It’s a Monday morning and besides existential dread we’ve also got another episode of Bryce and Melissa to look forward to! I’ve just had a look, it’s 36 minutes. These episode lengths are somehow getting longer and it’s magically tied up with my will to live getting shorter. I know that I promised acid but then Jason cancelled on me (me being the podcast) and Jason is the one I want to trip with. Coffee? Hot. Day? Cold. My brain? Mashed potato… let’s get this thing going.
It starts off and says that they’ve been getting really good feedback. Melissa said that someone mentioned it being a bit boring and then clarified it wasn’t a TV show we were watching — oh thanks for that, I was confused staring at my blank phone screen wondering where those voice were coming from.
Bryce and Liss have been recording “live”, which I don’t think they understand the meaning of that word, from their home on the Peninsula, Darwin and now they’re on the Gold Coast! With Bryce’s mum! We all remember Bryce’s mum Dana! She grilled Bryce for being an asshole on MAFS and then ended up making degrading memes about Bec, it was a full 180 and not the sort we were hoping it. Bryce says he’s going to take a backseat this podcast and I for one do not believe him. But the show must go on. (Must it though……? Some food for thought).
Bryce says that all parties involved knew about show’s cinema screening featuring his mum — what will now go down as a more entertaining piece of Australian cinema history than The Castle in the form of Bryce’s mum yelling into a computer camera, calling him a fuckwit (or something along those lines, I can’t remember because I was cheering too loudly). Bryce tells us the completely irrelevant information that his parents are smart cookies and then goes onto say he and Melissa are not idiots. My face remains expressionless — no one here is smart, myself included.
It’s Q&A time, the podcast equivalent of Reddit’s AMA (ask me anything), and definitely not censored or premeditated to make sure that Bryce and Melissa control the narrative.
Question 1: What did you think of Bryce going onto the show?
A: For some reason none of them name the show… They all call it “that show” like MAFS is Voldemort which is ironic considering who Bryce is the most aligned with from the Harry Potter universe. They’re genuinely answering the question but in my head it’s just a series of old-fashioned cartoons playing because that is more interesting than this.
Question 2: What did you really think of Bryce when you saw him on the “that show that shall not be named” (my new title of it).
Answer: I was embarrassed he was my son. That’s what she said verbatim. She goes onto justify he’s nothing like that but in my head the answer stops there and once again Dana is back onside! Welcome Dana!
Dana goes on and on about how radio presenters (one that she won’t name, this whole podcast is becoming a fucking mystery with all the blank names we’re getting!) ganged up on Bryce and the character he was portraying, which is insane to me because the character Bryce Ruthven was portraying was Bryce Ruthven. I get up to heat up some leftover pizza and leave the podcast playing because I’ve already had a stern conversation with one mother this morning, I don’t need it with a second. I return to Dana finally finishing her train of thought with the phrase, “and that’s politics baby” and excuse me whilst I make merch for this blog with that exact caption on it.
Bryce starts talking, he’s climbed out of the backseat where he’s lay low for a record breaking 45 seconds and mentions The Secret Girlfriend. Dana describes the story, and starts it with a truly bizarre statement, “we had an ongoing joke in our family that Bryce’s brother met his girlfriend on Tinder. I thought that can’t be true there’s no way they met on Tinder.” She talks about Tinder the same way I talk about the possibility of their actually being fans of the show Emily in Paris, that it would be physically impossible for that to exist. They talk about The Secret Girlfriend being from Tinder and that she was encouraging of him going onto MAFS and that by the way she really likes plants so if he could buy her one for her birthday that would be great and not at all inappropriate.
Then they talk about Bryce and Melissa’s honeymoon. Dana says she only saw bad things from it and Bryce goes, “it was good! We flew kites!” Which explains their matching tattoos that they got of kites because if there’s anything I want to memorialise on my body it would be the honeymoon where my husband told me I wasn’t hot enough to hit on in a bar but at least my hair was blonde-ish.
Time has paused, not the podcast, but time in and of itself as a theory has somehow slowed down, boredom knows no bounds. We’re 13 minutes in.
Melissa, Dana and Bryce all talk about everyone else’s last dates being amazing compared to Bryce’s where he introduced Melissa to his friends. I don’t remember all the last dates being amazing — remember when Patrick organised cheerleaders for Belinda and instead of being a Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You moment it came across more like that scene in Not Another Teen Movie where he sings “Janie’s got a gun” and gets her arrested — just awkward. Anyway, Dana says that Bryce’s friend McKayla has stayed over at their house before, Bryce chirps in just as friends (she also receives a plant every birthday I’m told — I told myself). Bryce says that John Aiken is a really nice man who wears an earpiece. He goes on and says that John said to him, “don’t hate me mate.” I don’t really follow where this podcast has come from to end up here — McKayla was kind of pushed to the side so that Bryce could address his made-up feud with John and my head is spinning but I also don’t care enough to go back and find out what I missed so you’ll all have to bear with me as we try to break through the boredom barrier together to try and squeeze some content out of this.
Dana brings up Sam and that he’s a bully. Bryce says Sam is way worse in real life. To be fair, Sam seems like a bit of a tool but his zinger one-liners that belong in a 90s rom-com were by far and large one of the most entertaining things to come out of this show. It was like watching an episode of Malcolm in the Middle as Sam taunted Bryce with his playground insults. Bryce claims that Sam said he was going to roundhouse kick someone which again is such a stupid insult from a guy who looks like Eminem when ordered off wish.com it’s laughable.
Liss pulls it back and asks what Bryce was like as a child. Dana says he was shy. Dana starts telling a story about their childhood which is the equivalent of someone telling me their dream — I literally do not care. Bryce starts talking about his budding soccer career and moving to the home of Australian soccer — Rockhampton!
The conversation goes on and on… and on. I know podcasts are just someone talking but I’d rather sit through a lecture on quantum physics than this. This is the equivalent of being the outsider at a party and everyone keeps telling inside jokes but none of the jokes are funny and you hate every single attendee. I start to wax my legs just to make me feel something again. Is 1:07pm too early to smash a bottle of Rosè and cry myself to sleep because I’m on tenterhooks right now.
They talk about their love of sports, I talk to my friend about what lawn fertiliser encourages grass to grow because that would be more interesting than this.
It’s listener question time! A new segment and when I say a “new” segment I mean any segment at all because this podcast so far has been meandering psychobabble equivalent to 50 Shades of Grey as in terribly written and wildly unhorny. The question is if they wanted to be in the public eye and Bryce says, “no, I hate the Kardashians” which is evidence enough, case closed your honour! Bryce’s disdain for the Kardashians is proof he is not a fame whore. And then Bryce says he can’t do another reality show for another 12 months but don’t worry people have been sniffing around and wait didn’t he just say 30 seconds ago he’d never do it again because he hates the Kardashians or some shit? Helllooooo? Can someone beat me over the head with a pillow because I’m lucid dreaming?
They answer one person’s question and then their loyal and loving audience is treated with a six minute lecture about the edit. Again. Dana chimes in, says something in French or Cantonese or a made-up language or maybe it’s English I don’t even know, I genuinely have stopped listening.
Carla from Bendigo asks Liss if she wants to have children in the near future. Liss says that she doesn’t want to have a half-lizard person as a child who was created in Elon Musk’s dungeon. Okay, she actually says something along the lines of “maybe, maybe not”. I stand by my theory that Bryce is a lizard person, we have received no proof he is not.
They again say Jason is coming on and also thanks for all the positive reviews. I gently roll my body down a hill — I have truly hit rockbottom.
