Generally, I do not like the Men/Women Tell All because most of the time, they don’t tell much at all. But these men were wound up tonight and came ready to spill all the tea! I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a group of contestants call one another out as much as these guys did. I feel like everyone was ready to (verbally) fight. Maybe it’s always like this and I paid more attention than normal, but my goodness it was a lot.
What bothers me about MTA/WTA is that we very rarely get answers, they yell over one another the first half, and then when the hot seats start, they get softball questions and nothing really gets resolved. Put a journalist in the hosting seat, then we’ll get some answers. Call Rachel Maddow!
Very much like this tell-all, this review will be a bit all over the place, but we’ll get through it. There was a lot of dead space in this episode, so rather than the usual play-by-play, I’m highlighting my five takeaways from the night.
But first, let it be known from here forward, Tayshia and Olu together created the color orange. These are facts, no further questions, please.
1. Tayshia and Kaitlyn lack the ability to move live/live adjacent shows along.
This is Tayshia and Kaitlyn’s second Men Tell All and I saw zero improvements. I love their dynamic on the show with the Bachelorettes and I hope at least one of them will get to stick around for future Bachelorette seasons, but they cannot command a live audience and a crowd of rowdy men.
What I mean by that is, they don’t know how to control their guests, move them along when necessary, or be firm and ask tough questions. For what it’s worth, Chris Harisson was also terrible at asking the hard questions, and sometimes his interview style would be to play dumb, but he did know how to command the audience and get contestants to listen when it was time to move on to a new segment. Tayshia and Kaitlyn don’t do this, no matter how hard they try. There was a moment when the men were yelling over one another and Tayshia and Kaitlyn looked like elementary school teachers trying to get second graders to come in from recess. It was embarrassing for everyone.
I also think there are more random segments to make people laugh and bring levity. I understand the need for this, but it seems like they’re televised more in the last year or so and it looks like a lot to manage. It’s unfair to them too. I get the vibe that they’re taking direction more than shaping the tell-all themselves, and even if that was the case with Chris Harrison (which it wasn’t because he was also an executive producer) it wasn’t as obvious.
2. The producers didn’t do enough to give these men opportunities to speak on the show.
Yes, there are contestants every season who do not get the shine they deserve and if they’re lucky, they end up on Paradise and shine there. But these dudes actually seem really cool (like firefighters Daniel and PJ). We didn’t see enough of that during the season. As much as the show is about the lead, it’s also a great opportunity to create some characters (besides just villains) that Bachelor Nation can get invested in. That can’t happen if we don’t see enough of these guys. This is also an unofficial petition for the show to be the same amount of weeks, but with just 10 fewer men. It would allow us to get to know them more, the lead would get to know the men more, and everyone’s happy.
Casey won the night from me. He did not miss, not once. Romeo was a close second. They weren’t just throwing out zingers that landed well, they were questioning the men on their season about their actions. Romeo spelled out how Martin was misogynistic, Casey kept everyone honest, we love to see it.
3. Going forward, this does not need to be two hours.
Wasn’t there a point where tell-alls used to be an hour? Bring that shit back bruh. One hour, limited commercials. They struggled to fill two hours and as a viewer, I felt it. The recap segments were minutes long, the fights needed to be cut off sooner, and there needed to be more yes or no questions.
For example, Jamie’s segment could’ve been done in half the amount of time if he was asked “Are you sorry, yes or no?” and “Did you lie to Michelle about men questioning her character, yes or no?” This also goes back to Tayshia and Kaitlyn not knowing how (or not being empowered to) move the show along.
4. Don’t fuck with Olu.
I guess during the season Chris S. said some slick shit about Olu having a low IQ. I don’t remember this, but if Olu said it happened, it happened. Olu let Chris know why he needs to keep Olu’s name out of his mouth.
Listen, in most circumstances, bragging about your degrees in response to someone questioning your IQ comes off a tad bit elitist, but in this situation, I gotta side with Olu. See what Olu and people like him know is that Chris’ comments were not one-off insults, but rather an example of (likely unconscious) bias that he has against Black men/people. Note: this is not the same thing as me calling Chris racist.
Chris needs an entire lesson on how much words matter and can sometimes have racial undertones even when that is not the intention. It will never be a good look to question a Black man’s intelligence on a show that has fucked up conversations about race and telling diverse stories. That’s not to say that contestants of color can never be called dumb (for example, Pieper was definitely acting dumb on BIP). These sorts of comments actually happen a lot on this show, but normally the contestant of color is not given the floor to respond. What frustrated me the most about this entire exchange though is that not once did Chris look Olu in the eyes. Don’t say something with your whole chest and then not acknowledge it when you’re called out.
5. Clayton’s season might…slap?
Okay, first of all, why are we asking Romeo’s opinion on Clayton? In fact, why are we forcing any of these men to speak highly of Clayton? This wouldn’t be necessary if we got to see for ourselves how great he is. And I’m sure he’s fine. In fact, I’m convinced he is rather normal, boring, and nice.
At this point, there should be no confusion about why people are upset. It’s not about Clayton, it’s about production ignoring the multiple Black/biracial men they could’ve chosen from on Michelle’s season, but didn’t because it would’ve been too much to have two Black bachelors back to back (even though Matt James was a full year ago).
Anyway, the one positive thing about going back to the tried and true formula is producers know how to manipulate within that formula better than anything. It’s the bones of their show. They can sell a white football player from the midwest. They can sell the final three white women who are 23 and absolutely not ready for marriage, but love God and are just trying to “trust the journey.” So, I expect to be entertained, although they might have revealed way too much in the trailer we saw. By the time we meet these girls via their ABC bios, fans will have sleuthed through their photos and this promo to piece together Clayton’s final three, which means we’ll know by night one, who Clayton fucked in fantasy suites (I’m going to do my best to avoid spoilers, that may mean no going in-depth on Claytons women). Wild.
This mess of a night ends with everyone getting one of pizza Peter’s “life-changing slices.” Honestly, this is so much free advertising for Peter, yet we still don’t know the name of his pizzeria. I know I could Google it, but I won’t. Worth noting: we don’t see Michelle specifically take a bite, so in my mind the pizza still sucks.
We end with an extended preview of what’s left of Michelle's season (i.e. what we didn’t get last week because we had to make time for corn-fed Clayton’s preview). In the preview, we get some tension between the final three, Michelle’s dad worrying about a man being jealous (likely Brandon), Michelle’s mom telling Nayte she doesn’t think he’s ready for an engagement (because he isn’t), and Brandon asking to chat with her right before a rose ceremony. It looks dramatic and left me wondering if Michelle is even engaged. I’m thinking maybe not. What are your thoughts? Comment below and let me know!