It’s official. It’s only week three, and already The Bachelor has gone absolutely mental.

Yes, yes, this is the week in which Matt walks off. Yes, this was the week in which the word c*** was said so many times it made the astrophysicist puns look like they were used sparingly. But hush, eager children. That was not how this insane week of Bachelor glory began.

Abbie was centre stage this week, our favourite Gemini sneaking in to nab the first single date with Matt. And man, that girl should sue, because while the other girls were out and about in aircraft and Ferraris, the poor girl was forced to squash citrus juice with her feet because…reasons? I don’t know, I guess crushing grapes for wine just wasn’t shocking enough for our lovely viewers this season. But hey, Matt seemed absolutely delighted that Abbie was prepared to drink disgusting foot juice for him. If that doesn’t scream ‘problematic’ to you, then I just don’t know what does.

But it was the next scene in which she got her own back, as between make-out sessions in the hot tub Abbie was able to drop the most Australian sentence on TV. Alert the presses everyone – apparently Monique called Matt a ‘dog c*** and a disrespectful pig’. What a shame the ‘Honey Badger’ wasn’t here this season, because I think he would have taken that as an expression of the deepest love.

Matt is not of the same opinion. We are treated to melancholic shots of him gazing into the distant sunset, his bare torso glistening (are you even sad if you have a shirt on?). His single date with Helena, which is so full of sexual innuendo that it involves ‘impregnating’ an oyster and a literal pearl necklace, doesn’t even end in a kiss, showing that Matty’s mojo is well and truly gone. Things don’t seem to be going well. Even his attempt to coax the truth out through a ‘truth circle’ doesn’t work, despite how amazingly subtle the strategy is.

But he doesn’t waste too much time pondering his existential crisis. The cocktail party quickly rolls around, and he pounces on Monique like a cat on a feather duster. Despite her fervent attempts to distract him by repeating the word ‘flowery’ over and over until it loses all meaning, it doesn’t quite cut it. She is forced to deny her words using some of the worst acting I’ve seen since watching Joey pretend to act on Friends.

Suddenly, it’s an episode of Poirot and every girl has a different version of events. Matt tries his best to interrogate each of the girls separately, while they compete for the world record of who can say the c-word most often in one hour of television. Not that that’s the word Monique is worried about.

“I don’t even use the word pig,” she protests. Oh Monique.

Matt’s fed up now, as you can tell by his teacher voice when he tells the girls that tonight has been ‘‘a waste of his time’’. Yeah, like this show is really a worthy use of your science brain. Still, the producers must have a pretty firm grip on our boy Matty, because despite the obvious blow to his sense of self, Monique stays in the mansion and it’s the lovely Julia who goes home. We knew you so briefly, Julia.

By the time the second episode of the week rolls around, the smoke hasn’t quite cleared on the whole name-calling debacle. You didn’t expect them to let it go that easily, did you? But before we get into all that down-and-dirty drama, we have to endure a terribly dull date with resident chemist Chelsie, during which the couple attempts to bake banana bread, but in a totally-not-staged montage end up just dumping ingredients all over each other. Cute? Anyway, it ends with a rose and a pash in the pool, as well as a very uncomfortable but very understandable moment of praise for the abs Chelsie is boasting. Is this show just an ad for fit scientists or what?

After that boringly wholesome date, it’s time to humiliate the women a bit more by forcing them to crawl in the mud for a chance to catch a bouquet, something Matt seems weirdly into. The ‘lucky’ winners get to embarrass themselves further by dressing up in wedding dresses and answering deeply personal questions. Abbie cheats (shock, horror!), leading the rest of the girls to conspire to get her eliminated from the game and our beautiful Vakoo to be crowned the winner. The scenes are intercut with the other girls undertaking one of the most half-hearted attempts at a workout that has even been put to film. This turns out to be just a way to sneak in a few more shots of the girls bitching about the Monique situation.

Vakoo’s single date with Matt is hilariously bad – and yes, that is a joke, because she could not stop giggling the entire time. Oh dear, he’s going to become even more convinced that he’s funny.

When the cocktail party arrives, Matt can’t even wait until the end to say, ‘see you next Tuesday’ to Monique, and the fake shock on Abbie’s face may have single-handedly rekindled my will to live. Yet, the show must go on, and just because there was a sneaky early exit, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the girls are safe. This week’s final rose ceremony lost us our beautiful Vakoo, and our airwaves are poorer for it. Ah well, he didn’t deserve her anyway.

And so ends the beautiful fairy tale of canine genitalia that will go down in history as the quintessential Australian love story.