Matt James started his night with 18 women at the rose ceremony and ended up with 23.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos, Craig Sjodin/ABC

Dumping new women into the cauldron of insecurity and jealousy that is “The Bachelor” several weeks into the season is kind of a no-miss move if drama is the aim.

At the very least, the original women will be flustered enough to generate lots of bitchy B-roll when the new ladies arrive. If the Bachelor keeps at least one of the newbies you’re guaranteed at least another day or two of tension.

But I imagine the producers practically peed themselves with excitement when Matt James kept (or agreed to keep) four of the five women parachuted in on Monday night, then took one of the four on a one-on-one date, leaving several of the OG contestants in a lather.

And when the jealousy reached new levels of verbal nastiness, well, high fives all around in the production room.

It seems like last week‘s gang-up on Sarah was perhaps a rule and not an exception given what went down this week. As usual, Victoria was the chief Mean Girl, but Anna was a close second, with assists from MJ and Serena C.

The episode began with Matt moping about Sarah’s departure and a few of the women gloating about it. “The trash took itself out,” sniped Victoria. When Katie asked her to stop being mean, Victoria responded, “No, I won’t stop, Katie. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.”

Matt and Katie, who had no time for Victoria’s nonsense.

During the group date, Victoria tried to get Katie to apologize: “You told me to stop when I wasn’t done expressing myself.” When Katie pointed out that Victoria’s self-expression consisted of calling Sarah names, Victoria retorted, “I can express myself with name-calling if I choose to.” When Katie didn’t back down, Victoria tried to shame her by bringing up the vibrator from Night 1, but Katie — bless her heart — stuck to her guns.

Model Chelsea, who chatted with Matt about the emotional weight that Black women attach to their hair, got the date rose.

By the time the rose ceremony cocktail party rolled around, it looked like the drama had died down. Matt gave a very unconvincing speech about how he was eventually “hoping to get down on one knee” and distributed kisses and compliments to Pieper and Kit and Katie and Bri. And then, just as Victoria started blathering to Matt, host Chris Harrison interrupted and told Matt he had to talk to him. Right. Now.

Matt liked newcomer Brittany way more than the OG contestants did.

Was Sarah back? That’s what the women thought when an SUV pulled up outside. But brunette bombshell Brittany quickly became their new target when they saw her from a window planting a big smooch on Matt (for the love of god, will someone tell Matt to close his eyes when he kisses?).

She was quickly followed by teacher Michelle, dancer Ryan, nurse Kim and Catalina, a former Miss Puerto Rico whose crown “Queen Victoria” stole right off her head.

Victoria fumed that the interlopers were “random-ass hoes”: Anna said she was having a mental breakdown; Katie worried they were “new and exciting eye candy.” Matt called them “a nice surprise” — so nice in fact that he kept Brittany, Michelle, Ryan and Catalina and sent home Khaylah and Kaili, not that it mattered much in the grand scheme of things. It’s mostly changing up the group date fodder.

Speaking of group dates, the next day Matt took Brittany, Ryan and Catalina on a group date with Mari, Bri, Abigail, Magi, Anna and Victoria.

Former Bachelor Ben Higgins was back to oversee a group date.

It was an obstacle course supposedly planned by former Bachelor Ben Higgins: a “Fall in Love Fest” in which the women had to kayak in “pumpkins” across a pond (fall, get it?), then dress in squirrel costumes and hunt for stuffed acorns in a pile of leaves before racing to the finish line.

There was no drama to speak of, unless you count Anna hiding Brittany’s acorn, but that changed at the cocktail party when Brittany interrupted Anna’s time with Matt.

Anna started trash-talking Brittany, egged on by Victoria, who called Brittany “slutty.” Anna claimed to have heard rumours from their mutual hometown of Chicago that Brittany was — gasp! — an escort.

Brittany denied it, saying it was shitty that Anna was drawing conclusions without knowing her. “I know you guys don’t care at all, but it’s really hard,” said Brittany, to which Victoria retorted, “OK, then get out of the house” and laughed.

First off, so what if Brittany was an escort? Would that disqualify her from coming on a dating show? And have we not moved past women slut-shaming each other on this series?

Newcomer Michelle got a coveted one-on-one with Matt.

Against that background, Matt’s one-on-one date with Michelle the next day was a nice respite. The ziplining and hot-air ballooning were fine (some of the other women spied on them with binoculars from a hotel balcony), but it was the dinner conversation that made it clear these two had really bonded in their short time together.

Michelle talked about her work as a teacher, how much she loved her job, how hard the year had been for her students between the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd, and she paraphrased Maya Angelou: “People don’t always remember what you say. They remember how you made them feel,” which happened to be one of Matt’s favourite quotes.

Matt said Michelle had “the type of depth I’m looking for in a woman” and “could be someone that I called my wife,” and you had the feeling it might be game over for the women back at the hotel.

There was fighting as well as fighting words on “The Bachelor,” with guidance from Mia St. John.

Nonetheless, the show must go on, so there was another group date. This time 10 of the women — no newbies, luckily for them — got to train with former world boxing champ Mia St. John and then beat each other up in the “Battle for the Bachelor” while the rest of the women, Harrison and alum Wells Adams watched.

The women didn’t pull their punches, so much so that one bout was stopped after Serena P. got smacked in the throat and the nose by Lauren.

At the after-party, the women began complaining about the new girls again, undeterred by Katie telling them, “At some point we’ve got to get over it and welcome them into the house a little bit.”

It was worse back at the “house,” where Anna and Victoria were tag-teaming again, with Victoria calling Brittany “serial killer weird” and Catalina “the dumbest ho I’ve ever met.”

Katie, who knew firsthand how upset Brittany was about the escort story, decided to tattle. She ran outside to tell Matt there was bullying going on and rumours being spread about the new girls that “could literally ruin their lives.”

So it looks like the poop will hit the fan next week just ahead of the rose ceremony.

There will be tears, recriminations and it looks like Victoria will have a fainting spell of her own.

You can watch all the drama on Citytv next Monday at 8 p.m. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo