‘The Bachelorette’ Recap: Lee Garrett Cements Status As A Terrible Person

On Monday night’s episode of the 13th season of The Bachelorette, audiences were further introduced to the horrid behaviors of the show’s villain, Lee Garrett.

As a continuation from last week’s episode, Lee and Eric Bigger continue to fight. Eric yells at the majority of the group, all though his comments are mostly aimed at Lee, who, by all appearances, is a racist sociopath who has poked and prodded at Eric to get him to this point of anger.

Soon after, Lee interrupts Kenny Layne as he explains the finer points of wrestling to bachelorette Rachel Lindsay. Lee tells Kenny that he really needs to speak with Rachel, despite having already had his one-on-one time with her. Kenny dubiously gives way to the conniving contestant. Having gotten what he wanted, Lee turns on the charm – according to him – and presents Rachel with a block of wood, in which he has rudimentary carved “enchanting” with a pocket knife given to him by his grandfather.

After returning to the mansion, Lee is pulled aside by Kenny, who expresses his frustration. Lee plays dumb and quickly gets a rise out of the professional wrestler, who can be heard screaming from all corners of the house.

For the second week in a row, Lee has picked fights with two of the show’s black contestants and feigned ignorance to his white counter-parts. Claiming that he loves both Kenny and Eric to his white friends, he constantly admits during the confessionals that one of his life passions is getting a rise out of people and making them look foolish. In light of the apparent racist tweets Lee has sent out in the past, he is a Bachelor villain like no other – truly reprehensible without respite.

With tensions high, Rachel cries on camera about the pressures she feels as the first black woman to be in this position. With all the negative stereotypes attached to black women, she feels it’s extra important to have a season void of any major drama. She tells host Chris Harrison that she wants to go directly into the rose ceremony.

The ceremony is predictable for the most part, with two exceptions. Kenneth ‘Diggy’ Moreland was sent home without a rose, despite Rachel’s initial interest in the 31-year-old inventory analyst. Equally surprising was Lee’s survival – he was awarded the last rose.

Despite the obvious nature of Lee’s racially coded talk, his involvement in almost all instances of drama, and his dastardly confessions to the camera, Rachel has kept him around. Being the smart person she is, it seems almost impossible that this decision was her own. Unfortunately, that means that the show’s producers have kept Lee around and are exploiting his racism for drama – next week, the show will air on Monday and Tuesday and will be focused on a fight between Lee and Kenny.

Monday night’s episode did have one bright moment – the one-on-one date between Rachel and the youngest contestant Dean Unglert.

It is revealed that the pair will be heading off into a blimp for their date and Dean says that he is terrified of heights. While many contestants may say that to seem cute, there is no doubt that Dean is telling the truth. He doesn’t smile once in the several minutes leading up their boarding of the giant blimp hovering over the empty field.

Once on the blimp, Rachel convinces Dean to take the co-pilot’s seat, and the young model settles in. Later, they speak about how important it is that a partner makes you feel safe, even when you are terrified. As expected, Dean gets a rose.

The next day, the contestants join Rachel for a group date on a boat. They dance, they drink, they do the limbo, and several of them freestyle.

Afterwards, Rachel tests their “cerebral” ability with a spelling bee in front of a crowd of Hilton Headions (Hilton Headonites? Hilton Headers? Hilton Heads?). Josiah Graham wins handily in the contest, which had the suitors spelling dating related words, including “coitus.” Later in the night, Josiah drinks from his trophy, spilling alcohol all over his crotch.

After the group date, Lee tells Rachel that he felt threatened by Kenny during their interaction several days before. Rachel doesn’t take all of what he says at face value but nonetheless asks Kenny about the situation. Kenny tries to convince her that Lee is lying, but he later tells the camera that Rachel appeared to be unresponsive to his side of the story.

Kenny asks Lee to speak with him and Lee, well into the second step of his reptilian plan, cries out, “Now what?”

They head out onto the balcony while the other contestants slowly try to get a good vantage point of the fight.

As mentioned earlier, The Bachelorette will continue to exploit Lee’s racism next week with a special two night, four hour event, as the fight between Kenny and Lee comes to head. Blood will be shed.