This post contains spoilers for Monday’s installment of The Bachelor.
It feels safe to say that no Bachelor fans had “Discussion of Healthy Emotional Coping Tactics” on their bingo cards for Monday night. And yet, during Part One of the show’s two-night “event,” that’s exactly what we got—after some good, old-fashioned back-stabbing. Our panelists for this evening’s debate? A weepy Kelsey Weier and an ostensibly worried but definitely gossip-prone Tammy Ly. If you buy Kelsey’s side of the story, Tammy stabbed her in the back; if you side with Tammy, Kelsey is emotionally unstable.
Neither contestant could really be described as a “frontrunner” this season, but they both have big personalities—the oldest recipe for a feud in the Bachelor cookbook. (The secret ingredient, I hear, is to chant the incantation “I’m not here to make friends” three times.) And depending on whom you think producers did a better job of setting up, we might have a new villain on our hands.
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Kelsey is still likely best known as the girl who started a weeks-long feud over a kerfuffle involving a bottle of champagne. (Hannah Ann, whom Kelsey insisted stole the bottle she brought from home, will likely still be shouting “I didn’t know it was yours!” from beyond the grave.) Tammy, on the other hand, has established herself as this season’s best commentator from within the Mansion; she’s smart and funny, and her backstory has made her one of Chris Harrison’s favorite contestants. So one might say that going into Monday night, the scales were tipped in Tammy’s favor.
And yet! Previews for Wednesday’s Part Two episode find Tammy in tears. “I gave up my life to be here, and to get sent home for this? It’s ridiculous,” she says.
How did this happen? It all started with one little date.
This week, Pilot Pete swept his “ladies” off to Costa Rica—although from tonight’s events, it seems not one contestant has embraced the concept of “pura vida.” Drama erupted as soon as Peter picked his first one-on-one date for the week; Kelsey, who recently went on her own date with Peter in the far less exciting destination of Cleveland, was not pleased. “I loved my date in Cleveland, but that was last week and we’re in a new week... I just don’t want our night to get lost,” she said through tears. “That’s what scares me. I didn’t expect it to be this hard.”
As Peter and Sydney got steamy on their date, Kelsey slowly unraveled—and it was Tammy who comforted her. But after a while Tammy, who has been tending to Kelsey’s emotional needs since #ChampagneGate, had enough. Eventually, Tammy told a group of their fellow contestants, “She’s just literally flipping out. I’m not going to cry my eyes over it over 10 bottles of wine.”
Later on, during a separate conversation, Victoria F. revealed to Tammy and others that Kelsey had told her before that she thought all of the girls were fake. It was at this point that the feud officially began—because Tammy decided it was time to get Peter involved. If he was forming a real connection with Kelsey and didn’t see all of her different sides, Tammy said, “I do need to voice my concerns.”
Tammy told Peter that Kelsey appeared to be having a mental breakdown, and that she had witnessed Kelsey drinking excessively several times. Peter, of course, wasted no time in reporting these allegations to Kelsey, who returned to the group of women soon after and asked—calmly, we should probably note—who it was who claimed she was emotionally unstable. Tammy did not cop to it.
“I’m not ashamed of crying in front of people,” Kelsey said. “I’m proud of it. But it’s not cool to go to him and be like, ‘She’s being emotionally unstable.’ ... Just mind your own fucking business.” Tammy hit back at Kelsey, saying, “You were upset over a bottle of champagne for four days.” And when Peter gives the group date rose to Hannah Ann after all that? Kelsey vowed to get to the bottom of whoever sold her out to Peter.
Kelsey later sat down with Tammy to try and patch things up, but things only got worse. The two argued over how drunk Kelsey had been on how many occasions, and at one point Tammy said, “I’m just concerned for your wellbeing.” Kelsey’s response? “You’re not fucking concerned, Tammy.” (Put that on a T-shirt, ABC!) By the end, the two had reached a fundamental disagreement about the nature of healthy coping—specifically, Is it healthy to cry over your emotions? Tammy clearly does not think so; as she eventually told Kelsey, “You can continue to cry and wither away in bottles of wine. I’m done.”
But Kelsey wasn’t going down without a fight; instead she pulled Peter aside to set the record straight, telling Peter that Tammy gossiped among the girls not only about her drinking, but also accused her of popping pills. Peter, ever a fan of the drama, loved it. In fact, he sent Kelsey back to the other women with a red rose, marking her as safe in the rose ceremony to come. As her man handed her the long-stem, Kelsey seemed hesitant—but Peter assured her, “Don’t worry about the other girls.” (At this point we can safely say that Peter is either very bad at predicting women’s reactions to upsetting surprises or he’s really helping producers make this season as spicy as possible. You decide.)
Kelsey told the other women she’d simply talked to Peter to clear her name—but that didn’t sit well with anyone either. “Like, why does she get the advantage of talking to Peter before the cocktail party?” Tammy groused. Then came the candle flicker that lit this whole emotional powder keg ablaze: The cocktail party, it turned out, had been canceled. Instead it was time to go straight into the rose ceremony.
Tammy asked Kelsey what she’d told Peter about her, but the group soon turned on Tammy—specifically, when she tried to deflect questions about why she’d started telling people Kelsey was popping pills. Then Tammy got in a fight with Sydney over who’s a bigger rat. Sydney denied that she told Peter about Alayah, setting off last week’s biggest firestorm, which was a boldfaced lie based on what we’ve seen—but Tammy stood up and began to yell in response, at which point several contestants seemed to decide it was Tammy who might be emotionally unstable.
“Tammy, you’re so crazy,” Sydney said. “Like, legit, you’re crazy.” And in perhaps the most relatable moment of the week, Hannah Ann looked on from afar, saying, “It’s like, I wanna know [what the drama is about]—but I don’t wanna know.”
Cue Tammy crying in an in-the-moment interview, telling producers she worried she was going home. Truth be told, all of the women hogging airtime this season, with few exceptions, have a fascinating propensity for accusing each other of vices and then denying doing so—despite camera evidence and, sometimes, witnesses within the Mansion. Anyway, the point is, Kelsey’s “pills” are Adderall and birth control and Peter has a fine mess on his hands.
Then came the Bachelor villain rallying cry of the century. “I’m not here to make friends,” Tammy said. “I’m gonna get what I want. I will fight to the death for Peter.” (Emphasis mine, but I mean, come on!) Anyway, Tammy talked to Peter just before the rose ceremony began, and he ultimately kept her on—because, and we cannot stress this enough, Peter! Loves! The! Drama! And with the group set to jet off to Chile on Wednesday, there’s plenty left where that came from.
