Spoilers ahead for the May 4 episode of The Bachelor: Listen To Your Heart.
The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart is down to four musical couples following the May 4 episode after losing four contestants by the time the credits rolled. Instead of two pairs being eliminated at a rose ceremony, however, two hopefuls chose to leave early, and it was all due to the twist involving Julia Rae and Brandon Mills, and Listen to Your Heart took way too long to get to that twist.
The episode mixed up how it handles its dates by sending hopefuls out for adventures with somebody other than their main squeeze, which seemed all but designed specifically to increase the drama of the Sheridan Reed/Julia Rae/Brandon Mills/Savannah McKinkley love square. Brandon and Julia were paired off for a date, but didn't leave without dropping some reassuring words on Savannah and Sheridan.
Unfortunately for Savannah and Sheridan, the sparks reignited between Julia and Brandon once they went off to write a song together, which was somewhat predictably called "Clarity." Julia was left determined that she wanted Brandon over Sheridan, while Brandon was a little less clear.
Back at the house, Julia wasted no time in dropping the truth on Sheridan, and he handled it with just enough justified frustration and resentment that I immediately became firmly Team Sheridan, especially when Julia started complaining about how he was handling the heartbreak she was inflicting on him.
Brandon's conversation with Savannah was a little less black and white. He was clearly still interested in pursuing a relationship with her, but he wasn't ready to nix Julia, and Savannah wasn't willing to accept being a choice, let alone being a second choice. Consider me Team Julia too!
Both Sheridan and Savannah willingly left, and Julia and Brandon couldn't have looked much more self-centered. In fact, if this was a normal season of The Bachelor, Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise, I would think this was the episode that firmly established the villains of the season. Or, at the very least, the Blake Horstmann and Kristina Schulman of Listen to Your Heart!
Unfortunately, The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart delivered this Brandon/Julia twist four episodes into a six-episode season, so there wasn't time for viewers to really savor the drama and watch the fallout and judgment in the aftermath of Sheridan and Savannah deciding to leave. Pretty much everybody seemed to love Sheridan!
It doesn't help that Julia and Brandon were eliminated at the end of the episode, so the drama doesn't even extend into the fifth episode. If only The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart was running for more than six episodes, or if only the show was running for 12 weeks of one-hour episodes instead of six weeks of two-hour episodes, the juiciness of this twist wouldn't be wasted.
I want to have the time to resent Julia and Brandon, and to baselessly wonder if Sheridan and Savannah could make a love connection over what happened to them, and to wonder if the circumstances of Julia and Brandon's coupling would result in a bad performance. (They did.)
If Listen to Your Heart had delivered Natascha Bessez spilling the beans to Julia about Brandon right before they took the stage at the end of the episode or even teased Natascha's bombshell, I would have been looking forward to next week, and I say that as somebody who hasn't especially been enjoying Listen to Your Heart.
The show took way too long to get to this place, and this twist shouldn't have happened in Episode 4 when there are only two episodes left. It's not like the Bachelor franchise hasn't gotten creative with editing in the past, right? I could have started to care so much more about Listen to Your Heart if I'd had time to savor the drama. Chris Harrison did float the possibility of adding episodes, after all!
See what happens in the rest The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart with new episodes airing ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
