All The Bachelors Ranked By How Much They Destroyed My Life
The Bachelor (or should I say, The Bachelors) is about to hit our screens for its 10th season and when you think about it for more than a second — that’s a lot of hours of our lives wasted over the years watching men with nice teeth try and find love in a shallow, fickle world.
The funny thing is, they shouldn’t need that much help — these beautiful people come onto our screens complaining about dating apps and never finding a connection which is borderline insulting for all of us average people out here.
If Mr. Colgate Smile over there can’t find love, in all his 6ft2 (because apparently it matters) glory, his abs so shredded I’d break my hand if I tried to punch him three times fast (IDK, it’s a kink of mine, whatever), what chance do us mere mortals have?
Yet, year by year, I sit back and get sucked into the dates, the drama, and the fairytale ending that the show usually provides.
I’ve been writing about The Bachelor since 2015 and this is my last week at Punkee after nearly five years.
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It’s become a running joke in the office that for every loooong reality season we cover, the Punkee team emerges at the very end, shivering, sleep-deprived, and no longer able to string a coherent sentence together after giving up our lives to recap reality dating shows.
Most episodes of the show in question we watch two times each. So you can imagine during a 10-week MAFS season when a show is on four times a week, that’s A LOT of reality TV.
Which brings me to my last article as Punkee editor: what better way to send myself out than by ranking all the Bachy men on how much they’ve ruined my mental health over the years?
Let’s get into it.
Here Are All The Bachelors Ranked By How Much They Destroyed My Life:
8. Tim Robards/Blake Garvey
Tim, our OG Bachelor ruined my life the least because I was still in university when he kickstarted the Aussie franchise and only watched the season years later simply for entertainment reasons and to do my research on the origins of the show. Thank you, Tim, for not ruining my life.
As for Blake… well, he had huge potential to ruin my life but I wasn’t yet in entertainment journalism. I was writing for a website for retirees and they didn’t give a fuck about The Bachelor. So I would go home, watch it with my housemates, and cackle at things like the Dirty Street Pie, shriek when Blake actually proposed to Sam Frost, and then gasp in horror when Sam gave a scathing tell-all interview to The Project after their breakup.
Gosh, those were the days.
7. Sam Wood
Sam Wood was my first season of covering The Bachelor religiously and what a season to start with! Sam was your classic, nice Aussie bloke, ready to settle down, and find love.
Normally just being a typical Aussie bloke is a walking red flag, but Sam was different. He is the kind of bloke you dream about, but as you age, you discover that they rarely exist. Sam is kind, smart, successful, tall, has abs that you could grate cheese on, but isn’t led by an ego bigger than his biceps.
His love story with Snez from the start was so apparent and when she brought her daughter Eve to hometowns, we all knew it was a sealed deal. He probably could’ve dry-humped Lana a lot less in the season finale, but time heals all wounds.
Sam and Snez couldn’t ruin my life, they just went on my vision board.
6. Matty J
Here’s my embarrassing secret: I’ve watched the final scene where Matty J and Laura confess their love to each other more times than I care to admit and I’ve cried every time. It could’ve been because I was going through a breakup when Matty J’s season aired so I spent a lot of time hanging out with my feelings and Magnum tubs of ice cream.
Or maybe it was inspirational to me that two people could genuinely love each other so much and not passive-aggressively eat their dinner in silence, the clinking cutlery the only noise in the very emotionally empty inner west terrace.
Matty J’s season was pure entertainment: from comedic Queen Tara and her sausage to the perfect fairytale ending.
Laura and Matty are still couple goals to this day, but in that kind of way that makes my teeth hurt a little from clenching them when I see their happy family images. That’s not their fault though, I’ve just been in an exclusive relationship with that Magnum tub for the last five years and they’ve had two kids and gotten married and are also wildly successful. And I’m not envious! I’m totally fine! I’m very happy for them!
I’d give up my salary for one tiny piece of Toni May jewellery. Toni May, are you hiring? Do you need a copywriter?
5. Matt Agnew
Matt Agnew had a lot of potential to ruin my life. He was in the tough position of trying to save the franchise after the Honey Badger stormed through and made a mockery of it. Covering the show for Nick Cummins’ season was truly an emotional rollercoaster I have never experienced before — but more on that later.
I was disillusioned by the time Matt Agnew had come in to take the leading role and the franchise doing a complete 180 from the Honey Badger by casting an unknown was obvious. Matt was the hot, smart, nerd who was going to be the polar opposite from Badgey Boi. That’s a lot of pressure on those enormous shoulders.
However, Matt’s season was entertaining to watch but for that he cannot take credit. We all know who made that season: Abbie Chatfield.
Abbie, you didn’t ruin my life with this season, even though at the time I think I took the show a little too personally for not delivering me an epic love story. In hindsight — and my internalised misogyny now reckoned with — I can appreciate Abbie for the breakout star she is which I don’t think I was good at doing at the time.
Thank you for making the show fun and horny again and for showing all us women out there that it’s OK to express yourself in such ways.
4. Richie Strahan
Saying Richie’s season ruined my life would be giving him too much credit because I barely remember it now. I basically slept-walked through it. But, the finale was something else: the nation hated Alex Nation for DARING to be so in love with Richie and wanted Nikki Gogan to win, and when Richie went with his heart and chose Alex, chaos ensued.
Ahh the traffic on those articles… brings a tear to my eye.
But the thing is, when a leading Bachy is boring to watch, it makes the long weeks of covering the show incredibly painful. Which you’ll discover as I talk more about the top two on this list.
3. Honey Badger
Oh, the Honey Badger. Nick Cummins. The man who allegedly had no idea what he signed up for and went into hiding after choosing no one.
In 2018, I would’ve happily shouted to anyone who listened that the Honey Badger had ruined my life and my belief in love. In fact, I probably did.
Every Bachelor shift, I had been working for 12 hours a day for eight weeks straight, watching this “larrikin” be so stereotypically Aussie and avoid his feelings for a chance to get his rocks off. “This wasn’t the show I signed up for,” I probably wailed to the poor Punkee team, who were wondering why their boss had lost the plot after weeks of sleep deprivation. “WHERE IS MY LOVE STORY?”
The day of the finale, I was in the office at 9am and left at midnight. When Honey Badger chose no one, I shrieked like a banshee while James, our video editor, dropped to the ground, and Tara desperately tried to keep up with the flood of outraged live tweets. James had to work until 5am to deliver you all the finale recap for the unprecedented finale we never saw coming. I was doing elim interviews with Brit and Sophie by 7am, a couple of hours sleep under my belt, trying to write anything cohesive about the finale.
The Honey Badger definitely ruined my life, and the Punkee team’s lives, for at least 24 hours, until we could all finally sleep again and pretend he was just a nightmare.
The only reason he didn’t rank number one was because, looking back, he still brought entertainment value and the shocking ending really did gift us a lot to talk about… so the lack of sleep was nearly worth it.
2. Jimmy Nicholson
Picture this: it’s 2021 and your city is in lockdown. You’ve been advised by a naturopath to give up alcohol, gluten, sugar, and avocado for some reason, and you spend your days and nights watching a good-looking Sydney boy pick a good-looking Sydney girl so they can go on to make good-looking Sydney babies.
They could have just saved us all the trouble and met at Ravesis.
There wasn’t much saving grace about Jimmy’s season: if it could be summed up in dating terms, it was a total beige flag. And, well, if I am wasting my life covering a show, I’d rather be engrossed by the red flags *cough Honey Badger cough* than the feeling like each week was slowly, painfully dragging on like a bad first date that’ll never end.
Did this season ruin my life? It was like being part of a long, boring, management meeting that will never end while my leg starts twitching and my eyes start closing and my brain drifts off to another planet and there’s NO WAY OUT and time hasn’t ticked over for what feels like hours, so yes, it got close.
1. Locky Gilbert
There are a few reasons why Locky ruined my life the most.
Firstly, Jimmy’s season was too boring to give it credit to ruin my goddamn life. I still slept at night! I yawned my way through it! I did my stretches! I had given up recapping by then, so it was doable.
Locky’s whole season was also impacted by COVID. Instead of just pulling the plug on production and giving us a year off like they should’ve (especially given the lack of excitement over the casting of Locky), the network kept filming, introducing Zoom dates and social distancing to the show.
So, basically, after living through the very first lockdown ourselves, we got to then relive it all while watching Locky go on Zoom dates. It was triggering at that stage. We had already been through enough then we had to watch this man take a bath over Zoom with someone? C’mon!!!
Part of the beauty of shows like The Bachelor is becoming engrossed either in the love story or the drama — just anything that will keep you watching. We had Locky profess his love to two girls, who were also fighting because of him, and neither the love story or the drama was that entertaining or groundbreaking that it could make the show bearable to watch.
Historically, if you look at it, you have the Bachelors like Sam or Matty, who had their clearcut winners but still delivered a certain charm and appeal to their dates. Then you had Matt Agnew who may not have been the best leading man but had Abbie and moments like “she called you a dog c*nt” to carry the show.
Locky had neither of these things: the love story was confusing, he was confused too, and there was not one single dramatic storyline that made the series salvageable.
This may sound really harsh because Locky and winner Irena Srbinovska are still together and we’re very happy for them, it’s just that given the unprecedented times and the storylines being lost amongst the COVID restrictions, it made for one exhaustingly long, life-ruining viewing experience. And it wasn’t helped that the 2020 Bachelor series was followed by the worst ever Bachelorette series too.
The show should’ve been rested in 2020. End of story.
The Bachelors 2023 prediction: would they destroy my life and take the top spot on this list?
There’s a very good chance. Thomas could destroy my life any day he wants, if you know what I mean, but I don’t predict MGK 2.0 and SportsBet bringing any sunshine and rainbows to my life whatsoever.
I am more than happy to be proven wrong.
OK, that’s me, resigning editor of Punkee, over and out. But you know I’ll keep watching this show because I’m sick in the head. See you in the Reality Tea live threads!