'The Bachelor: The Women Tell All': Big Girls Do Cry

If ever a group of women needed to tell all, it’s the “ladies” from this season of The Bachelor — amirite, rose lovers? Hey look! Britt’s crying already.

Hold your horses, honey — you’ll get your turn. First, it’s time for Chris Harrison and the Bachelor to “crash” some viewing parties and “surprise” some “completely unsuspecting” fans, some of whom just happened to be wearing cowboy hats and eating corn pasta and pigs in blankets in keeping with the party’s farmer-takes-a-wife theme.

I hope Team Bachelor helped clean this crap up.

To be fair, though, this group of young women did seem pretty legitimately surprised… and, you know, wasted.

Well, that was fun. Now let’s welcome all the women you love — and some you probably couldn’t name if Mike Fleiss held a gun to your head — to the Tealight Candle Thunderdome.

Initial notes: Loving Megan’s hair, but still not down with that Goth lipstick; Ashley S. looks fantastic; Jillian’s earrings are distressingly large; and Britt looks like she may have showered for the occasion.

Harrison treats us to a Drama Montage, which proves two things:

1. Ashley Onion is the most DGAF Bachelor contestant ever…

2. There are few greater pleasures in life than watching people watch themselves get mocked on national television…

Naturally, Harrison brings Britt up first to defend herself. “People are saying I manipulated him into liking me, but our connection was instantaneous,” she tells the host. It only fell apart, Britt adds, after Carly trash-talked her to the Bachelor. And as it turns out, Britt-Britt isn’t the only one who has a problem with Carly.

Now, I’m pretty pro-Carly, but even I can admit making dick jokes about Jillian in front of the Bachelor is pretty uncool. But we’re not going to hear Carly’s side of the story just yet because Britt’s litany of complaints against the “ladies” is not over.

And of course she would have moved to Arlington, you guys! “It’s beautiful! It reminds me of where I grew up,” she insists. “People live in homes in the countryside. That’s the life I would be having with him.” Carly, who’s been on the defensive since the WTA cameras rolled, tries at one point to smooth the situation over — “I don’t wish you ill will at all,” she tells Britt — but ultimately she just can’t help telling Britt what she really thinks of her.

I don’t disagree, honey. But I don’t love how this segment played out — Carly offered legitimate comic relief on several occasions this season, yet here she came across as nothing more than a mean girl. Word of warning, future funny ladies on The Bachelor: Your confessional-joke chickens will come home to roost on the Women Tell All.

Related: Chris Harrison Blogs ‘The Bachelor: The Women Tell All’

Oh my God, seriously Britt — are you still bending Harrison’s ear about your shattered romantic dreams? It’s a commercial break, for Lord’s sake. Listen to the man with the headset and and back to your seat — it’s someone else’s turn to shame and be shamed.

After watching her Drama Montage — which may as well have been titled Everybody Hates Kelsey — the widow tells Harrison that she feels “betrayed,” and that the women were so cruel to her it feels like they made her dead husband die all over again. When she asks for a tissue after this dubious declaration, the host — perhaps remembering the Tissue Gate scandal on Twitter during the Andi interview — hands Kelsey his silk handkerchief.

I agree, Ashley I. That is disgusting.

Honestly, why are we even giving Kelsey more time in the spotlight? Didn’t she already talk about how the other women perceived her as “condescending” because she uses “big words,” and all that? I guess Team Bachelor just couldn’t resist putting Kelsey in a room with the other “ladies” primarily to elicit reaction shots like these:

Of course, hearing the women take Kelsey to task for constantly crowing about her tragic story to the cameras was pretty great. “I would’ve never used something that happened to me to say that I deserve love more than anybody else here,” sniffs Juelia. Megan, meanwhile, says her mom — who lost her husband in a similarly sudden way — thought Kelsey’s behavior was offensive. And it doesn’t end there.

"That statement hurt a lot of people," admits Kelsey of her "Isn’t my story amazing?" moment. "I regret saying that." But dammit, Kelsey doesn’t regret going on the show, even if it means several million people now think she’s a weirdly emotionless snob-widow. "I chose to go on this show because I challenge myself to grow and to become better and to find love again," she declares proudly.

Well alrighty, then. Move along, toots, because the moment we’ve all been waiting for is here: Ashley Onion Crazy Montage!!!! It features two previously unseen gems: 1) Kaitlyn’s stellar impression of a demon-possessed Barbie doll.

And 2) Chilling footage of Ashley S. with an ax.

Honestly, I could have watched found footage of The Ashley Chronicles for another hour, but Team Bachelor has other priorities — and the segment is disappointingly short. That said, it’s not like producers had much to work with during the interview segment; Ashley Onion remains firmly but politely withholding through the whole thing. Despite Harrison’s persistent attempts to get her to explain herself, Ashley gives up basically nothing.

The “Mesa Verde” stuff
"It’s like, ancient ruins that you literally crawl through."

The “betting ring” theory
"It just seemed like it was a bet."

Chatting with cats
"It was one cat! It didn’t reply."

So who is the real Ashley S.?
"I like to ride bikes."

Of course, as with most things in life, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. “I think with the cameras around, it’s really hard for me to not be silly.” Fair enough. Now for the really important question.

And then — perhaps because she’s not sure, perhaps because she’s too polite to say no on national TV, or perhaps because she simply isn’t going to designate Harrison’s question with a response — Ashley goes out in a blaze of freak-flag glory.

You guys, I think Ashley Onion is normal — and we’re the ones who are crazy.

(No, we’re not going to talk about that Repeat After Me ad.)

Moving on. Jade, you’re up! Poor thing, she’s still clearly very hurt and embarrassed by the whole situation. “I don’t know what went wrong, because I feel like he was very supportive to me when I told him,” she tells Harrison. That made it all the more upsetting, she continues, to read in the Bachelor’s blog that he was “disturbed” that the Jade he knew was so different from what her family described. “That absolutely crushed me,” she says tearfully, adding that she wants to know “exactly why” Chris dumped her. Fair enough, toots, but not yet. Please vacate the hot seat for…

"That might have been the most confident I felt at a rose ceremony," admits Kaitlyn, after watching herself get the boot in Bali. Like Jade, she’s still reeling from the blindside break-up. "Honest to God, I think about this every day," she tells Harrison. "It was like an out-of-body experience. I was crushed." Though I’ve always found Kaitlyn a little too crass for comfort, I really started to like her during her hot seat interview, as she acknowledged that she uses humor as a defense mechanism and took some belated pride in "opening up," as these women like to say.

Side note: Kudos to Team Bachelor for cutting to Carly when Kaitlyn talked about using humor as a defense mechanism.

Gosh, have we really gone this long without having to watch Britt cry? Maybe bringing the Bachelor himself out to face the “ladies” will be enough to push her back over the edge.

Yeah, that’s the stuff. Anyhow, remember that 12-second hug Britt gave Chris on the first night? Well, she reenacts it here, only this time she’s bawling the whole time. Once Britt finally lets Chris out of her clutches, she proceeds to inform him that she, too, was “duped” by Carly and that he “did the right thing” given all the bad intel the cruise-ship-singer fed him. Ever the gentleman, Chris isn’t going to let that kind of slander stand.

Scurry along back to your seat, honey, and let the grownups talk.

Is it me, or did Kaitlyn sound extra Canadian tonight? Unfortunately, she does not get the answers she hoped for; all the Bachelor can tell her is that choosing a wife on TV is like “throwing darts at a dartboard in the dark” and that he didn’t have the wherewithal to send her home before the rose ceremony because, you know, being the Bachelor is hard: “I did the best I could.”

Jade’s airing of grievances, though, yields slightly more satisfying results. Chris assures Jade that he was more “caught off guard” than “disturbed” by her family’s description of her — and she’s probably fixating on that word because the blog post in question used it in the headline. As for her hurt feelings about Chris calling the whole “let’s look at my nude photos together” moment “awkward”? Well, the Bachelor is able is able to talk her down from the angry tree with some aw-shucks, farm-boy charm.

That’s as good a segue as any into the next segment: BLOOPERS! (Someday, the gods will hear my prayer and we’ll get a full two-hour special of Bachelor bloopers, but not tonight.) I gotta say, the animal kingdom really killed it this season, what with the dolphin laugh montage, Sully the break-free burro, Whitney’s randy puppy, and of course this guy:

Perhaps they can hire him for Bachelor in Paradise 2? I’m sure Claire’s raccoon could use the help.

The only thing that bums me out about Chris Harrison’s book announcement is they’ve already decided on a cover — which means the cover won’t be determined by a group date photo-shoot challenge on next season of The Bachelorette. Missed opportunity, guys!

Wow, can you believe there’s only one episode left, rose lovers? Sure it’s 180-minute long episode that will consume your entire Monday night in one gulp… but still, I’m getting a little misty to think that we’re almost at the end of Chris’s journey. And wow, can you believe how many famous people were in the audience tonight?

I had no idea the Duchess of Cornwall was a member of Bachelor Nation! What was your favorite moment of the night? Let me know your thoughts below, and be sure to check out Chris Harrison’s exclusive Bachelor blog right here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go track down Ashley Onion and beg her to be my friend.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.