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'Finding Prince Charming' Recap: The Hand That Rocks The Chad

This week sees the emergence of not one, not two, but three reality TV star villains

In reality television, you’re lucky enough to get one villain. Sam came, he saw, and he spat — his villainous turn on the show ended not with a bang but with a whimper when the majority of his fight with Dillon was edited out of the show and he emotionally packed his bags. But the one great thing to come out of Finding Prince Charming has been the emergence of not one, not two, but THREE villains.

We should have seen them coming. Dillon had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of the spit, so it was hard to see him in anything other than a sympathetic light — that is, until he turned full-on supervillain tonight and started taunting his prey. The glorious thing, however, is that Dillon’s nemesis this week was not one of the boring, pretty contestants. It was Chad, who is an absolute lunatic and, yes, the third villain on this series. While Sam was loud, argumentative, and bratty, Dillon’s treachery comes in his ability to drive all of his victims crazy, eventually fleeing the house. Chad’s problem is simple: He's honestly just off his rocker. Screen Gems should produce a gay thriller starring Chad, because he’s better than Ali Larter, better than Rebecca De Mornay!

But we’ll get to that shortly. In the beginning of the episode, Lance Bass arrives at the house to host the most excruciating televised game show since I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! The contestants have to answer questions about Robert, which, how many layers does a rusted piece of tin from the local junkyard really have? Justin does extraordinarily well because he’s the living embodiment of a PR girl who constantly shoots you “just circling back” emails. Eric fails completely, which concerns Robert, because he thought he had the biggest connection with Eric. Maybe Eric was too busy coming up with a dramatic way to reveal that he’s HIV positive at a masquerade ball to remember facts he made up about the childhood he never had like some Westworld android.

Justin wins a solo date with Robert which is described as an “art walk,” but I’m positive they’re just in some Downtown Los Angeles restaurant that has the work of neighborhood artists on the wall. The date ends with Justin and Robert drawing portraits of one another and Robert’s looks fucking awful. He describes it as capturing how much Justin cares about his friends and makes his heart shine or whatever, but in actuality it looks like a crayon drawing you’d begrudgingly tape to your fridge after your child brings it home.

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The second date features Dillon and Chad, which is when things finally take a turn for the melodramatic. Chad has been having a slow-burn meltdown for weeks, starting with the episode where he packed his bags and threatened to leave the house. This time, his second meltdown happens when Dillon takes advantage of some one-on-one time with Robert at their salsa dancing lesson date by pulling him to the side. For some reason, this makes Chad insanely jealous, even though Robert and Dillon have less chemistry than I had with the male underwear ads I made out with in high school.

Chad doesn’t want to see love as a competition, apparently because he walked in on his ex cheating on him and he thought the best way to get over that was to be on a reality television show where he’d have to compete with even more men for love. Chad flies into a rage over Dillon’s chaste hand-rubbing with Robert and tells them he’s going home. Robert chases after Chad, who is practically in tears because he feels like a third wheel. There have been one too many breakdowns for someone without the last name Lohan; it becomes painfully obvious that Chad will completely snap before the episode is over. Meanwhile, while Chad drives off the edge of a cliff like he’s Thelma and/or Louise, Dillon pours himself a glass of wine and celebrates his machinations. This was actually the first sign I got that Dillon was a master manipulator. He’s a lot more subtle than I expected, given that most people go for the over-the-top Omarosa approach, but there was no doubt in my mind after Dillon poured himself some Merlot and grinned at Chad’s downfall that we had a new villain on our hands.

In case you weren’t sure that Dillon had revealed his true stock-reality-show-scoundrel colors, when he and Chad get back to the house, Dillon tells him: “I’M NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOU! I’M NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE!” “You came here to win,” Chad sobs, clearly having seen an “I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends” speech before. Dillon, not content with making Chad cry, goes to bother Chad’s roommate, Brandon, so he can rant about Chad. This naturally upsets Chad, because he wants to go to bed and he wants Dillon out of his “fucking room.” Dillon rolls his neck like he’s auditioning for Queen of Jordan and revels in the fact that Chad is fraying before his very eyes. If you’ve ever seen Days of Our Lives, Dillon has become the Kristen DiMera to Chad’s Marlena Evans, attempting to drive Chad crazy by throwing in his face the fact that Robert has gotten more intimate with Dillon.

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The final date is Eric and Brandon, who get to go boxing with Robert. (Um, sure.) Brandon endears himself to me for the first time by saying that he used to pretend he was Buffy as a kid, so boxing is a perfect date for him. Eric spends the entire time whining about not knowing enough about Robert. Neither of them are going home, so this date is boring and I’m moving on.

The black-tie ceremony is where Chad has his last stand. When it’s clear that Robert is about to pick Dillon and give Chad the ax, Chad interrupts and tells Robert that he has trust issues because his ex cheated on him. But girl, that’s not even the best part. He goes IN on Robert, calling him a thot, telling him he’s lying about being interested in monogamy, and basically painting him as a ho who’d rather make out with a bunch of guys than form a real connection. And he doesn’t even KNOW that Robert used to be a prostitute at this point, he’s just turned into an evangelical preacher who’s five seconds away from banning dancing. Chad storms off from the black-tie ceremony and packs his suitcase. But because the ceremony takes place in the front yard, he … has to walk back through the ceremony when he exits. He tells Robert once again, “I don’t do players,” then goes off into the night to presumably boil a bunny.

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