CLEVELAND — Monday night's episode of "The Bachelor" may have just as well been called the Shanae Ankney show, because well over half of the 2-hour production focused on the Ohio native.
While recent Ohio University graduate and private pilot Rachel Recchia, 25, waited mostly in the wings, Shanae, 29, got tons of screen time with personal coaching on how to get a rose from fellow contestant Cassidy Timbrooks and a heated group date feud with Elizabeth Corrigan.
When Shanae wasn't invited on the first group date of the episode, the rose winner Cassidy, who looks alarmingly like Shanae and is already clashing with several women on the series, sat down with Shanae and gave her tips on how to make sure she wins the second one, in the event that she's invited.
She was, to a spill-all-your-secrets session lead by comedian Ziwe, where Shanae was instantly mad at herself for not sitting next to Clayton and letting Elizabeth take that spot.
In one clip, she tells producers, "Cassidy would have sat right next to him," and calls Elizabeth "pathetic." In another, she channels her feisty alter-ego, saying, "Today, Shanae-nae has arrived. I want that group date rose. And all you b*****s, knocking you over. Dead."
Instead, seated side by side, sparks were clearly flying between the 28-year-old Bachelor and Elizabeth, who is a 32-year-old real estate advisor from Colorado. Shanae and the other ladies had to watch the two desk-mates flirting during a game of "Never have I ever," where the ladies and Clayton had to share whether they had ever cheated on someone, and other intimate details.
After that, when the ladies had to engage in a physical race later in the date, Shanae admittedly pushed Elizabeth down so she wouldn't win. That didn't work out for Shanae, either, because Shanae also lost the race in the end, and she made an enemy of Elizabeth doing it.
That growing feud was made worse when Shanae used her time with Clayton at the cocktail party to seemingly try to sabotage Elizabeth by telling him that she felt Elizabeth was "two-faced" and "not here for the right reasons" (which everyone knows is an accusation that is just as good as the kiss of death on this reality dating competition).
Giving credit where credit is due, Clayton immediately went straight to Elizabeth to sort this out, and Elizabeth went straight to Shanae, in a confrontation that somehow ended in Elizabeth hugging Shanae after Shanae told her she felt ignored by her in an earlier conversation with another woman. Elizabeth explained that she has ADHD and that it's difficult for her to listen to more than one thing at a time, so she didn't mean to leave Shanae out.
Later, after Elizabeth had time to process the interaction, she got upset with Shanae again, prompting Shanae to publicly call her "two-faced" and reveal Elizabeth's ADHD diagnosis to the full group of women.
After that, Cassidy tells Shanae, "It doesn’t benefit you at all to have any kind of beef. Just squash it," but this is advice that Shanae does not take and continues to fight with Elizabeth.
By the end of the episode, the majority of the women vying for Clayton's love side with Elizabeth, including Cassidy who can be heard saying that she can't stand up for that kind of behavior. That's especially interesting from Cassidy, who has angered several of the other women to the point of tears.
Meanwhile, Cassidy (who remember, already has a rose from her group date) gets roped into drama of her own, with one woman telling Clayton she has a guy back home after we see Cassidy describing an awkward situation where a man she has casually been intimate with between relationships in the past told her he wanted "to watch whatever she's leaving to film for together when she gets back."
The episode ends on a cliffhanger before the elimination ceremony with Clayton asking new host and former Bachelor Jesse Palmer if anyone has ever taken a rose back once they've given it to a contestant.
In previews shown at the end of the episode, we see Shanae and several other women dressed in the iconic Baywatch-style swimsuit that was worn by Pamela Anderson in the hit 1990s show, suggesting she is given at least one more rose by Clayton.
Follow along on Shanae's and Rachel's journeys for love, with a recap here every Tuesday following the Monday night airing of The Bachelor on ABC.
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