The Bachelorette: Why is Jed Wyatt responding to girlfriend allegations?
Has our opinion changed about Jed, Haley, or the scandal since the news first came out? You can easily claim at this point that Stevens is milking the scandal down to the last drop with continuing to keep the story going; there seems to be an element of hoping the story boosts her own music career, but we’re not entirely sure that it will. Even if you think that this is her primary motivation, consider this: It doesn’t change what he supposedly did! He’s still the one who seems to have put himself in this position. Maybe she should’ve recognized more that him going on the show was a red flag for her relationship, but if the stories of him ghosting her are accurate as opposed to having a real, legitimate conversation, he set himself up for this. It seems like the reasonable thing to do here would’ve been having a conversation after filming, explaining that he developed feelings for someone else. That may have spared him at least some of the trouble … but maybe not all of it.
For the sake of this CarterMatt article, the thing we mostly want to dive into is this: Why is Jed being so quiet about all of this? For the past few days, someone has been going in hard on his reputation and talking about things that severely alter the impression of him as a contestant. Yes, he did tell Hannah Brown on his one-on-one date that he went on the show for his music career, but we don’t think this in itself is unusual. Almost every contestant comes on this show with an ulterior motive; he was just gutsy enough to actually admit to his publicly.
The likely truth is that Jed would like to speak about all of this before this runaway train hurts him more than it has; he just may not be able to. Like many other contestants, he’s currently suffering amidst a gag order where he can’t exactly talk about a number of pressing topics until the show allows for him to do so. It’s possible that ABC or producers are keeping him from directly addressing this until either his elimination from the show or after he and Hannah end up together, provided that it’s the case. They want to obviously generate as many headlines as they can, good or bad; Jed writing a statement on his iPhone notes and posting it to Instagram isn’t maximizing any story potential. Isn’t it going to be incredibly awkward if Jed has to do a photo shoot at the end of the season with People, given that they’re the ones who first spoke with Haley about all this? If he and Hannah are engaged, they’re the publication that tends to do these photo shoots.
To see our take on all of this drama in video form, check out our latest video below! Remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube so you don’t miss our weekly Bachelorette talks and also view our official show playlist.
Rest assured — a time will come when Jed tells all about this. Maybe it’s (ironically) at The Men Tell All. Maybe it’s a little bit later down the road. There’s a new episode of The Bachelorette on Monday, and you can read some more about it over at the link here.
Do you think that Jed should be allowed to talk about these allegations prior to his completion of The Bachelorette? Be sure to share in the comments. (Photo: ABC.)