If you haven’t been watching this season of The Bachelorette then you might want to start tuning in just for the characters and for what will happen this Monday night.
First of all, you’re likely aware that it’s a reality show where contestants disguised as suitors (they tell me it’s the other way around) try to win the heart of the chosen one. In this case, the main character is Charity Lawson, an impossible-to-not-like bachelorette — except for when she wants ice cream — who is just being her own sincere self on her journey to find her true love.
Per usual on this rosey show, her options are filled with all kinds of characters and, as our own Ashley Marie pointed out, Charity has a strange mix to choose from, maybe stranger than any one of these shows that we’ve seen before.
Amongst the oddities are two charismatic dudes who are slowly but surely becoming rivals.
One of them is Brayden. He’s an outgoing dude, honest to a fault, with an attention-getting personality. He wears different sets of flamboyant earrings each day, tosses an outfit on that looks nothing like what anyone else wears, and can be rightfully called the closest thing the show has seen to a pirate.
He earned himself a date with a Charity, or perhaps bribed her for one, on the most recent episode where they enjoyed a dinner in the outfield of Petco Park where the San Diego Padres play, which is extremely odd because you would think they would go to PNC Park where the Pittsburgh Pirates play. So be it, a team named after fathers, and not pirates, would have to suffice.
Did this particular pirate of love just hijack a whole stadium for a date? They arrived there by helicopter, maybe because his pirate ship needed repairs, and enjoyed a moonlight meal off the coast of Cali.
Then there’s Aaron B., the B stands for Batman (not really, it’s just to distinguish him from the other Aaron on the show). Aaron, the B version, sparked comparisons to the Batman villain Two-Face — you know, that Harvey Dent guy — thankfully not because of his face. It was because when he first met Charity he decided to have a coin choose his fate. Two-Face would be proud.
Aaron flipped a coin right in front of Charity and said if it ends up heads that they will ultimately be engaged but if it ends up tails that he will return to Gotham, or wherever he’s from, immediately.
Indeed, he flipped the coin and it came up heads.
Later that night he flipped a coin in front of Charity again, this time to decide if he should kiss her or not. Heads they kiss, tails they don’t. It was heads. Charity was charmed but many, including myself, pointed out how it‘s very highly likely that he is using a coin in which both sides are heads. This technically means that he wasn’t really Two-Face anymore but rather he was being Ren from the groundbreaking video game series Shenmue.
Ren had both a double-headed coin and a double-tailed coin and would let the main character choose heads or tails before he grabbed the appropriate coin and thus always won. Ironically, Brayden looks like Ren — sort of like a pirate who wears long earrings, but Aaron apparently has one of his coins.
In the next episode — of The Bachelorette not of Shenmue — Aaron came clean to Charity about his coin. It was a shocking twist! Charity laughed in enjoyment of his tricky ways. Of course, she likely knew the whole time and just played along with it because she saw it as fun also, as someone like Charity would do.
Then Aaron turned villain by telling Charity in the most recent episode that Aaron is not in it for the right reasons. This happens every single Bachelor and Bachelorette season. One of the suitors tells the person they are trying to get engaged to, that one of the other suitors isn’t here for the right reasons. It’s amazing how often this happens and how the person being told this falls for it almost every time. But, remember, this time we’re dealing with a pirate.
Brayden rightfully told Aaron that he must be intimidated by the fact that he is Charity’s favorite, which is true when you consider Brayden got the first impression rose despite Charity’s brother’s warnings, the first rose after that stadium date, the rose of the seas (just kidding!), and every version of a Charity smile possible. Even girls named Charity like pirates, matey!
So, what happened after this confrontation? Charity questioned her love for pirates but kept Brayden on board, forcing others to walk the plank.
Now comes the best part. Based on preview footage that ABC showed to end last week’s episode, the Brayden and Aaron rivalry heats up to the point where these two threaten to get physical in what’s hopefully a sword duel but will likely just be fisticuffs. Check out the video to see Captain Brayden telling Aaron, “I’ll whip your a**!”
Do those threats and video teasing of a fight mean that they actually do fight?! We shall soon see but this rivalry is ready to heat up and I’m sure that the whoever gets booted off the show first won’t be decided by a flip of a coin.