'The Bachelor' Week 5 Recap: Tammy & Kelsey's True Colors Come Out

Louisa Ballhaus
·11 min read
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I cannot believe tonight’s episode of The Bachelor was three hours long. And I definitely, definitely can’t believe that there are another two hours on Wednesday. This week, Peter Weber continued to display terrible, baffling lapses in judgment, and the contestants got progressively more worked up (read: loud and annoying) in response. As I predicted, Kelsey Weier is slowly cementing herself as the season’s villain — but with drama like we’re seeing on Peter’s season, no one who engages is a winner.

The episode starts with Alayah, who has already been kicked off the show once and then asked back. Peter, who is trying desperately to prove to the women how not wishy-washy he is, takes Alayah aside. It’s over; He sends her back home. “I was following my heart, but like, that was rough,” Peter tells the cameras.

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Peter goes back to the other contestants, who have been tearing him a new one all night for bringing back Alayah. “I know this could come off as wishy-washy,” he tells the women. It does, but they’re glad to see Alayah gone either way.

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The cocktail party continues, and everything is back as it should be. Peter talks with Victoria P., Hannah Ann, Natasha, and Mykenna. There’s a lot of kissing. The rose ceremony, unnervingly early in the episode, goes off as expected: Deandra, Savannah, and Kiarra go home.

Peter has big news for the remaining women: They’re all headed to Costa Rica! The women are decidedly more excited than they were about Cleveland. When they arrive in Costa Rica, Peter has less exciting news. Within hours of arriving, Peter walked into a golf cart, smashed a glass into his head, and went to the hospital to get 22 stitches. There’s security footage; it’s excellent.

Peter takes Sydney off for a one-on-one, where she once again surprises me with a moving story about her childhood — how she was bullied in high school for being multiracial, and ate lunch in a bathroom stall all of senior year. (Fun fact: People are already poring through her high school yearbooks on Twitter to disprove this.) Peter loves it; they make out a lot.

“I do think you’re the most mysterious person in the house,” Peter tells Sydney. He also tells her she’s the best kisser. They make out a lot more.

Back at the house, Kelsey is straight-up losing her sh*t, weeping by the side of the pool while Tammy tries to get her to calm down. Kelsey’s afraid that Peter will forget her as soon as he goes on a date with someone else, and she’s at least a little drunk. Possibly very.

“I do like Sydney a lot, I think she’s cool,” Kelsey insists to Tammy. “But she’s a dramatic f**king b*tch.” Tammy is out. “At this point, I don’t care,” she tells the producers. “Kelsey is clearly wasted.”

Back on the date, Peter and Sydney have relocated to a…hot tub? Waterfall? They wear bathing suits and make out, first in the water, then on the ground next to it. It’s a lot. “She’s a beautiful girl,” Peter tells the cameras. “And it couldn’t have gone any better.”

Next up: The group date from hell! It’s everyone except Kelley: Victoria P., Victoria F., Natasha, Lexi, Mykenna, Hannah Ann, Shiann, Kelsey, Madison, and Tammy meet Peter in the jungle — and the Editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan Jessica Pels, plus a photographer they’re about to do a shoot with. Naturally.

The women pose with Peter, and the photographer decides to stir the pot. “I think we need something more dramatic, right?” This is music to Victoria F.’s ears: “I can’t help it,” she tells the producers. She starts making out with Peter while the two other women posing with him freeze. Kelsey’s eyes immediately fill with tears. The photographer snaps away.

The group date continues with Hannah Ann also deciding to make out with Peter while making two other women extremely uncomfortable, and I’m left feeling somewhat sour about both Peter and the contestants he’s chosen. But this is the season of drama being rewarded, so Victoria F. wins the group date challenge, and gets a special Cosmo cover shoot with Peter. They make out again, but now in matching red bathing suits.

(A quick note: Victoria F.’s digital cover has since been canceled after the discovery that she modeled in a White Lives Matter campaign. You can read Pels’s letter about it here.)

Kelsey has been having a rough time on this group date, and she tells Peter why: “I’m falling in love with you.” Peter doesn’t return the sentiment, but he likes it. Minutes later, Tammy sits Peter down for some tough love. She tells him Kelsey has been crying endlessly and “drinking excessively.” Peter’s very fragile confidence in his decision-making crumbles.

“First with Alayah, and red flags, and now, a possible red flag with Kelsey,” he tells the camera helplessly. “What’s too much a red flag?” This is a question Peter will try and fail to successfully answer over the (*checks watch*) next two hours.

Peter only knows how to respond to gossip in one way: immediately telling the person who was talked about. He confronts Kelsey with this new information, and she denies having had a “breakdown;” she was just emotional. Kelsey storms back in to the room of women: “So, do we want to talk about who said i was emotionally unstable?” she asks.

Tammy, it turns out, does not want to talk about this. So instead, Kelsey takes the entire room to task, though Tammy ends up doing most of the arguing anyway. “It was a lot,” Lexi tells Kelsey about her maybe-breakdown. Natasha suggests she try journaling when dealing with tough emotions. Kelsey tells them they’re all insane and repressed and she won’t apologize for having feelings.

Peter comes back and gives the group date rose to Hannah Ann, whose conversation with him was mostly about “giving it 100 percent,” and how they both do that. It’s nice. But once again, everyone’s too distracted by Kelsey to really be happy.

Kelley is going on the second one-on-one with Peter — in case you’d forgotten, she’s the lawyer who met Peter a few weeks before the show started, and she seems more level-headed and mature than 90% of the women here. “You also have to be realistic in this situation and think, ‘OK, I know he checks off a lot of boxes, but am I into it?'” Kelley explains to the producer.

This is not an attitude we see on The Bachelor often, and it becomes clear within seconds that Peter has noticed, and it’s been bugging him for a while. He and Kelsey melt gendered candles, hold hands, walk blindfolded through a maze — typical first-date stuff. Kelley is just short of disengaged. At dinner, she tells him she’s been reserved because he “rewarded drama” with Alayah, and she hadn’t had a chance to get to know him.

“I could for sure be, like, engaged,” she says finally. Peter breathes for the first time that night and gives her the rose. “She really challenges me,” he tells the producers. They make out in another hot tub that looks suspiciously like where he was with Sydney.

Back at the house, Kelsey confronts Tammy about what she said to Peter. She denies having been drunk, and tells Tammy she was “projecting” that. Tammy says she doesn’t have good coping mechanisms and she’s concerned for her well-being. Kelsey decides to take her fate into her own hands and goes to see Peter on her own.

As we should all have expected by this point, Peter loves a rule-breaker. He loved it when Hannah B. came back on the show, he loved it when Alayah came back on the show, and it’s no surprise that Kelsey going off-book — because she’s just so crazy about him — would do it for Peter in a major way.

Kelsey tattles on Tammy big time. She tells Peter that Tammy’s been telling the girls she has a drinking problem and that she’s “popping pills,” and that she wanted to squash that right away with him and clarify that her not-breakdown had been way overhyped. Peter is devastated to hear this, and suggests that Tammy is “jealous” of the strong connection she sees between him and Kelsey. It’s completely shocking how well this has worked out for Kelsey — and then it gets even worse.

Peter pulls out a rose. Kelsey is safe for another week, and Tammy is basically f**ked. Kelsey returns to the house with the rose, and the other women all stare daggers at her. The next night, there’s a scheduled cocktail party and rose ceremony — but when they get there, Chris Harrison tells them the cocktail party is cancelled. They’re going straight into elimination.

They all turn on Kelsey, but no one more than Tammy. She demands to know exactly what Kelsey said to Peter about her, and Kelsey tells her: the drinking and the pill popping. Tammy tries to furiously backpedal: “That’s something I heard from someone else,” she says. “I don’t know what medication you take.”

“I take Adderall and birth control,” Kelsey snaps back immediately. It’s iconic. Tammy knows she’s been cornered and gets even more aggressive, jumping to her feet and screaming at Victoria P. and Madison. They go into the rose ceremony, but Tammy snaps last-minute and asks to talk to Peter.

Mykenna, who has also been on the brink of a nervous breakdown all night, decides she needs to talk to Peter too. This is a farce of a rose ceremony; The remaining women are all irritated that Peter can’t even hold firm on cancelling a cocktail party. When Peter returns, he gives everyone a rose except Lexi and Shiann.

Shiann, bless her soul, gives Peter a warning on her way out: “Be aware of some of the people that are in this house,” she tells him. “Sometimes what you’re seeing is not really who they are, okay?” Given how attuned Peter is to his gut instinct, I’m sure that won’t rattle him at all.

Our next episode is on Wednesday, tragically, and the preview promises more tears — a theme I think we’ll see continue until Peter makes up his damn mind and starts to see things clearly. Whether or not he wants to admit it, Peter is attracted to drama and the women who provide it. And I can’t help but think that’s not going to lead to the stable future he keeps saying he wants. I guess we’ll find out!

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