The Men of “The Bachelorette” Have Found the Secret to Male Friendship: Fighting Over the Same Woman

This season's rejects may not have found love, but apparently they did find bromance

All the male contestants on the "Men Tell All" episode of "The Bachelorette" on ABC with Katie Thurston
The men of this season are feeling the bromance.
ABC/Craig Sjodin

As we all know, straight men kind of suck at friendship. But the men of this season’s Bachelorette may have finally found the key to mastering the elusive art of male camaraderie: competing for the hand of the same woman. This seems to be the conclusion to which the contestants of the Bachelorette came over the course of their televised battle for the heart of Katie Thurston — a revelation apparently so beautiful it could only be adequately expressed in song.

On Monday night’s “Men Tell All” episode — a series staple in which rejected contestants come together to bicker with each other on live television — this season’s rejects flipped the script by deciding to put their differences aside and instead celebrate the lasting friendships that apparently blossomed among them, however counterintuitively, while they were supposed to be fighting for Katie’s affections. When the bachelorette made her regularly scheduled appearance to greet the gaggle of presumably heartbroken men she’d rejected on national TV, she was instead greeted by a song about the love and friendship they’d found with each other, rather than with her.

The unforeseen musical number was kicked off by a contestant named Connor, who, I’ve gathered, is apparently no stranger to these kinds of melodic displays of emotion based on the fact that he introduced the musical interlude by rising, ukulele in hand, and saying, “You guys really thought I was going to show up here and not write another song?” Connor’s final serenade chronicled his short-lived romance with the bachelorette, which apparently involved a ball pit and some maniacal kissing, before getting to the moral of the song: “I know I didn’t win your heart, but I walked out with 30 new friends.”

Those 30 new friends, of course, are Connor’s fellow rejected contestants, who, according to the last line of Connor’s mercifully brief little ditty, “have got him believing in bromance.”

It remains unclear to me, a person who does not watch the Bachelorette, whether the men for whom Connor has developed bromantic feelings reciprocate that affection. But for this group of failed Bachelorette contestants, maybe the real final rose was the friends they made along the way?

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