You Thought Bartise Was a Villain Before? ‘Perfect Match’ Turned Him Into a SUPER Villain

Netflix’s all-star dating show Perfect Match has delivered the drama every single week; from partnered players picking new matches for themselves in front of their current boo (Francesca, twice!), to over-the-top freak outs (oh wow, Shayne, honey, therapy, please), to the dumbest of “strategic” lies (Chase’s poor “chipped tooth”). None those dramatic moments have felt sinister, though — like Chloe and Mitchell jumping into their balcony hot tub and accidentally soaking the night’s losers. That’s just a bit of ridiculous bad luck that makes for good TV. But we should’ve known that things could and ultimately would take a darker turn simply because of the involvement of one Netflix personality: Bartise.

There are too many editors and producers and bizarre circumstances at play to claim that being on a reality TV show is a good showcase of one’s character. But Bartise, his mentions most definitely still scorching hot after how he left Nancy at the altar last fall, does himself no favors in Perfect Match. And in the final two episodes of Perfect Match Season 1, the Love Is Blind Season 3 villain manages to out-villain even himself — and this is the guy who was ready to get into a fistfight on his wedding day.

The penultimate episode of Perfect Match puts all of the established couples through one final challenge by bringing back all of the eliminated contestants and giving them a chance to shoot their shot with any of the coupled up players. At this point in the game, Bartise is matched with Abbey (Twentysomethings: Austin) — and they’ve been a match for two whole rounds. That’s a big deal for Perfect Match and an even bigger deal for Bartise, because our man has — as The Circle’s Savannah points out — run through a lot of women during his stint on the show.

Let’s recap Bartise’s Perfect Match track record: he was brought in as a date for Ines (The Circle: France), but then immediately afterwards he matched with Izzy (Too Hot to Handle). Then on the next round he ditched Izzy to go back with Ines. He then got kicked out of the house when he failed to make a match, and was then brought back as a date for Diamond (Love Is Blind). And then, right after hitting it off with Diamond, he pursued and matched with Abbey. Now the couples are at the end of the season, on the eve of crowning one couple The Perfect Match, and Bartise has managed to match with the same partner twice in a row. Abbey thinks she and Bartise are solid.

She does not know Bartise.

We know Bartise, though. Unlike everyone on Perfect Match, we’ve seen Love Is Blind Season 3 and we’ve seen just how Bartise operates in these high-pressure moments. He talks faster than the narrative, like he’s trying to beat the truth in a race. So when Bartise tells Abbey that he could potentially match with Izzy, someone he has already matched with and dumped (!), she is taken aback.

Abbey has been turning down offers all night because Bartise had said earlier that they were a match. Bartise reacts to Abbey’s look of confusion as if it was a starter pistol and he’s off.

If there’s one thing you don’t want a potential romantic partner to say to you, “Your head is not in the fucking game anymore with me” has got to be up there. That’s what Bartise immediately says to Abbey, clueing her into the fact that he is not there to make friends — even though that is ostensibly the whole point of Perfect Match. (Reminder: there’s no prize money!) Bartise continues, trying to make Abbey think that she’s irrationally mad that he’s talking to other women. Abbey, however, keeps reasserting the truth: she’s not mad that he’s talking to Izzy; she’s mad that he changed his mind about her so damn fast. That’s exactly what Bartise has been doing all season and he’s livid that finally, someone is calling him out on it! Bartise is in the middle of doing to Abbey exactly what he did to Ines, Izzy, and Diamond!

Just pausing here to point out Perfect Match could very well be viewed as a character study of Bartise. After seeing him go on so many first dates, after seeing how effortlessly he charms every single one of them, it becomes immensely easier to understand why Nancy fell for him the way she did on Love Is Blind. But even Love Is Blind didn’t show this side of Bartise, which is his cutthroat side. He saves that for Abbey the instant she says that he’s “going to look like a dick” when all this airs.

He doesn’t just look like a dick. He looks like villain — and he acts like one, too.

Bartise instinctively throws this dig back on Abbey, saying that it’s actually her who’s concerned about she’s portrayed. Why? Because the night before, Abbey did not want to have sex with him on camera.

Yeah.

We see part of this exchange at the beginning of the episode, when the two of them are in bed and Abbey has to keep pushing Bartise away, laughing and saying, “I’m not trying to make an OnlyFans over here, I’m sorry.” He persists and she says that there’s a “big-ass camera in the room, calm it down.” And now Bartise has twisted that — “that” being her not wanting to have sex on camera — into a weapon to use against Abbey, and to question her authenticity the way she’s questioning his. He says that because Abbey was concerned about what her family would think about her were she to — again — have sex on camera, that Abbey is somehow being fake or conceited. Reminder: Abbey has just told Bartise that she’s not comfortable being with someone who can go from “I’m definitely sticking with you” to “Well, actually…” in the span of an hour, which is something that he’s already done three times this season. Abbey is understandably horrified by Bartise throwing what she said to him in their suite back at her.

“You’re using my words against me now,” she says in shock, like she’s in a horror movie and has found out that her boyfriend has been the killer all along. “The things that I told you in confidence, you’re gonna weaponize. Yikes.”

Yikes, indeed.

Bartise did some wildly hurtful stuff on Love Is Blind, but on that show it always seemed like Bartise was able to talk his way out of trouble — or at least talk over it. But this move on Perfect Match, the way he immediately turns on Abbey, taking an honest concern she had and sharpening it into an attack on her character — congrats, Bartise, you’re now the ultimate villain on two seasons of Netflix TV! Well, at least that’s how you’ve been edited.