Is our Clayton Echard about to find himself alone in Iceland? It’s sure looking that way! Last week’s Bachelor two-parter—a brutal “Women Tell All” followed by an even more chaotic fantasy suites week in which Clayton watched his apparent top choice send herself home—showcased a Bachelor in distress. And given the previews for this week’s two-night finale, things are only going to get worse for our flailing former footballer.
Clayton’s season has been shaky from the start—partly because the Bachelor himself appears to have been no one’s top pick. He didn’t make it as far in Michelle Young’s Bachelorette season as leads typically have in the past (although the tenure required for contestants to become a lead has become more flexible in recent years), and many fans had hoped the franchise would choose another Bachelor of color. Michelle’s season did, after all, give the franchise an embarrassment of options.
It also didn’t help that Clayton barely had any screen time during Michelle’s season, another detail that made his selection puzzling at best. Fans were less than pleased by his announcement; social media has been rife with suggestions of a boycott and some fans have gone so far as to send Clayton Venmo requests for their “pain and suffering.”
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Clayton also faced a logistical hurdle. As former Bachelorette Becca Kufrin recently pointed out, “Clayton was in a very bad position” coming into this season straight out of The Bachelorette. He would have had “no idea” what people were saying behind the scenes. “So he went in, I think, truly wanting to find love and find a partner, but in a very naive sense and not knowing that there was gonna be extra drama and all this cattiness.”
It didn’t help, Becca added, that the contestants this season were… shall we say… a little more intense than normal?
First there was Cassidy Timbrooks, who managed to alienate the entire house in just two weeks. And then there was her villainous successor, Shanae Ankney, who seemed to delight in her own hypocrisy during an exceptionally shouty “Women Tell All.”
But much of the frustration with Clayton at this point is of his own making. He has seemed easily swayed by producer meddling, much like former train-wreck Bachelor Peter Weber. Despite the show’s insistence that he’s an earnest communicator, Clayton has struggled this season to match the depth some of his contestants have brought to their conversations. And worst of all, he’s been so unspeakably terrible at sorting through any of the house drama. (That last failing was what made last week’s “Women Tell All” such a verbal bloodbath.) Since the season began airing, Clayton even apologized to one contestant, Elizabeth Corrigan, whom he sent home instead of Shanae, after he later found out Shanae had been bullying Elizabeth.
And while we’re on the subject of Peter Weber, the two share one more trait in common: both men managed to piss off their top pick with less-than-chivalrous behavior.
In fairness, Peter’s snafu was definitely more egregious. Madison Prewett had requested that the Bachelor not sleep with other women if he wanted to leave the show with her—but he did it anyway, hoping to talk her into forgiving him after the fact. It did not work, and in the end, he got roasted to high heaven by the woman he proposed to, Hannah Ann Sluss, despite not being all in on their relationship.
Clayton’s misunderstanding with Susie Evans had at least a little more nuance. As teased endlessly throughout the season, Clayton claims to have fallen “in love” with three women this season. Producers knew Susie wanted her man to remain chaste—so of course they scheduled her fantasy suite date last, giving our Bachelor ample opportunity to share his feelings (and a bed) with two other women before her.
And oh, boy, did our Bachelor take the bait. He was riding high when he left his second fantasy date with Gabby Windey; he shouted to the heavens that he was “falling in love!” as he got into the van to leave. Once he sat down for dinner with Susie, however, things began to fall apart.
Susie never actually told Clayton that him having sex with another woman or confessing feelings for another woman would be a deal-breaker—and given the setting, it’s fair to argue she certainly should have. Still, Clayton’s angry response to her feelings was less than desirable—especially when he started saying absurd things like, “I don’t believe in anything anymore; everything is literally invalidated” and “I don’t even know who I’m looking at anymore.”
“I just thought he would have had more compassion for me at the end, to be honest,” Susie said in the post-breakup van ride home. “Regardless of what kind of love at this point, I just thought he would have been better at getting though that conversation kindly.”
Clayton might’ve thought he was falling in love with all three of his contestants, but the moment Susie said she couldn’t overcome his failure to remain chaste, it became pretty clear he favored her over the other two. So, uh… what’s he gonna do now?
It’s never auspicious when a finale teaser features a Bachelor’s father telling him, “You screwed the pooch.” And yet, that’s exactly where we’re headed. The teaser includes all the requisite crying, as well as Gabby telling Clayton she can’t trust anything he tells her anymore. There’s also the “Rose Ceremony from Hell” to look forward to, in which our Bachelor is going to tell his remaining two women that not only is he in love with both of them, he’s also been “intimate” with both. Fun! Chill! Not awkward at all!
It’s hard to blame finalist Rachel Recchia for collapsing to the floor and saying this is not the experience she wanted or expected. Wouldn’t we all!
There’s a chance that things could turn around for Clayton yet; Chris Harrison replacement Jesse Palmer can be seen in the teaser telling him he’s got some news that could “change everything for you.” But my gut intuition and years of Bachelor watching tell me otherwise. It seems far more likely that this man will be left on the black sands of Iceland alone, with nothing but the Northern Lights to keep him company.
