina and a giant, blingy necklace also get cosy time with Blake and 1500 candles. And this is where the show goes eye communication mad. Laurina is about to fully expose herself to Blake when - shock, horror - he touches his eye. She goes ballistic. Suddenly we digress into a five minute psychoanalysis of what it means when a man touches his eye. "If he was really considering me as a life partner then he would pay more attention," she says indignantly. Is Blake closed for business? Does he have conjunctivitis? Is he trying to say "eye love you"?

"I just have something in my eye!" Blake wails, bewildered. But then Laurina undermines herself by touching her own eye. It's an eye for an eye. Eye-yay-ay. Everyone is confused. Let this be a lesson to Sam's delinquent brothers.

At the rose ceremony. God, they talk about connections a lot, as though Blake was the NBN. Blake takes Laurina away (again!) and tries to talk to her but all that comes out is a low rumbling sexy noise, like Hugh Jackman's stomach in search of a snack. Laurina, thrown by the strange sound, wanders off to look for a breath mint. Undeterred, he tries setting up for a pash but she panics and starts to babble about the Melbourne property market and her amazing apartment. It's all for nothing though. Louise, Jess, Zoe and Lisa get roses. Laurina is the last woman standing and not in an empowered, Beyoncé way. Farewell Laurina. We will miss you and your bitchy remarks. Luckily you have an amazing apartment in Melbourne only 15 minutes from all the bars and will one day share a conjunctivis-free kiss with the love of your life while the theme from Jurassic Park plays softly in the background.