Last night The Bachelor broke the fourth wall, and things will never be the same.

Though marketing itself as the ultimate kind of reality television show, those who watch The Bachelor know how far it falls from the realm of real.

Very rarely, in any kind of reality, will you find one man able to date 22 women at the one time without raising an eyebrow, and very rarely, at least in my kind of reality, will you hand someone a red rose every time you decide you want to see them again.

Alas, it’s perhaps the fact The Bachelor is packaged as something far from reality that demands its cult following. But of course I can watch The Bachelor and still be a feminist, because here I am consuming something so outlandish that I can critique it with reckless abandon, we say.

And so it is, and so we do.

But on Wednesday night, we saw, for the first time, real life intrude on The Bachelor, and suddenly, it wasn’t all champagne, cheese, fun and games anymore.

For those who missed the show’s climax – which, might I add, was ironically rather anti-climactic – contestant Sian Kelly had a kind of outburst that should be more common in a scenario where you’re locked away from the world, with only the intrusion of a camera crew keeping you company.

"I don't like this process... it's just awful," she told Matty. "Surely you know what I mean? Just like, everything. Cameras in your face. I just have a bad intuition at this current moment in time, I'd just prefer to exit."

This, of course, came moments after the show put producers in the shot, illustrating the way in which they coach the contestants through the series and their various meltdowns.

Sian, in locking herself away from the cocktail party, was wallowing in the bathroom, away from the glare of the camera and the stalking of the producers. That was until a producer, under a veil of faux-concern, opened the door, counselled her through the distress, all the while throwing a microphone under her words.

“I’m leaving,” she told a producer from the bathroom. “I don’t like him, Jasmine. I’m better than him. I’m better than this.”

Later, she told Matty: “I’d prefer to exit. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s just me and my energy. And just everything today it’s like, ‘Get the f*ck out’.”

Channel 10 broke the fourth wall, showed behind-the-scenes, and extolled how sometimes, the reality of reality TV can be as ugly as we speculate.

It's a strange thing, when a show characterised by perfect lighting, the glittering of tealights and a veil of beautiful clothes, untouched makeup and well-crafted hair suddenly pulls the curtain back.

The camera angle isn't what we are used to, the setting isn't what we're accustomed to, and the characters aren't happy and obliging as we've come to see.

In fact, they're blatantly unhappy.

Sure, in showing behind-the-scenes we're being told something we already know. That the show, in all it's glitzy facade, has real people in a very unreal scenario who find the concept as unnatural as the rest of us.

And perhaps it's not that funny anymore.