I wasn’t asked to stan for The Bachelorette; I was called to it. Today I am a proud member of Bachelor Nation—but before Arie Luyendyk’s season of The Bachelor, I had never seen a single episode of the mega franchise. I got into it because I bought a cable package this spring to watch Steph Curry flex, I mean to watch the NBA finals. Once you’re the kind of person who watches live sports, you just sort of naturally also become the sort of person to join Bachelor Nation. So far, the best thing I have seen on The Bachelorette is Christon, a former Harlem Globetrotter who literally dunked on Becca when he met her. Hot.
Tonight the mediocre men who contended for the heart of Becca Kufrin, the world’s most boring Bachelorette, will reunite to gossip about all their drama. Such is the notorious “Men Tell All” episode of the series—a pre-finale favorite that is packed with complaints, confrontation, and arguments that everyone has already moved on from.
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There are also cute stories to tell, like how the sexy guy who famously wore a chicken suit to meet Becca for the first time fell off his bed and broke his nose. And there’s the conspiracy theory, I mean realistic possibility, that Arie himself could be in attendance. After all, the guys spent so much time talking about Arie and what a wad he was to Becca that they barely talked about Becca herself. But there’s also disgusting sub-dramas that have occurred off-screen, living separate lives in the media, that are desperately asking to be addressed on the show.
Lincoln Adim, who was eliminated mid-season, was reportedly convicted of indecent assault and battery on May 21, 2018 for a 2016 crime. According to Variety, Lincoln is “expected to register as a sex offender.” The network denied any prior knowledge of these charges, and Chris Harrison recently stated that Lincoln would not be attending the “Men Tell All” event.
In late May, reports surfaced that Garrett Yrigoyen, the squarish meathead who seems to have won Becca’s heart, had “liked” a bunch of sexist, transphobic, racist trash on Instagram. He received Becca’s first rose; naturally, he is now one of the final two contenders. Becca is obsessed with him. She literally might pick him and, like, get married?
Read more: ‘The Bachelorette’ Has Confused Racism with Entertainment
This is not the first time Bachelorette contestants have come under fire for their off-show behavior. Last summer, Bachelorette fans followed the vile, racist saga of Lee Garrett, a contestant who tweeted disgusting racist garbage and, among other things, attempted to cast a Black contestant as “aggressive.” Lee’s behavior then became the center of the “Men Tell All” conversation. Lee left a hideous stain on Bachelor Nation, signaling that the production was out of touch with the impact that his racism would have on other contestants, while capitalizing off of it by framing it as one more titillating plot point in a dramatic saga.
Garrett, however, didn’t bring the bizarre beliefs he “likes” on Instagram onto the show. If former Bachelor contestant Ashley Spivey hadn’t screenshotted and outed Garrett’s now-deleted Instagram account, who knows how long we’d have gone without knowing that Garrett has “liked” Instagram posts shaming fat women, mocking transgender people, making racist jokes about immigrant children, spreading a conspiracy theory about a Parkland shooting survivor, coming for icon Colin Kaepernick, and…you get the picture.
Conversely, Garrett’s remarkably passive social media expression of hateful ideas is completely invisible on TV. When she exposed Garrett, Spivey tweeted that “After Lee’s problematic @$$, I truly thought this would be something we paid better attention to.” The production team should know better, should be sensitive to the fact that this sort of political history is contentious in a way that is ugly, divisive, and inappropriate for national television. Instead, Garrett’s past Instagram behavior has been written off as a history of bad taste.
After the screenshots were made public, Garrett issued an apology and deleted the old account. In it, Garrett said he understood that his “likes” were “hurtful and offensive,” and that he is “taking steps to grow, become more educated, and be a better version of myself.” His apology makes no sense to me. He also says, “I never realized the power behind a mindless double tap on Instagram and how it bears so much weight on people’s lives,” as if the problem is that racist, transphobic memes impact people offline, and not that the meme is, in itself, racist or transphobic. Sorry, Garrett, you are what you “like.”
From this apology, we’re left to believe that the problem is his failure to understand why it’s bad to publicly support bigoted content, rather than the fact he gave his support to those ideas in the first place. People can grow and change, but I don’t see any indication in his apology that he understands why that content was so offensive.
Following the news that Garrett had “liked” trash content, Becca said, “I’ve just been so busy traveling around the country with press that I haven’t really been able to read too much up on it, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions.” Cool.
I get that the controversies are distracting from Becca’s pursuit of love, but the premise of Bachelor Nation is centered around the personalities and histories of the contenders and their suitor. When atrocious past behavior is brought up outside the show and then ignored during opportunities like the “Men Tell All,” it just makes those controversies more glaring and weird. There has to be a way to address them responsibly, especially during a season that is bizarrely mundane and dull. What are the guys even going to talk about? Arie? The chicken costume? That dude who always took his clothes off? Cologne guy?
Last week Becca bizarrely discarded her best suitor—the dewy, well-oiled stud Jason the banker. He was a kind, tanned man from Buffalo who is incredibly cute and chill-seeming. I dream that the “Men Tell All” episode features Jason receiving a shirtless chest massage on screen, while lambasting the network for allowing a man like Lincoln on the show, and failing to address the Garrett situation seriously. But that is just a dream. We already know that neither Lincoln or Garett’s controversies are going to be addressed tonight, thanks to The Hollywood Reporter.
I like to believe that Becca will eliminate Garrett because he’s just not good enough, pick the benign Blake, and let him become a martyr by doing to him exactly what Arie did to her on the last season of The Bachelor: Becca will romance Blake for a handful of months after the show, but never be able to forget Jason. She will then destroy Blake’s heart on live television which is normal in Bachelor Nation, and offer herself in marriage to totally swole and compassionate Jason, at last finding true love with the man of my dreams. Garrett’s toast, Blake gets empathy, and Jason returns the victor.
But Bustle thinks it is painfully obvious that Becca picks Garrett in the end and, eh, they’re probably right.
