The End of an Era: Bachelorette 18, Episode 10
We've seen diverse casts in the last few seasons, that likely ended tonight.
I went into this episode very nervous about it all being live. Rachel Lindsay has spoken at length about how dirty the show did her by forcing her to watch her entire finale live for the first time in front of cameras and a live studio audience. I didn’t want to watch Michelle have to defend her choices without any time to reflect on the edit she watched. Luckily that isn’t what she had to do.
It wasn’t lost on me as this episode started that this might be the end of an era. For more than a year now we’ve either gotten leads of color, very diverse casts, or both. Although Clayton’s season looks like some fantastic MESS, I got a little sad at the thought of not seeing people who look like me more prominent on my screen. I mean, we got our first Black couple of this franchise tonight (from a Bachelor/Bachelorette show, not counting Paradise) and that’s huge. More than anything, I am so proud of Michelle and Matt for how they carried themselves on their seasons and forever in awe of Rachel Lindsay who started it all. Just had to say that before getting into the recap.
We began the night with a full audience with no masks and no mention of if they’d been vaccinated/tested. It’s as if Omicron ain’t lurking through every crevice of this country. On the heels of multiple major cities announcing indoor events and dining would only be for vaccinated individuals and the president’s address on Omicron, it was pretty reckless to 1) still host a full studio audience like this and 2) not acknowledge it. We do get Kaitlyn Bristowe letting us know that Tayshia came in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID and so she couldn’t be there.
Michelle is in her bed reflecting on her final two men. She’s sad about sending Joe home, but her feelings for Nayte and Brandon are stronger. Personally, I’m impressed with her ability to let go of that Minnesota dream so quickly.
Brandon Meets the Family, Take Two
First of all, Michelle looked great in this two-piece outfit. Wow wow wow. She sees her family and starts crying pretty quickly, which is so sweet. They sit down to talk about meeting Brandon shortly, who her parents have met before.
Ephraim says Brandon reminds him of himself and that he could see Brandon really caring for Michelle. What a compliment from a Black daddy! Dad opinions are held in high regard over here.
Brandon says he feels at home with Michelle’s family already, something Michelle said about Brandon’s family too. You can see it too. Sure he had the privilege of going first and meeting them already, but there’s a comfortability there that feels deeper than those advantages. Brandon brought flowers and swim trunks for Ephraim, a nice call back to when Brandon wore his trunks in Minneapolis.
Brandon and Michelle’s dad go chat and Ephraim asks where he sees himself fitting into Michelle’s life knowing she’s looking to finish her graduate degree and has dreams of being a principal (sidenote: why are we hearing about this for the first time now). Of course, Brandon is team Michelle so he has no worries about her pursuing her career aspirations. Again, Ephraim says if Michelle picks him, they’d accept him into the family no questions asked.
Next, Brandon sits down with Michelle’s mom, Lavonne. He tells her he’s in love with Michelle and Lavonne asks if he’d move to Minnesota, he says yes without missing a beat. He shares that he wants to be part of Michelle’s family so badly and Lavonne says she’d love that. He tells her again that he wants to marry her daughter and Lavonne says she wants that for him too and begins tearing up. When I was first watching, I thought she was crying because she really saw him and Michelle together. Now that I know how it ends, I can’t help, but wonder if she was crying because she knew it wasn’t him at that moment.
The family gets their final hugs and Brandon and Michelle briefly recap how well it went. Michelle says the more time they spend together, the more she falls in love with him.
Nayte Meets the Family
Nayte is confident as ever and thinks meeting the family will go well. Meanwhile, Michelle’s family thinks it will be hard to not compare him to Brandon, who they’re pretty pleased with.
Michelle says her family has sometimes been able to see red flags that she couldn’t see and so their opinion is important to her. Right away her family felt standoffish to me. Michelle is looking at him to tell their love story and Nayte is giving very little, which is crazy because he’s so charismatic.
Ephraim and Nayte go chat and Nayte assures him he’s ready to get down on one knee and that the feelings are mutual. Ephraim asks about logistics and if Nayte would move to Minnesota, Nayte is honest and says they haven’t talked about logistics and I already mentioned last week how that line of thinking drives me insane, so I’ll save the rant this time. Michelle’s dad is concerned that they haven’t discussed big life plans like where they plan to move.
Nayte also tells Michelle’s sister he hasn’t discussed moving to Minnesota, but that they have plans to do a bunch of fun things. Michelle’s sister says plans are nice, but the values and foundation of a relationship are important too. I had to agree with sis on this one. It’s really easy to create a fun bucket list, but the details and mundane/downtime matter too.
When Michelle sits down with her dad, he brings up concerns about Nayte being ready for marriage right away. Michelle assures him that he said he was ready, but Ephraim is aware that his daughter is an internal optimist. I did think it was interesting that there was so much focus on if Nayte would move, or how much he loved Michelle, did they ask Brandon these questions? Particularly the logistical ones? Canada is closer to Minnesota than Portland and the climates are similar too.
Nayte’s time with Lavonne is up next, they’re talking about Nayte’s feelings for Michelle and she asks if he feels that Michelle is the one. Nayte stumbles through his answer before saying that he doesn’t take love for granted. Michelle’s mom calls him reserved and says she’s not convinced he’s all in. Lavonne asked how Nayte would feel if Michelle didn’t pick her and he said he hasn’t given that much thought (cuz he’s so damn confident). I love what a straight shooter Lavonne is, she tells it like it is, but with love and care. I see where Michelle gets it from. Towards the end of their time together, Lavonne tells Nayte that she feels he isn’t being open with his emotions. She says “you’re not quite open with your emotions, you’re saying them, but I’m not feeling them.” The meeting of the family is the most unconfident we’ve seen him all season and it’s not even that he seems unconfident, it’s that you could tell he was trying to say the right thing.
In her interview with producers, Lavonne says she’s concerned that Nayte isn’t ready and says Michelle is likely into him because he’s exciting and less predictable. While watching this, I tried to remind myself that this is an edit, an edit that made it feel like there were no positive vibes when they met Nayte. I’m sure that wasn’t actually the case. So I’m saying it here so you know that too. We’re shown what production wants to show us.
Michelle talks with her mom and asks if she thinks Nayte is ready for an engagement and she says no. Lavonne tells her she expressed those concerns to Nayte and Michelle said it triggered her because that’s what she was worried about coming into this process. Michelle says she’s scared of losing him but thinks he might not be as scared.
After meeting the family, Michelle and Nayte debrief family time and Nayte says that he likes what a straight shooter her mom is. He tells Michelle he’s sure this is what he wants, despite how he’s coming across. This felt icky to me. At this point, it felt like production, Michelle, and her parents were forcing him to say he loves her and be open the way Brandon was, but they aren’t the same person so that’s not a fair expectation. I wish Nayte would’ve tapped into whatever he did when he was with Charles during hometowns and been honest about why he isn’t the greatest at conversations that center feelings. It might not have been enough for Michelle’s family, but it would’ve been more context than they got. Michelle says she’s going to reassess her feelings for Nayte because she doesn’t want to be in a relationship where the other person isn’t all the way in it.
The Final Date with Brandon
Brandon and Michelle are going jet skiing and Michelle says she’s on the cusp of falling in love with Brandon and she really wants to be in love when she’s proposed to. I think this is such a weird thing to say. In the real world, we have the luxury of waiting until we feel it to say it, but Bachelor world isn’t set up like that, so people who feel first, think second (Brandon) tend to do better on the show.
Michelle says she likes how Brandon challenges her to stay in the moment, I too love people like this. They sit and talk about how much Michelle’s family loved Brandon and how well they’d all fit together. Brandon also shares that he loves Michelle because he faces things in love rather than anger and he knows Michelle does this too. This was the first time I think we got an actual reason behind why he loves her so much, so this was good to hear.
Time for the nighttime portion of the date, Michelle says their day date was one of her favorites. She and Brandon reminisce about the season. Brandon says meeting the family was his favorite, which was sweet. Michelle says she loved when he pulled her aside at the last rose ceremony which was a surprise, I didn’t like that and it seemed like much of Twitter didn’t either. But knowing that it really meant something to Michelle just affirms that these guys know her way better than we do.
Brandon has a gift for Michelle, it’s the sweatshirt she ruined during their fantasy suite food fight. It’s his favorite sweatshirt and he just wanted to give her something with sentimental value to show he cares. Brandon loves Michelle the way she wants to be loved and I didn’t quite see it before, but it’s really beautiful.
Once again this season we get horrible audio (not the last time tonight) but Brandon is telling Michelle how much he loves her and how ready he is for an engagement. She tells him that she loves him and cares bout him and Brandon looks shocked that she said it back. At this point (before knowing how it ends), I’m terribly nervous for Brandon.
Michelle says telling Brandon that she loved him made her chest feel lighter, she says this is the love she’s been looking for. So many big proclamations for someone she doesn’t end up choosing. Ahhh it was so cringy.
Nayte’s Final Date
Going into his final date with Michelle, Nayte acknowledges that he knows meeting the fam didn’t go the best and didn’t come with a strong conformation of their trust in him and Michelle’s connection.
Listen, I don’t know Nayte, but I know people like Nayte, his tone shifted after meeting the family. In his ITMs he doesn’t seem like the confident guy we’ve seen this entire time. He seems like a kid. I really hope he’s able to unpack why emotions are more difficult for him. I think it’ll change his life.
Nayte and Michelle are going on a problematic shamen date. Can we please stop with these dates? I mean, at least it seemed like they hired a local to perform this ritual, but it is always such a watering down of a legit practice. Let’s hire a licensed Imago therapist instead and have them relive their worst childhood traumas (I’m only kind of kidding).
The couple starts out by setting intentions and hopes for their date, Michelle wants Nayte to open up of course and Nayte wants the relationship to continue. This date felt chaotic, there was a lot of confusion. Nayte didn’t understand the directions and wasn’t confident in his answers, which made him seem uninterested and scared
Michelle says she feels the red flags with Nayte and needs to know if he’s really ready for an engagement. They sit down to chat and Michelle says she values her family’s opinion when it comes to her relationships. She shares that her parents couldn’t quite feel that he was ready or would take care of her. Nayte says that’s what he wants too.
He says losing her would suck. He came on this journey with two suits because he didn’t think he’d make it this far. He said he’s terrified of spending all this time focused on her, their relationship, and losing that would suck.
Michelle admits she’s scared too and when he’s feeling a certain way, she needs to hear it. What Nayte says seems like enough for her. I’ve said this plenty of times throughout the season, but Nayte reminds me too much of someone I used to date to really trust him. Obviously, that’s a projection more than anything else, but all I want for Black women is an easy love. A love with healthy communication, vulnerability, open and honest communication and I don’t see that with Nayte. That’s not editing, that is who Nayte has told us he is. Of course, he can change, of course, he can unpack some shit in therapy and do better. I want that for him, but that doesn’t mean that Michelle has to stick around for it.
Nayte is in his head a bit, wondering if his honesty earlier in the day was too little too late. He asks how Michelle is feeling and she says stressed out, Nayte agrees that it’s a big decision for everyone involved.
Michelle asks him again if he has thoughts about an engagement/proposal and I don’t really understand the question. Was she asking if he’d have a legit speech prepared or if he’s sure it’s something he wants?
Nayte’s response is again him admitting that he’s scared to lose her and that he wants to see this through. As expected, this is enough for Michelle.
Michelle maintains that she’s seen emotions from Nayte she hasn’t seen before, but she’s ignoring how much she has to pull them out of him. That gets exhausting. She says she trusts her heart and that her heart is telling her that Nayte is her person.
When Michelle gets back to her room, there’s a card for her at the door, it’s from Brandon. He says a world without her is a world he fears to face, their love is special. He tells her to follow her heart because he followed his. There were a few jabs at Nayte in there, he says something about her never having to ask about or question his love for her.
The Proposal
Michelle says she woke up confused, she has two men who she’s in love with and that are in love with her. She says she’s emotionally torn, that’s an awful way to go into a fucking proposal. Usually, at this point, I feel like bachelorettes are set on who they want and just doing their best to protect that relationship, but Michelle really fell for both of these men.
Nayte is meeting Neil Lane and looking at rings, they all look hideous and Nayte picks the worst of all, a fucking pear-shaped ring. We have to do better, gentlemen.
Back in her suite, Michelle says being in love with two people she doesn’t know how to know which person is hers and again this is what I think we get wrong about love as a society. Love is so important, a great foundation for a relationship, but Michelle has mentioned feeling chosen and creating special moments throughout this season, and I feel like no one gave her that more than Brandon. I don’t understand how your person is someone who doesn’t love you the way you need to be loved.
Brandon is excited. Excited to see Neil, excited to pick out rings, excited to propose, he picks a much better ring. But still, one that looks like everyone else’s.
Michelle is emotional because she realizes that she needs to put herself first and that's something that she’s never done. She said there is one person she’ll be devastated to live her life without, so that’s who she’s choosing. This was the moment when I knew for sure it was Nayte.
Michelle’s final dress is gorgeous. She says the weight of having to let a love go is painful. We got a montage of b-roll of both men headed to the proposal site. And first out of the car is…Brandon. He is not her person. His suit looks great though. My heart sank at the thought of the breakdown he was about to have when he found out it wasn’t him.
As he walks up to Michelle and begins his monologue, we can barely hear him over the waves and my closed captioning was going in and out all night, so unfortunately I’m not too sure what he said, I would assume it’s not far off from what he’s said the last four weeks. Why do these proposals off the water when you know the sound is hard to capture that way? Them saying goodbye to one another was heartbreaking.
They walk on the beach a bit, cry a lot, and say goodbye. Beyond the show forcing a proposal every season, I hate that the lead has to dump someone right before getting engaged, please make it stop. The best thing Brandon did was respect her decision and not turn around and try to convince her differently. That would’ve been unfair and I do think that’s the true mark of love, specifically, loving someone from a distance.
I’m not sure I want to see Brandon in Paradise, but I’m sure his DMs are looking lit right now. I hope he reveals in that a bit.
A note about choosing Nayte: There will be a lot of hate towards Nayte that is steeped in racism and anti-blackness over the next few days. As I write this, Nayte and Michelle have already shared their first post of one another on Instagram, and Nayte definitely addresses the haters in it (which lets me know he’s a bit bothered). My critique of Nayte isn’t rooted in any of that. In fact, I think Bachelor Nation has gotten too comfortable tossing around the word fuckboy to describe him.
However, there is this thought that circulates on social media where Black women encourage other Black women to choose love they don’t have to question or endure for because too often Black women love stories on and off TV are marked by what they had to suffer through to get a great love. That’s not to say the relationship wouldn’t come with work or disagreements, but it’s this idea that Black women often have to do the emotional labor that we’ve watched Michelle do with Nayte and many of these other men all season. I loved watching a Black man love Michelle so openly and vulnerably in a way I never really have, especially not on TV and even though he wasn’t her choice in the end, I’m glad we got to see that. I also hope Nayte watched this season back and was able to have some conversations with Michelle about why it’s tough for him to open up. We aren’t owed that explanation, but that is the work Michelle deserves to benefit from.
Anyway, Nayte walks up and his smile says it all. But as he starts talking, Michelle doesn’t look that happy. I wonder how far apart these two speeches happen, it never looks much later in the day, which leads me to believe there pretty close together in time, which I imagine absolutely sucks.
Nayte says she wants to run away with her, he says he loves her, and he chooses her. Michelle said she felt a connection the moment he stepped out of the limo and that walking into this journey she feared that she wouldn’t be loved as much as she loved a person, she says it hasn’t been the smoothest ride, but she isn’t willing to walk away without him. I stopped listening because I didn’t believe her. Ugh, I hate even typing that. I’m frustrated that even though we saw so much of their relationship, we saw so much doubt too. That’s on production, in the process of trying to throw us off (which they did not do successfully) they gave us an edit filled with too much doubt. At least for me, it was.
The good news, we got our first Black couple out of a Bachelorette season! They look great together and I truly wish them all the best. I’ll be cheering them on via Instagram.
After The Final Rose
I’ll be honest, by the time AFR started, I was pretty checked out, especially when I realized Joe wasn’t getting any sort of segment. That sucked. But maybe he was offered it and turned it down? Anyway, similar to what I did with Men Tell All, I’ve had a few takeaways from AFR.
1. I do not believe you can fall in love with two people. You can love two people, you can be in true lust with two people, but when we are talking about a lifelong commitment, you’re not making that choice lightly and I refuse to believe Michelle chose Nayte the night before, or the day of. The edit has pretty much shown us that its been Nayte the entire time, with seeds of doubt sprinkled throughout.
2. The issue with Kaitlyn and Tayshia hosting live shows was the fact that it was both of them. Kaitlyn had a commanding, but calming presence, and I have a feeling Tayshia hosting this on her own would’ve been similar. Having two hosts makes it feel like they’re fighting for lines, and it’s awkward for them to both ask questions while interviewing two or more people at a time and managing an audience. I thought KB did a great job on her own and I hope one or both of them stay for Bachelorette seasons in the future.
3. Younger millennials can buy a house with the help of ABC! Forget the running joke about millennials not being able to buy homes or have babies because of student loans, if you sign up to be a contestant on The Bachelorette and are lucky enough to be the one standing with the lead at the end, you two could potentially afford a home thanks to a generous down payment from the execs at ABC. Not a bad trade-off for agreeing to have every detail of your life shared for 10 weeks.
4. Production definitely knows we hate Clayton. Hate is a strong word, but you get what I’m saying. When Kaitlyn introduced Clayton, she made a joke about no one knowing who he is and they created an entire segment of Clayton reading mean tweets, YIKES. They clearly picked Clayton because they can make him do wild shit like this and I love that for us as viewers. This was also (hopefully) a nod from production that they see us, but they still ain’t probably gonna listen. Love that Clayton can laugh at himself. It would have been nice to see one tweet acknowledging that Clayton was picked over several Black men who finished after him. Maybe they’ll address it one day (probably not).
That’s it, another Bachelorette season wrapped! We get one week off before Clayton’s season, which premieres Monday, January 3. I’ll be back on here recapping his season. Thanks for rocking with me for this one!
Thank you for recapping this season! (I completely agree re pear shaped diamonds - no good)