The Bachelorette: What did Charity Lawson see in Brayden?
“It’s hard to see a bunch of dudes date a girl you really like.”
Welcome to “The Bachelorette,” Brayden. Actually, turns out it’s “goodbye,” because Season 20′s villain didn’t even make it to the rose ceremony before Charity Lawson sent him packing, to the delight of the rest of her suitors and viewers like us tearing our hair out, wondering how he lasted this long.
The Auburn University graduate’s journey to find love wound up in Stevenson, Washington, of all places. But who doesn’t love when ABC randomly sends the production to the beautiful Pacific Northwest?
“I mean, I’ve never been here before,” Charity said, speaking for all of us. “The trees, the mountains, the greenery…it’s insane.”
Jesse Palmer swoops into the guys’ suite and rambles about Bigfoot for what feels like 20 minutes before remembering the real reason he paid the visit, to deliver a date card for the next one-on-one.
The lucky recipient: Dotun, the 30-year-old integrative medicine consultant from Brooklyn. The pair took to a scenic bridge where they bungee jumped twice, taking the requisite “leap of faith” each season allows when a lead invites a suitor on a date with heights. They shared some sweet moments, and Dotun seems as fine a choice as any so far, but this episode isn’t interested in a happy ending yet.
Brayden, the 24-year-old travel nurse from San Diego who has assumed the role of villain this season, played that role fewer than six minutes into episode four. After Charity picked up Dotun in a lime green Jeep Wrangler off to do God-knows-what on their date, the dudes indulged in the obligatory pow-wow about their respective connections with her.
As would-be suitors like Sean and Aaron spilled their guts, Brayden quietly nursed a pint of beer, as the show cut to him trashing his fellow bros, comparing one to Prince Charming from “Shrek” and insisting another pulled a “bitch move” against him by questioning his intentions in a previous episode.
We, as long-suffering loyalists to this reality dating television program, know guys like Brayden either flame out a few episodes in or improbably win the heart of the lead, only to break up mere months after solidifying their forever romance on national TV. And how a guy handles receipt of the first impression rose (or first one-on-one date card) during a season’s premiere tells you everything. So far, Brayden has failed all the tests, at least from the viewer’s perspective. He’s still here, so he must be doing something right.
Other men describe him as “shifty” and “a loose cannon” whose back is against the wall. Another said “he’s overcompensating for something.” Even Charity, when asked by Girl Scouts (there to be cute and assist on the date) who the smartest suitor is during a group date, laughed and said “definitely not Brayden.” The chuckle became nervous when Brayden’s fellow competitors all said they would eat him to survive in the wilderness (part of a game involving children, mind you), and Charity remarked, “They all have it out for Brayden.”
And let’s be real: The slicked-back hair (tiny man-bun included), the dangly earrings, the scarves, the suggestion of “humping” everything in the woods during a group date — Brayden relishes this role. Sometimes you’ve got to play the part. Every season needs a heel, and Brayden came prepared. He certainly made an impression on night one, but Charity’s shocking decision (despite her brother Nememiah’s warning) to give him the first impression rose emphatically declared he was here to stay, for at least the first half of the season.
“I feel like I like you, but I feel like I don’t want to be here right now,” he admitted to Charity during a pivotal group date sit-down that would ultimately decide his fate. “It’s disappointing to see such a strong connection plummet like this, but I deserve someone who is going to wholeheartedly put their heart in this,” she said.
MORE: ‘The Bachelorette’ through the eyes of a sports editor: Ken just wants to have fun
Charity called Brayden “someone I thought I could have seen a forever future with,” likely confusing the millions watching week-to-week, all of whom undoubtedly breathed an enormous sigh of relief when she said she’d walk him to the SUV waiting to drive him to the airport or just anywhere that wasn’t Charity’s future.
“I am not in a position to fix Brayden,” she said. “He is reminding me so much of my past relationship — playing victim, not taking accountability. Bayden is the old. That’s just not a road I want to go down.”
So yeah, that’s it for Brayden, although we’ve seen enough seasons to know what twists and turns producers throw in when compelling characters see premature exits. That could mean crashing a cocktail party or rose cerem — oh look, he did it.
Brayden is back, because why wouldn’t he be? He’s the show’s lifeblood right now, so you think ABC won’t squeeze every last drop? The man got the first impression rose, after all. And nearly halfway through the season, who will replace his drama, his gloriously immaturity and failure to read any room he occupies? Television needs Brayden, even if Charity and her suitors do not.
We’ve ignored this long enough: Viewers of both “The Bachelorette” and “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” saw the two worlds collide during the latest ingenious season of the latter. During a sketch called “Summer Loving,” a spoof of reality dating shows like this, Robinson plays Ronnie, a man who seems less interested in his show’s bachelorette Megan than he is the mansion’s pool zip line, which he can’t leave alone even during group dates and meals.
“How do you think your connection is with Megan?” one guy asks. With a mouthful of food, he sips his drink, says, “Good” and hurries back to the zip line. Megan confronts him about this and other encounters, with production flashing back to show him caught red-handed in his apathy towards anything other than pool fun.
The accuracy of the spoof is uncanny and even eerie. A note-for-note masterclass in parody shining a mirror into the faces of ABC and other networks who probably couldn’t care less about the absurdity of this still-successful genre of reality television. But the parallels between Brayden and the zip-line-obsessed Ronnie run even deeper when, in the sketch, the zip line company manager steps in to further bury the doomed contestant. “He’s just too excited,” Mike says, as Ronnie repeatedly tells him to shut up. “He’s too rough on the rope. He pulls on the rope. … He thinks it’s his.”
I don’t know what Brayden’s zip line was on “The Bachelorette,” whether it was the first impression rose, the confidence that he’d connected faster and better with Charity than the other guys did, or perhaps Charity itself. But that would all suggest his focus was a long-term relationship all along. Like with Ronnie, we saw flashbacks indicating Brayden was uncomfortable with the format of multiple men dating the same woman, and that he might feel better elsewhere. But he didn’t seem keen on leaving the cameras behind. So that could mean only one thing: Brayden’s zip line … was Brayden.
Charity made the right decision, paving the way for the rest of the season without looking back at the childish drama. But if we’re being real about it: Zip lines are fun.