We all thought Ashley S. (the onion girl) was going to be this Bachelor season’s ultimate crazy, but Kelsey Poe, now coined the “Black Widow,” one-upped her this week as the reality show’s newest villain.
After hearing about Britt’s hot air balloon date and “nap” with Chris (right, you two were only napping…), Kelsey claims Britt’s actions “presented a threat to [her] relationship with Chris.” With this in mind, she decided to take matters into her own hands by paying a surprise visit to Chris’ hotel room. With this alone time, she took the opportunity to finally tell Chris about being a widow.
Her attitude makes it evident that this is a scheme to play the game, to purely stick around, not to intimately share something meaningful about her self. After all, tell a sob story and you’re sure to get a pity rose that week. She essentially admits her motives for telling him at that particular moment:
“There’s the risk of me being sent home without him having known that I’m a widow. So I know what I need to do.”
Chris can’t send home the widow, right?
She proceeds to theatrically tell Chris her story with an unconvincing, single, fake tear. She met her late husband, Sanderson Poe, at 19 and they dated for only three months before deciding to get married. He was 42 when he died suddenly of heart failure when out for a walk “on a beautiful day in Austin.”
It matters for these women to share their lives with Chris. Her husband passing away definitely falls under that category, but at this point, the women are competing to have the best “story.” Ashley I., otherwise known as Kardashley for her Kim Kardashian look, proves this is the case when she pouts and says:
“She has a story that is so much more traumatizing than mine and now it’s just a comparison game of sad stories.”
Sorry Kardashley, you being a virgin is not your “story,” it’s not traumatizing, and it does not define you. Stop crying because your virginity isn’t the center of attention. Although, the Bachelor realistically isn’t about true love, it also isn’t a “comparison of sad stories” to see who gets the pity rose. Side note: I’m so ready for this Kardashley girl to go. I can only look at her spider leg eyelashes for so long.
After telling Chris about her tragic loss, Kelsey then proceeds to shock us all with her interview in the diary room. She gives the camera a radiant smile and maniacally laughs:
“Isn’t my story amazing? It’s tragic, but amazing. I love my story. I had to tell him my story. We had to have our first kiss.”
I’d say that’s a pretty insensitive reaction from a woman who was widowed only a year and a half earlier. It was like watching a movie where the villain reveals his evil plan with an evil laugh and everything. Her statement and her attitude were unusual and I was immediately reminded of Amy from “Gone Girl.” My first thought was, “this woman totally killed her husband!” That’s what it felt like and just about everyone else had the same reaction.
Bachelor Nation exploded on Twitter with the same assumption.
Earlier in the episode, Kelsey also casually talked to the other girls about the death of her husband and even has a hard time remembering what he died from, nonchalantly saying, “what’s it called again? Oh, congestive heart failure.” Also suspicious, take a look at his obituary that’s trending on Twitter. It’s not surprising that she wrote it because it’s almost entirely about herself.
I’m not into bullying other women and there could have been some editing involved here, but it was one take in the diary room. She said it and she said it with confidence to the camera; I find it alarming, tact-less, and downright creepy.
Later that night at the rose ceremony, Kelsey starts tearing up talking about how unfortunate it is that she knows she’ll be saying goodbye to some of the other girls because of course, she will be staying. Half way through this very fake, tearful speech, I’m thinking she means she’s going to have to say goodbye to these girls because she’s going to cut them (literally) out of the picture too.
After her awkward speech about her confidence in staying, she goes on to have a full fledged panic attack in the bathroom. Scream-crying on the bathroom floor with paramedics in tow. My theory is that she freaked because everyone started to realize her husband’s death was suspicious and that she definitely had something to do with it.
Kelsey took to her Facebook after the backlash where she wrote:
“Widows inherit the role of being the beacon who attests to their deceased spouse’s happiness. That’s why I sometimes find myself idealizing my marriage to him, describing our relationship as perfect, when in reality it was just as healthily flawed as any other marriage.”
She also wrote, “On our wedding day, we vowed to love, cherish, and honor each other until death do us part. But even after death, I still love, cherish, and honor him.”
Kelsey P. should win an Oscar for her phony performance this week. The episode was a two-part story, ending with Kelsey crying in the bathroom. I guess we’ll see what lies ahead for the Black Widow next week!