At first, I was Team Tre. Not because of the whole Thomas nonsense, but because the dude got his ass waxed on national television. Was I not entertained? No, reader, I was very entertained. But then, what first started as a fun Truth or Dare date devolved into a house divided. And that left all of us watching asking: Are you Team Tre or Team Andrew on The Bachelorette?
Both have points. Both have passions. And both have a serious sweater game. But when it came to the central argument surrounding Thomas' desire to be the Bachelor, Tre and Andrew came down on separate sides of the debate: To care, or not to care?
So, who is right? Who argued for the ultimate right reasons? Let's weigh both sides.
Team Tre: To Care
As a member of the Bachelor cast, your role is threefold: 1) You must be willing to expose all your damage on national television. 2) You also must be willing to wear turtlenecks. And, finally, 3) You must protect Katie at all costs.
So when one member of the cast admits to wanting to be the Bachelor (should a relationship with Katie not work out, of course), you must vanquish said contestant. You must unionize with your fellow men, and cast him over the tall fence that Colton Underwood himself once scaled to separate from the Bachelor narrative. For a man who appears on reality TV for clout, is not a man of honor. And haven't we learned that a show that shoves fettuccini into gluten-deprived men is all about honor?
Therefore, Tre is right to try to stand up for Katie. To put not himself, nor their relationship first, but to put truth first. Anything else would be selfish, wouldn't it? Thomas' problem is absolutely the men's problem — if they're going to lose, it's better to lose to someone in the house for the right reasons, not to someone who might inevitably trade Katie's heart for an Instagram heart.
But perhaps you might double-tap the other argument of the episode...
Team Andrew: Not To Care
To be a successful contestant on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, one must have tunnel vision. And the vision at the end of the tunnel is a proposal to Katie, not a gold medal from the most Olympic of testosterone-fueled events. Andrew could join the Bachelor Men's Union and fight against Thomas and his intentions, or he could simply... get to know Katie.
As Andrew told Tre, Katie asked the men to trust her. And to trust her means to trust that she has the savviness to understand who is intentional and who isn't. The need to be a knight in shining armor is, in itself, verging on sexist — if you can't trust Katie to make her own sound decisions, aren't you, in a sense, insulting her intelligence?
What's more, the more you focus on Thomas, the less you focus on Katie. And are the men here to kick Thomas off The Bachelorette, or to woo The Bachelorette herself? With the limited time contestants have, why waste that time on... Thomas?
The crux of the debate might lie whether you lead with your heart, or you lead with your logic. But, wait, but there's a dark horse in this face-off...
Team Michael A: Be Cool. Don't Be All, Like, Uncool.
Or, as Michael A. told the men: "We gotta make sure to remember that we all care about Katie. The how we handle it... we all can agree to disagree about these things, but the love for Katie is all there."
Thank god for 37-year-olds on The Bachelorette.