I didn’t expect to like Don’t Date Brandon as much as I did. The three-part series, which dropped on Paramount+ today, is pitched as a fairly standard love fraud story, and there are certainly elements of that in the case. But it’s also a story about women who were pitted against each other — and who ignored that catfight convention (and, let’s face it, decades of societal conditioning) to support each other in the face of an allegedly deceptive, manipulative, and creepy man.
The series, which is briskly directed by Grace Chapman, centers around Brandon Johnson, a man who shares a name with the current mayor of Chicago. But this Johnson is a West Coast guy, with an ex-wife in Seattle; as the documentary unfolds he adds a second wife in Portland, as well as girlfriends up and down the coast.
He’s truthful with few of them, the women allege in interviews. One former partner details messages he sent her claiming he was working for Nike, flying around in private jets. (Guess what, he wasn’t.) In another case, he allegedly set up a “family wall” scheduling platform for his current and ex wife to communicate about childcare responsibilities, but it was Johnson typing nasty and aggressive messages as he pretended to be the ex, the women later learned, an apparent effort to convince his current spouse that the past one was the standard “crazy ex.”
Johnson’s claims to various women that other women in his life were “crazy,” stalking him, or were otherwise abusive is an ongoing theme in Don’t Date Brandon. Johnson frequently presented himself as the nice guy victim of countless unhinged harridans, in some cases even allegedly claiming (with photos swiped from the internet) that he’d had one woman arrested for chasing him aggressively despite his happy marriage.
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This is typically the part in a narrative like this one that the supposedly besieged male starts making requests for cash. (That’s the right time in the love fraud con to do it, as the mark has been primed to give by learning that there’s another women out there literally deranged with affection for the needy male. Better pay up to keep him around!) But the Johnson case again deviates from the expected plotline — Johnson “always had” money, the folks interviewed claim. (The reason he was cash flush is revealed later, and I’m not going to spoil it here.)
Also unexpected is how Johnson’s alleged deceptions started to be revealed. Frustrated by the negative interactions on the “family wall,” Johnson’s current wife reached out to the ex — defying Johnson’s request that the women remain separate due to some mysterious court order. But once the pair began speaking, they realized he’d been allegedly bullshitting them both, and they suspected they weren’t alone. The duo launched a podcast, called Ex-Wives Undercover, to spread the word about Johnson, and, eventually, to place their experience with him within the larger world of coercion. domestic manipulation, and abuse.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s behavior went from gossip-worthy to truly criminal, culminating in a shocking incident at yet another woman’s home. He has since been arrested and eventually incarcerated, and though he participated in a plea deal he continues to deny many of the claims against him. (And now you know why I am wearing my Exhibit B t-shirt as I write this).
If there’s one thing this tightly-paced series lacks, it’s any insight into why Johnson was doing what he did — there was no financial gain to hoodwinking slews of women, so what gives? One thing kept popping into my head: “Lonely Hearts,” the second episode of 1999 (my god!) TV series Angel. That’s the one where this body-hopping demon is tearing its way through LA hookup joints, for reasons I don’t quite recall. But I remember, at one point, a possessed bartender frantically claiming “I just need to make a connection.” Was the non-supernatural version of that drive what spurred Johnson to do what he did?
But then I realized that maybe the show was better without that stuff. Why, I am starting to wonder, do we need to know what drives men to kill, to rape, to harm? What purpose does it serve to try to figure out why some people do what they do? Is society somehow improved if a show like Don’t Date Brandon devotes an additional episode to “What Makes Brandon Tick?”
That question is rhetorical, it won’t. Chapman made the right call in avoiding much speculation on why Brandon was such an allegedly shitty and mediocre male. His name might be in the title, but it’s not his story, not really. Instead, this is about women who defied the standard societal demand to fight over a dude — and who ended up stronger, happier, and better because of it.
