Charity’s Journey as The Bachelorette is Here

Heidi

Heidi is currently obsessed with watching people make bad decisions…

Bachelorette Monday came back this week with two glorious hours of 25 men falling over themselves for ~~a spot in Paradise~~ Charity Lawson.

Life is good. I mean, not for the people tasked with clearing the cast’s social media history. And probably not for Charity because this show has a horrible success rate. And okay, not so great for me either because writing these things takes forever. But it’s great for the rest of you.

If I’m being honest

I watched Zach Shallcross propose to Katie on March 27th of this year, closed my laptop, switched from my Bachelor Instagram account to my personal account, and didn’t think about this franchise again until now. No, I’m serious. I quite literally just had to google “Who was The Bachelor in 2023?” in order to come up with the name “Zach Shallcross” and I wrote 2,000-word recaps of his entire season weekly. It broke me.

For the first time in my eight years as a Bachelor recapper, I haven’t even read the cast bios. I didn’t do a deep dive into Charity’s history. I’m going in as innocent and unknowing as Zach Shallcross wanted to be in the fantasy suites (it’s all coming back to me now).

Save us, Charity

I may not have had a ton of enthusiasm leading up to Charity’s season, but that’s no fault of the 27-year-old from Georgia. Charity is straight from a The Bachelorette producer’s most PG dreams.

She’s Southern with the slow and syrupy sweet accent to prove it. She’s a former athlete with a body that wears gowns like a pageant queen. She’s demure but also has a professional career as a family and child therapist. She’s the youngest child of an idyllic family with parents who have been married for 48 years and siblings who remain close.

Her only trauma is dating a man who cheated on her for 6 years, but by The Bachelorette standards, that’s a point in her favor because it means she’s terrible at picking men.

Charity is a gorgeous, educated, Black woman from the South who is willing to date messy men on national television for our entertainment.

I don’t know which god the Bachelor producers sacrificed to find her, but they should do it again.

Let’s meet the men

For some reason that I didn’t take the time to research, Charity only has 25 men on her season instead of the usual 30. Let’s blame it on the recession. Regardless, the 25 she got seems pretty great.

Okay, no like 5 of them seem great and the rest seem like they’re going to be a huge disaster. In other words, they’re perfect.

Limo introductions were tame overall. Like, cool, John Henry showed up with a deep sea diving helmet because he’s a deep sea diver. And, yeah, Brayden took tequila shots with her because he’s a travel nurse so he knows how important “getting shots are.” Okay, fine, there is a professional wrestler and a different man who kept doing backflips and jumping on things; but for the most part, it was 50% rizz, 50% cringe. Just like we like it.

The group has great racial diversity (fingers crossed for the first Asian bachelor next season), is mostly age-appropriate, seems to be well-employed and they’re all really, really tall.

Do it for America, Charity.

Charity goes deeper

After limo introductions were made the cocktail party began with Charity being passed around like the conch shell in The Lord of the Flies.

One thing became clear very quickly. If Charity is into someone you can tell.

There were about five men who were given the full Bachelor edit with swelling orchestral music and all while she made heart eyes at them.

Joey (27, Tennis Pro, Hawaii) was one of the first to catch her attention and he is undoubtedly going to catch the attention of all of Bachelor Nation too. I can’t even remember what they spoke about and neither could Charity because we were both too busy looking at him.

Xavier (27, Biomedical Scientist, North Carolina) is 6’6″, loves to knit when he’s not in the lab, and plays the ukelele. The man is stunning. When he got the first kiss of the night Charity just stared into the camera and repeated “Xavier, Xavier, Xavier” to herself like she had been dickmatized.

John (27, Data Scientist, NYC) was so twisted up after he kissed Charity that he said it was one of the best moments of his life.

Aaron B. (29, Software Salesman, San Diego) played her a very strange song on his keyboard which she 100% fell for even though it sounded like something you’d hear at Karaoke night on a Carnival cruise ship. When he was finished playing her told her that his song “started high and then went deep” just like he wants their relationship to go. Charity ate this ish up.

Then there was Brayden (24, Travel Nurse, San Diego) who is a walking red flag if I’ve ever met one. Like, he’s fine, and he said all of the right things, but if I know anything it’s that a 24-year-old travel nurse from San Diego is here for a good time not a long time. Brayden and Charity bonded over their pasts of being cheated on and he told her that he’s attracted to her empathy. I’m also 90% sure his glasses were fashion frames.

Other than the requisite backflip competition that men seem to think women want to see in these situations, the only awkward conversation came from Spencer.

Spencer (32, Medical Sales Director, California) is maybe the most awkward person I’ve ever seen speak on this show. I almost hesitate to talk about it because I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up having some sort of diagnosis that explains why his facial expressions make me think he has bodies buried in his backyard.

I watched Charity’s conversation with Spencer through the gaps between the fingers covering my eyes. It was that uncomfy. The takeaway there was that he’s a single dad and he is really, very, intense.

First Impression Rose

Before Charity could hand out the first impression rose she had a big surprise coming. Her older brother, Nehemiah, had been posing as a bartender all night in order to get the dirt on his sister’s men.

They had this man wearing a dollar store wig and mustache.

Now, I have a hard time believing that Charity didn’t know that he was there, but regardless, she looked pissed off when he told her he’d been spying. I don’t know a little sister on this planet that wants the biggest night of her life usurped by her older brother playing dress-up and giving his unsolicited advice.

Anyway, Nehemiah told her that everyone was pretty cool except for Brayden (the San Diegan travel nurse) who came off way too confident after his conversation and kiss with Charity.

Charity took that information and went straight to Brayden for an explanation. He told her that, yeah, he was feeling confident because their kiss was so good that there’s no way she could feel stronger for anyone else.

Charity was like, “You know what? You’re right!” and gave him the first impression rose.

I don’t know if Brayden would have received that rose if her brother hadn’t put a target on his back, but I know that once he did, it was over.

Never try to take a toy away from the baby sister.

Rose Ceremony

The other 24 men were shook when Brayden walked back in with the rose because they know absolutely nothing about women and then it was time for the rose ceremony.

I still haven’t learned more than a handful of their names and I never will so all I’m saying is that 6 dudes went home and none of them were mentioned in this recap.

Yep, creepy ass single dad Spencer got the last rose.