the bachelors jed mcintosh

Everyone Agrees Jed From ‘The Bachelors’ Is A Walking Red Flag

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The Bachelors premiered last night and while we’ve been asking the show for diversity for years, the network sat up and paid attention but not in the way we expected. Instead, they gave us three very strange men to lead the series.

Felix Von Hofe, Jed McIntosh, and Thomas Mallucelli are the three leading men this season and they’re very different — well, personality-wise, anyway. But yes, they’re all white and tall. Good for them.

Felix is a former basketball player turned podcaster, who has never been in love and who I will predict will leave the show still never knowing what love is. Thomas is a romantic Italian stallion who is ready to find the love of his life (in between his breathwork and morning meditation).

And then there’s Jed: our youngest Bachy ever. Jed is a 25-year-old drummer who grew up in the country, has the nicest nails of anyone I’ve ever seen on this show, and if the first episode is anything to go by, his whole personality is based around being a misunderstood, alternative drummer.

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Now, I know some people could be ready to find love and settle down at 25. Maybe. But does Jed give off the vibes of someone who has lived his best independent life, hit peak maturity, and can be a communicative, open, loving partner?

Not exactly. We’re kinda getting big softboi vibes over here — the man is a walking red flag.

Let’s unpack a bit of Jed’s softboi/red flag behaviour from The Bachelors premiere episode, shall we?

Jed said it wasn’t cool to be a drummer when he was younger and focused on the struggles of being ‘different’ for being alternative:

Look, as a former/current emo kid who grew up in the country, I GET IT. Do you ever feel like breaking down? Do you ever feel out of place? Like somehow you just don’t belong and no one under- OK, you get me.

But I’m sorry, you cannot make that your whole personality at 25, in a modern day era, when being alternative is cool, Machine Gun Kelly and Pete Davidson are pulling the hottest women in the world, and everyone’s using TikTok as a form of therapy.

Now I commend anyone who just wants to be their true selves. I doubt it was easy for Jed to be a modern day punk-rocker in a country town, painting his nails and wearing eyeliner. I know how heteronormative and repressed those towns can be. But the ‘misunderstood rocker who just needs to find someone to accept him’ storyline as a love narrative is rife with dangerous softboi behaviours.

As we will come to see…

He didn’t handle being rejected on his first date well:

jed the bachelors

The danger about any young musicians who tour and have fans is that the size of their ego could be inflated by the attention. They could develop a God-like complex. They could think they are in a position of power and let that go to their heads.

When Jed went on his first date with the stunning Catelyn, it was love at first sight for him — but not so much for her. She rejected his rose, and he was completely baffled that someone would dare do that to him, the Bachelor.

Rejection is hard, rejection on a show when you’re the leading person would be a shock, but it’s not a completely new concept. We all have to face rejection at some stage and it’s rarely as personal as we make it. Unfortunately, Jed’s rejection was on camera and he was left disgruntled and pissed off, questioning producers about what had happened.

Wasn’t he the one who was meant to make the decisions? Wasn’t he the one who had the power? How could he get rejected?!

Jed let the rejection impact his following decisions:

Jed didn’t pick himself up, say a polite goodbye to Catelyn, and dust himself off. He stormed off and ruminated about it for his next few dates, as though his trust had never been so broken before.

Sure, he may not have felt a connection with his next few dates — that’s fine. But it was the way the narrative kept coming back to his rejection and his ego being bruised that was alarming.

Instead of remembering he is, in fact, one of the leading men on the show, he wallowed about some beautiful woman he knew for about 10 minutes not being into him, while rejecting a whole bunch of people he could’ve tried to get to know a little better.

When he did click with people, he likened it to finding “the one” or “falling in love”:

Sure, it may all be hyperbole but the whiplash is a bit much. He had obviously recovered from being rejected but then to declare each beautiful woman he gave roses to next as the love of his life was a complete 180 from the behaviour we had just seen, as well as coming across a little desperate when he tried to seal a few dates with a pash.

The Bachelor has historically been about forming a genuine connection. Physical compatibility will always be important, but watching Jed (and to be fair, Felix) felt like watching a man on a real-life Tinder mission, trying to claim hot women to make himself feel better vs. getting to know them.

He gave Felix his last rose because bros over hoes, right?

Felix, who I’d deem more of a fuckboi than a softboi, needed another rose so Jed surrendered his last rose to him in a moment of respecting ‘the bro code’. I mean, the fact these two men adhere to the ‘bro code’ is one of many red flags, but I’m not going to pretend that I won’t enjoy/get simultaneously frustrated at watching them give each other dating advice because I can only assume their advice will be awful.

Jed is apparently here to find love. He had one more rose to give out. Why wouldn’t he try to pursue all his romantic options and keep that rose for himself?

But where does softboi Jed go from here? There are a few options.

  1. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt — it’s been one episode. He could surrender to the process, form a genuine connection that’s not based on stroking his own ego, and learn a lot about himself. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be filmed at 25 doing a process like this, so credit where credit is due.
  2. It could be an eye-opening journey into realising he’s not King Shit and he’ll continue to face things like difficult chats, rejection, and other Bachy curveballs by having tantrums.
  3. He could be as engaging to watch as the Honey Badger: just one horny man, there for a good time, not a long time.

Who’s to say! Already this season is so wildly different that while we may be questioning Jed today, we sure as well may have a new nemesis by tomorrow. And that’s the beauty of reality TV, my friends!

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The Bachelors returns tonight at 7:30pm on Channel 10 and 10play.