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Tag: Brandon

Michelle picks, leaving one man ‘broken’ on ‘The Bachelorette’

December 22, 2021 /
Michelle Young on the beach in Mexico on proposal day on “The Bachelorette.”
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHO MICHELLE PICKED ON THE BACHELORETTE FINALE, STOP READING NOW!

You could say Michelle Young’s season finale was a textbook end to a “Bachelorette” season in the sense that she dropped the guy who seemed perfect for her and kept the one who was raising red flags.

That producers made it look like Brandon Jones stood a chance of getting the girl is another feather in their caps, I suppose, although it did seem inevitable that someone so heart-on-his-sleeve sincere was bound to be disappointed.

And oh boy, was he disappointed. On a scale of one to 10, the emotional brutality of that breakup was like a 20.

It always seems so pointlessly cruel to let a dude walk up in his best suit, an engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket, give a flowery speech declaring his love and then have the Bachelorette tell him sorry, I’m just not that into you.

You have to assume she knows where her heart lies before she hits the beach, or wherever the proposal happens, so why not head off the unlucky runner-up at the pass?

Well, for the drama, that’s why. And on Tuesday, we got to watch a solid eight minutes of agony, both his and hers, as Michelle told Brandon — just after he told her she was the “missing piece” he’d been searching for his entire life — that her heart had taken her in another direction.

But don’t worry, Brandon told host Kaitlyn Bristowe on “After the Final Rose” that he’s doing good and that he wants Michelle and Nayte Olukoya to be happy, and he seemed like he meant it.

As for Nayte, yes, I was as skeptical as the next person. How does a dude who claims never to have been in love before, who comes from an emotionally constipated family, make a lifetime commitment to someone he’s known for mere weeks when no one else seems to believe he’s ready for it?

Well, Michelle is a really smart woman and if she says Nayte is in it for the long haul, who the hell are we to doubt her?

In any event, the producers seem to have so much faith in the relationship that they gave Michelle and Nayte a $200,000 down payment for a house on “ATFR” — in Minnesota naturally, you think she was going to move for a guy?

Let’s just hope they patronize a different grocery store than the one used by Joe Coleman and his family.

Anyway, let’s backtrack and recount how Michelle got to her happy ending.

If you’d tuned in just for the “meet the family” part of the finale you would have been shocked as hell that Brandon lost.

Has a family ever loved a member of the final two as much as Michelle’s family loved Brandon? It seems unlikely.

They had already met him, of course, during that one-on-one in Minneapolis when her parents “surprised” Michelle and Brandon in the hot tub in her folks’ backyard. And Brandon charmingly brought dad Ephraim a pair of swim trunks to replace the ones he’d borrowed that day.

Brandon couldn’t have answered his and mom LaVonne’s questions any more agreeably if he’d had somebody from production coaching him on the sidelines.

No, he wouldn’t be threatened by Michelle finishing her master’s degree and becoming a school principal. “My mom in my family is the powerful woman.”

Yes, he was in love with Michelle, “the most incredible woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

Yes, he’d be thrilled to move to Minnesota. “I just want to marry her so bad.”

LaVonne Young bestows a welcome-to-the-family kiss on Brandon Jones.

LaVonne bestowed not one, but two cheek kisses on Brandon and beamed, “I would be so happy if you’re here in the end.”

Brandon was the “best friend” that Mom and Pop wanted her to marry.

And Nayte’s time with the Young fam? Awkward, at least the way it was edited.

He was vague about moving to Minnesota, telling Michelle’s sister Angela, “The thing about me is I’m all about the adventure. I’ve moved so many times in my life.”

To LaVonne, he said things like, “My mind and heart are definitely pointing at Michelle,” not exactly a declaration of undying love.

LaVonne told him point blank she didn’t think he was ready to get engaged and shared that sentiment with Michelle, which had Michelle saying she had to “reassess” things with Nayte.

Naturally that meant that when it came to the final dates with the final two, Brandon got the chill zooming around on Jet Skis date and Nayte got the uncomfortable “sacred ritual to make you spill your guts” date.

Brandon got the sun, fun and surf date; Nayte not so much.

There’s no point rehashing all the smiles, smooches and declarations of Brandon’s true, true love on his date. The most significant part — other than Brandon gifting Michelle with the sweatshirt he’d been wearing when they had their fantasy suite food fight — was her telling Brandon she was in love with him too.

Up till that point, the fact Michelle was already “in love” with Nayte but just “falling” with Brandon made the ending seem like a foregone conclusion.

I would never accuse Michelle of telling a fib — she seems far too principled for that — but what a gift to production! Despite Nayte having been the clear favourite for weeks, maybe Brandon did have a chance of being the last man standing or so it seemed.

Raul guides Michelle and Nayte in telling each other how they feel.

On their date, Michelle took Nayte to a “sacred place” where a shaman named Raul got them to waft smoke on each other and share their innermost feelings, although he sensed a “blockage” in Nayte.

Well duh, the man had already confessed to being raised in a home where emotions weren’t expressed and “I love you” wasn’t said. It takes more than sacred smoke to counteract that. And I get that you have to go beyond platitudes if you’re planning to marry somebody, but this show makes almost a fetish of the concept of “vulnerability.”

Michelle said in her voice-over that if Nayte stopped trying to pull down his walls it would be a “deal breaker.” Dunh dunh dunh.

Luckily, Nayte was more forthcoming when he and Michelle were alone in his suite. “All I do, all I do is think about life with you, that’s all I do,” he told her. “I think what’s scary is just looking at you right now knowing like, hey, I might wake up tomorrow and just never be able to see you again, you know? That’s scary as hell.

“So as crazy as it is for me to get down on one knee, I am more than ready to do that with you because I want this to be forever, you know?”

She did know. She left Nayte’s room saying, “I think my heart is telling me that this is my person.”

So Brandon was a goner then except, conveniently, there was a letter from Brandon waiting when Michelle got back to her suite — and I don’t blame the conspiracy theorists out there for suspecting production wrote it for him.

It talked about how “a world without you is a world I fear to face” and how he’d always place her happiness above his and he’d love her forever and he’d always see her, etc. Just the sort of thing you want to read the night before you dump someone.

So the narrative the next day, as Nayte and Brandon picked out engagement rings, was that Michelle was confused and her heart torn.

Production threw one more red herring our way by having Michelle say in voice-over as we watched her walk barefoot across the sand to the proposal platform that she was following her heart and was “never going to feel unseen again,” a clear callback to the words in Brandon’s letter.

But of course it was Brandon’s SUV that pulled up first.

Michelle and Brandon tearfully embrace after she dropped her bombshell.

There were so many heartbreaking moments to choose from as Michelle broke up with Brandon, while reassuring him that she still loved him — at least the ones we could hear since the crashing waves drowned out much of the sound, leading viewers to scramble to turn on closed captions.

“Giving you my heart was worth it. It’s something I’ll never regret,” said Brandon while struggling to hold back tears. But tears there were, many, on both their parts.

“I’m just so broken,” he said and there was nothing fake about that.

Michelle had dried her tears by the time Nayte arrived, vowing to make sure she was “always chosen first, seen now and today, tomorrow and for the rest of our lives.”

“I love you with my entire heart,” Michelle told him, adding that her soul mate “is definitely standing right in front of me.”

Yes, of course Nayte proposed to Michelle.

Nayte got down on one knee, pulled out the pear-shaped Neil Lane sparkler he’d chosen, and they were engaged and giddy with happiness.

“This is my soul Nayte,” declared Michelle.

A mariachi band serenaded them, and Kaitlyn and Tayshia Adams ran down the beach cheering to congratulate them (I must say I always get a kick out of that part).

So are they still happy and in love?

It sure looked that way on “After the Final Rose,” which Kaitlyn hosted solo since Tayshia had been exposed to COVID-19.

Michelle reassured Kaitlyn and everybody else that not only was Nayte continuing to let his guard down in their relationship, “he’s more vulnerable than me.”

“I really can say I’ve never been with somebody who makes me feel so beautiful truly inside and out,” Michelle said.

Perhaps, most importantly, mom LaVonne and the rest of the Young clan had fallen in love with Nayte too. And LaVonne was now “besties” with Nayte’s mom. They were in the live studio audience, which went from unmasked to masked about 40 minutes in after viewers complained about the lack of COVID precautions on Twitter.

So simmer down, doubters. Nayte might not have been your pick, but he and Michelle seem as happy as any couple who got together on a dating show can be. Plus he’s Canadian, so I have to support him, eh?

Now, for Brandon. And I apologize for the length of this recap, but damn you to hell three-hour finales!

Brandon and Michelle reunite for the first time since their breakup.

He was gracious while speaking with both Kaitlyn and Michelle, saying he’d always love Michelle but was thankful she’d found her person.

The only hint of frustration came when he said he felt “like a little bit my love was overlooked” and found it confusing that “you really had to push Nayte to that point . . . you never had to push me.”

Maybe we’ll see Brandon again on “Bachelor in Paradise” next summer, although part of me feels like he’s too pure for it.

Speaking of seeing people again, Kaitlyn also brought out the next Bachelor, Clayton Echard, “a man who does need an introduction because nobody knows who he is.”

That’s not true, though. We all know who Clayton is, at least on a surface level. We just don’t understand how he got to be the Bachelor.

Kaitlyn had Clayton read mean tweets about himself, some of which viewers thought were fake.

I will say that Clayton was a good sport. “I kind of wanted this too,” he said in response to the tweet “All I want for Christmas is for Rodney to be the Bachelor. #SantaSucks.” And he laughed really hard at one that read, “I hope Clayton uses protection in the fantasy suites, otherwise 9 months later there are gonna be a lot of baby Shreks running around.”

We also saw the steamy, bitchy, tear-filled promo for Clayton’s season, the one that gives away all the drama by revealing that he told all of the final three he loved them and was “intimate” with at least the final two.

Who am I kidding? I may not be excited about it the new season, but I’ll be recapping it, starting with the Jan. 3 premiere. So check back here Jan. 4 and, until then, have a safe, happy holiday.

And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

An apple falls right out of the tree on ‘The Bachelorette’ hometowns

December 1, 2021 /
Nayte Olukoya, Joe Coleman, Rodney Mathews and Brandon Jones wait to learn their fate
on the hometowns episode of “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Sjodin/ABC

You could say the hometowns episode of “The Bachelorette” came down to an apple vs. a guy in orange shorts. Michelle Young tossed the man who will forever be known for dressing as an apple on Night 1 while the man who donned orange swim trunks on their date, the one we were meant to think she was having doubts about, maintained his frontrunner status.

I mean it’s hard to drum up drama when you have a final four that seems this benevolent, and not a mean brother or rude mother in the bunch among the families that Michelle met.

The closest we got to hometown conflict was when Nayte’s stepdad expressed doubt that Nayte was ready for an engagement, which set up the narrative that Michelle was “struggling” as she went into the rose ceremony with the fear that Nayte would break her heart.

But there was no way she was going to send the season’s frontrunner home; ditto for Brandon, since Michelle told him she was falling for him. And was she really going to ditch Joe after he threw her a prom?

So that left Rodney Mathews, the down-to-earth, good-natured fellow who wormed his way into viewers’ hearts.

I always figure you can tell a lot about a man by how he makes his exit. “I’m always gonna care about you, Michelle, like forever,” Rodney said. “You’re amazing Michelle, so thank you.” And he kissed her hand before he got into the SUV.

That’s class. And I don’t want to belabour the point, but like a lot of other people I’m wondering why we couldn’t have had Rodney for a Bachelor instead of Clayton Echard, whom ABC finally confirmed as its next male star.

While I had hoped we might get actual hometown dates this week, instead the men’s families came to Minneapolis.

First up was Brandon, who hails from Portland, Oregon.

Michelle gets a skateboarding lesson from Brandon Jones. My apologies for the crappy screen grabs,
but ABC’s photo selection for the episode was really paltry.

The less said about the skateboarding part of the date the better. Whatever skills Brandon had gained from skating with his whole family deserted him with Michelle around and yes, it did make him look 14.

Skating around Brandon’s mother Carmen, father David and brother Noah was way easier. Noah was playing the skeptic of the group, but Michelle told him she could 100 per cent see herself with Brandon. She won David over by talking fishing and basketball. And she assured Carmen she could see who Brandon really was “and that’s why Brandon is still here, because I truly love who that person is.”

Speaking of love, Michelle told Brandon, “After today it is very clear to me that I am falling for you.” Combine that with the fact there was so much goodbye smooching that they were still lip-locked as Michelle sat in the back of the van and Brandon seemed like a shoo-in for a rose.

Next it was Rodney’s turn to take Michelle spiritually if not physically to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., but they picked apples and Rodney fed Michelle apples blindfolded, callbacks both to the first night and their one-on-one date.

Michelle was clearly the apple of Rodney Mathew’s eye during their hometown.

If you didn’t know any better it would be easy to think Rodney stood a real shot at a rose. Michelle leapt on him and kissed him and told him she missed him. She said Rodney could be the “best friend” her parents had told her she should end up with. We never heard Michelle say she was falling for him, however.

When his mom, Carrie, asked Michelle if she could create a life with Rodney outside “The Bachelorette,” the best Michelle could come up with was that Rodney was the type of person she’d want to be stuck in an airport with for five hours if their flight got cancelled.

So yeah, I get why Carrie was fearing the worst for her son with three other men in the running, but Rodney told her Michelle was worth the risk.

Perhaps Joe, on the other hand, already had a leg up, since he shared his hometown of Minneapolis with Michelle, but he had the best non-family date activity hands down. He took Michelle to prom at his old high school complete with fancy clothes, snacks, balloons, dancing, a photo booth, king and queen sashes and crowns and, with no chaperones, all the smooching they wanted.

The prom do-over that Joe Coleman (and production) planned made Michelle happy.

This was a callback to Michelle’s group date spoken-word poem in which she said she was the last picked for prom, as well as the fact Joe had never gone to one.

“You’ll always be first with me,” Joe told her.

“Joe really sees me and understands me,” Michelle said.

The tough cookie at the family meet-and-greet was meant to be Joe’s sister-in-law, Hanna, but once again the family was putty in Michelle’s hands.

She told Hanna Joe was her “little slice of home away from home” and Hanna decided that Michelle had the kind of strength and energy that Joe needed in his life. Although she also said, “I hope this works out because we will see her in the grocery store.”

The last supposed obstacle was that Joe hadn’t told Michelle how he felt about her yet, but he rectified that: “I am falling in love with you and I feel like you’re that special person for me.”

Finally, it was the turn of Nayte, a Winnipeg native who now calls Austin, Texas home.

Nayte Olukoya put on the orange swim trunks that Michelle said she liked for their date.

The paddleboarding was an entertaining enough diversion for Michelle, but the main event was meeting Nayte’s mom Leanna and stepdad Charles, who were divorced but had come together just to support Nayte — or Nathaniel, as they called him.

Nayte had warned Michelle that his family wasn’t into talking about emotions — “no heart to hearts, no I love you’s” — so it was pretty remarkable to watch Nayte and Charles do both those things, apparently for the first time ever.

Charles, who had come into Nayte’s life when he was in Grade 9, told Nayte what an amazing journey it had been to watch him “grow up to be you.”

“Never doubt that I’m proud of you . . . never, ever, ever doubt that I love you and never doubt that I’m here for you,” Charles said.

Nayte thanked him for everything.

“I’m gonna have a family one day and I want to be who you were to me for them,” said Nayte, with tears in his eyes.

“You’ll be even better than me,” Charles replied.

If nothing else ever comes of Nayte meeting Michelle, that’s a moment to treasure right there.

But for purposes of plot development, the important conversation was between Michelle and Charles when she asked if Nayte was ready for an engagement and Charles replied, “I don’t know if he’s gonna get to that point.”

Then again, who knows if that answer actually had anything to do with Michelle’s question, given the magic of editing, although Nayte himself told his mom he wasn’t quite there yet.

The day of the rose ceremony, Michelle had an extraneous visit from her former “Bachelor” mates Bri Springs and Serena Pitt, which boiled down to Michelle telling them it was going to be tough to send one of her final four home since they were “the best guys I’ve met in my entire life.” And maybe she’d get her heart broken at the end. Well, duh.

When the time came, Michelle handed roses to Brandon, Nayte and Joe and you know the rest.

Next week it’s back to a Monday night schedule with “Men Tell All.” ABC also promoted Clayton’s “Bachelor” season for the first time, which starts Jan. 3. My assessment, based on the clips, is that they’ve brought on some mean girls to compensate for what would otherwise be the deadly dullness of the season.

You can tune in next Monday at 9 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

A Bachelor is born and a final 4 picked on The Bachelorette

November 24, 2021 /
Michelle Young gets milking lessons with Nayte, Rodney, Martin, Olu and Joe on “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos but screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

Michelle Young, who’s just the fourth Black lead in 43 combined “Bachelor” and “Bachelorette” seasons, picked her final four in Tuesday’s episode and they’re all men of colour for the first time in franchise history.

It’s just too bad that milestone is being overshadowed by the choice of yet another dull white guy as the next Bachelor.

The good news is that on Tuesday Bachelor Nation finally got its first clue as to why Clayton Echard got the call (still to be officially confirmed by ABC). The bad news is that either ABC is letting fifth graders make its casting decisions or it’s manipulating children.

The kids — four students who’d been taught by Michelle — had the task of choosing one of the remaining eight men for a one-on-one date and they picked Clayton.

No sense getting down on the kids. Clayton did build them a fort out of sheets, pillows and overturned furniture. And as student Luke said, “Clayton has really big muscles. He’d be really good at carrying the groceries in” — definitely a useful skill in a husband.

The kids were also perceptive about who didn’t deserve Miss Young’s time.

 “I don’t really like Martin,” said Kelsey. “I don’t know how to explain it. He’s trying to show off. I don’t know if he’s the right one for Michelle and he wears too much cologne.”

Well, that’s bang on.

The kids, if it was indeed the kids, also planned one of the best dates we’ve seen all season, sending Michelle and Clayton to the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota for a real-life Night at the Museum — minus the exhibits that come to life.

Unfortunately for Clayton, fort-building skills and making up his own animal mating call weren’t enough to snag him a rose and a hometown date.

Clayton Echard and Michelle spent the evening in a natural history museum.

Let’s be honest though, that was a given. Sure, he earned the group date rose on last week’s episode, but with guys like Nayte, Joe, Brandon, Rick and Rodney in the running for hometowns Clayton had an insurmountable amount of catching up to do.

Michelle said he checked all the boxes as far as desirable qualities, but “giving out this rose means I’m ready to meet your family and I don’t feel that I’m able to get there with you in time.”

So what made the producers fall in love with him? His muscles? His earnest confession about being ready to settle down and have a family after five years of focusing on his job to the exclusion of all else?

They key moment in the campaign to win fans over to Clayton came after he’d been eliminated and he got letters from two of the kids urging him not to be sad that Miss Young didn’t choose him, which made him cry and vow he’d do whatever it takes to have a family of his own.

Thoughts: why only two letters, was the vote for Clayton not unanimous? (Ahmed, for instance, seemed partial to Rodney and his shaved nipples.)

These letters seemed about as genuine as the wishes that Michelle and Rick pulled out of a wish box on their date but, even if they were real, Luke and Kelsey wouldn’t have written them without guidance from production.

Jayleen and Kelsey, two members of the Bachelor selection committee.

“You will probably meet someone else and fall in love and have lots of kids and be a great dad,” wrote Kelsey, stopping just short of “And you’ll be the next Bachelor.” Just to hammer the point home, the end credits showed Jayleen, impressed that Clayton let her paint his fingernails red, telling a producer, “He’ll be the next Bachelor.”

Yeah, OK, we get it.

Time to move on to what the point of the season is supposed to be: Michelle finding a husband.

To that end, she took Rick, Rodney, Nayte, Joe, Martin and Olu on a farm date, ostensibly also picked by the kids, on which they milked cows, bottle fed calves, churned butter and shovelled shit.

But the real poop got flung around at the after-party. Martin — still pontificating about his “miscommunication” with Michelle over his sexist comment that Miami women were high maintenance — told Rick and Olu that Michelle had not been paying attention, which was “why she perceived everything a little bit incorrectly.”

“There’s a lot of things that have made me question what she really stands for, I guess,” Martin said. And then he mentioned Michelle’s group date poem, the one in which she shared her hurt at being the “token Black girl” at school, and said it showed there was “something deep inside her that maybe she hasn’t worked past and I think that’s immature.”

Michelle in one of her final conversations with Martin Gelbspan.

Martin, of course, despite his boast that he was brutally honest, didn’t share any of that BS with Michelle but just blah blahed about how she was an amazing woman and he wanted to introduce her to his family and friends.

But Olu spilled the tea — “I just want that right man for you,” he said and I believed him — and Michelle confronted Martin.

Martin at first denied the “immature” comment and then tried to spin it as being about the “difference between being insecure and having insecurities,” which doesn’t even make sense. And he kept talking over Michelle, then apologized for “maybe speaking over you” when she called him on it.

I doubt Martin would have got a hometown rose even if Olu hadn’t spoken up, but it was nice to see Michelle put him in his place before showing him the door.

The real Martin came out in the SUV of Shame. Michelle was making a mistake, he said, but “at this point I wouldn’t even care to give her a shot . . . like a woman like that does not deserve my time.”

Can’t wait to see you get your misogynistic ass handed to you at Men Tell All, dude.

Both butter and Michelle were putty in Nayte Olukoya’s hands.

In any event, the only man who was getting the rose on the group date was Nayte, and it wasn’t for his butter churning or the fact he put his back out on manure duty. He told Michelle he was “definitely, seriously, strongly falling for you” and she replied that she was “really tumbling down a hill so fast falling for you as well.”

So if he wasn’t before, Nayte is now the man to beat.

Next up was a one-on-one with Brandon, the main event of which was Michelle taking him to her childhood home while her parents were out.

Brandon Jones and Michelle before her parents “caught” them.

We’re supposed to believe that Michelle’s idea to hang out in her parents’ Jacuzzi, with Brandon in a borrowed pair of her dad’s trunks no less, was spontaneous and that it was a complete coincidence that her folks surprised them there mid-smooch. As if.

To be honest, I’ve always found Brandon’s intensity when it comes to wooing Michelle a little unsettling and, on Tuesday, he dialled it up to 11 by asking for her folks’ permission to marry her — like, bro, you didn’t even know yet if you were getting a hometown date!

The sentimentality continued at dinner, where Brandon talked about how much he wished Michelle could have met his late grandfather, who was his best friend, and gifted her a bracelet that his mom made for him to give Michelle “if I truly think that you’re the one.”

“Michelle Ann Young, I’m falling in love with you,” he declared.

Michelle handed over the rose, obviously, telling Brandon “I can see you being my best friend.”

She also said, “It’s very possible that I could fall in love with Brandon,” but she won’t and man, is he going to be crushed when he gets sent home.

All that was left to do was hand out the other two roses, which Michelle did after cancelling the cocktail party, a move that’s always supposed to come as a shock but never does.

Obviously her fellow Minnesotan Joe Coleman — of whom she said after the farm date, “Clearly Joe knows how to handle tests” — was a lock for a hometown. I figured it was between Rick and Rodney for the final rose and it was Rodney’s.

Despite how much Bachelor Nation loves Olu — and they’ve been lobbying for weeks for him as Bachelor instead of Clayton — he never had a one-on-one with Michelle, a clear indication he wasn’t her guy.

When Michelle said letting Rick and Olu go was her “most difficult goodbye yet,” you believed her.

On to hometowns — and will Michelle actually go to their hometowns? — and an assortment of skeptical family members.

You can tune in next Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo

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