Bachelorette 7 Media - No Discussion

Although The Bachelorette's two-on-one dates usually end with at least one happy guy, on this week's episode Ashley axed them both. "Ashley was in a bad mood," host Chris Harrison tells us. He also admits that Ben C.'s exit looked abrupt because of bad editing. In our weekly chat with Harrison, he says he stands by the violent group date, tells us why Ames is the most fascinating guy he knows, and how next week's return of Bentley leaves the remaining men a bit upset with the girl they're fighting for.

Let's start with the two-on-one date. Why didn't Ashley let Ben C. explain himself?
Chris Harrison: I think that might have been a little misconstrued in the edit [because] it did seem very abrupt. I know he had said some stuff [about wanting to date after the show] so we should've gotten a little deeper into it and we probably should've shown a little more.

Do you think William's tattling on Ben C. lead to his exit?
Harrison: I think it had a little bit to do with it, but I think it also had a bit to do with the fact that Ashley was in a bad mood. I don't think J.P. or Ben F. would've survived that date. She was in a cranky place ... I don't think she was fully sure about William, but they never really had that chemistry.

And his comments about not wanting to grow up didn't help his cause.
Harrison: I think he was trying to be cute and funny, but it just shows he's a bit young and naïve because men don't say stuff like that.

He's going to be on Bachelor Pad -- don't you think he'll be eaten alive?
Harrison: Maybe he's learned from his mistakes and is a little more savvy this time around. It's like Wes [Hayden], if he came in acting like Wes he would've been a dead man, but he learned and changed. So, hopefully, William will learn from the error of his ways.

Did you see Ashley's attraction to Ben F. coming?
Harrison: Ben F. is the dark horse in this that has slowly but surely captivated Ashley.

Do he and Constantine look like twins?
Harrison: They look very similar. The first couple of rose ceremonies I had the toughest time telling them apart. Now that I know them it's not even close, they just have the same hair, but Ben F. is a dead ringer for Rafael Nadal.

The group date was intense!
Harrison: I still love that date. I stand behind it. I know people are angry like why are you doing this, but one of the biggest traditions in Thailand is Muay Thai boxing. It's a crazy event, something out of a Tarantino film, where you go to the back of this alley and there's a boxing match going on. ... Testosterone and human nature took over and they started fighting like crazy. For most of the guys it was no big deal, but Ames really couldn't defend himself. But that's Ames ... Unfortunately he took one in the head even with the head gear on that knocked him silly.

He's surprisingly growing on me.
Harrison: Once he gets under your skin he's fascinating. The more you talk to him he's like, "Yeah I was in Phuket last week and I took a cooking class" or "I was in Nepal and I climbed Everest," and you're like: What? He shows up like he walked out of a Ralph Lauren ad, but there's no pretension there ... He's a good guy who everybody wants to be around and he's very endearing.

Next week is the big return of Bentley. It better be the last we see of him!
Harrison: We got to a point in Chiang Mai where I was sitting there telling her this isn't going to work, what you're doing is a disaster, you're not going to find love and these guys are going to hate you. She said, "I need to do something" and I said I will make this happen, I don't know how, but we were able to figure out how to get him to Hong Kong. ... But I was like: These are good guys, a million people are going to be watching the show, screaming at you, saying are you out of your mind wasting this opportunity. I think she needed tough love at that point.

Does the situation get resolved when they meet?
Harrison: People are anticipating the Bentley thing so much, but what really happens next week is telling the guys. She gets to this happy place and is almost a little arrogant and cocky because of it, but I don't think she thought through the effect it was going to have on the guys. It's like you walking up to your boyfriend and saying, "For the last couple of months I've been sleeping with another guy, but the good news is I don't want to have sex with him anymore." She didn't really understand it until our deliberation and all of a sudden things start to unravel in the cocktail party in Hong Kong.

ABC won the night in terms of viewers last night, but FOX had more to celebrate. The Bachelorette continued to slip in ratings, while Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition remained steady versus last week. FOX's MasterChef continued to rise, recovering from its after-premiere slump.

On The Bachelorette, Ashley continued being an insecure, self-doubting mess, and one of the guys got punched repeatedly in the head. How romantic! The episode was down 8% versus last week, with 7.83 million viewers.

We’d be stupid to accept Reality Steve’s finale spoilers without question. The Spoiler King’s crown has been tarnished by bad early intel on the last two Bachelor/ette seasons in a row. He said Ali Fedotowsky picked no one on The Bachelorette Season 6, then updated his spoilers late in the game to say she’s actually engaged to Roberto Martinez — oops! In last year’s Brad Womack redux season, Steve’s sources said Brad picked Chantal O'Brien over Emily Maynard on The Bachelor Season 15 then pulled a reversal way late in the game saying it was the other way around.

It seems obvious that Ashley Hebert would pick JP Rosenbaum over the expected runner-up, Ben Flajnik, as reported by Steve. But we can’t just go with what seems to make sense to us. Can anyone make sense of Jake Pavelka picking Vienna Girardi over Tenley Molzahn or Gia Allemand? Or Jillian Harris picking Ed Swiderski over Kiptyn Locke or Reid Rosenthal?

So excuse us if we have a few strong reasons for speculating that Ashley could be engaged to Ben F. instead of JP. Here’s what we’re going on about:

Love is a slow burn

We didn’t get to see too much of Ashley’s connection with Ben F. until the show got to Thailand in Episode 4, but that’s not necessarily a bad sign. In fact, on this week’s Bachelorette Beatdown, Season 4 winner Jesse Csincsak said JP has been getting too much camera time to be the winner, since the show doesn’t usually play its cards so soon. As for Ben, viewers took more notice of the California wine maker when he impressed Ashley with his artistic skills at the orphanage date in Phuket, Thailand, where he got his first date rose.

As Ashley wrote about that date in her People.com blog:

“At this point, I started to see the guys in a completely different light, especially Ben F. He took it upon himself to paint a mural for the children and was a standout guy in terms of interacting with the children. It really melted my heart, and I feel like this helped solidify my feelings for him. [...] Looking back at this week, the most important lesson I took away is that the best type of love starts off with a slow burn, and eventually turns into something much brighter than a spark ever could.”


At the time, we thought maybe she was referring to her date with Ames Brown, but now we’re wondering if that was a nod to Ben F.

Ashley is engaged to a “sensitive” guy?

When the Life & Style cover came out with Ashley saying “Yes, I’m engaged,” the description of her fiance didn’t completely fit with the assertive and sexy JP we’ve come to love.

An “insider” described him in the interview and quotes Ashley’s chosen one as follows:

“He said, ‘I’m in such a great place in my life and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been’ [...] He’s the sweetest guy, and he’s very sensitive. He had his heart broken in the past, but he loves being in a relationship, and he and Ashley have great chemistry.”


We know 34-year-old JP spent his 20s enjoying two- or three-month relationships with just one long-term one that lasted over two years. Seems that he’s usually the heartbreaker rather than the heartbroken, since he told Ashley he’s the one who ends the relationships because something is missing.

Ben, 28, on the other hand, had his first one-on-one date in Episode 5 and told Ashley he’s been “an emotional zombie” in relationships up until about a year ago, stemming from his father’s passing about four years ago. Could that be considered having his heart broken? He told her now all he wants to do is spoil and spend time with his lady love — with Ashley, he corrected himself with a wink — which she seemed genuinely and totally into.

Both JP and Ben have great chemistry with Ashley. She can’t keep her hands off either guy. Though Ashley’s raved about JPs kisses mulitple times, Ashley and Ben’s adorable “mental kiss” in Chiang Mai during their first one-on-one left Ashley wanting to jump him. She said they had a lot of passion together, adding “This could be the beginning of a very happy ending for me.”

Why we can get on Team Ben F.

The main reason we’re really kinda hoping this whole speculation is true is because, if Ashley is engaged to Ben F., that means JP can be the Season 16 Bachelor! The show may be positioning Ryan Park for the gig, but lately all we’re seeing is how much Mr. Sunshine’s been rubbing the other bachelors the wrong way — which can’t bode well for how the viewing audience will feel about him in the end.

And piggybacking off of Jesse Csincsak’s theory, the show could be airing so much JP footage to prime us for his own love story. Do you know how many women would crawl over their own family members to date JP? After Jason Mesnick’s flip-flopping, Jake the Jerk, and Brad Womack 1.0, it would be nice to have a Bachelor people like for a change!

Poor Ashley Hebert.

Watching herself pine for Bentley Williams on The Bachelorette can't be easy.

Being played on national television? It's something former Bachelor winner (then loser) Melissa Rycroft certainly knows a thing or two about...

"On one hand, you feel really bad for her," Rycroft said at Radio Shack's HTC Evo 3-D launch party. "I know she had to have been watching the show with everyone and going, ‘I wish I would have known.' On the other hand, you just want to look at her and go, ‘Stop! Stop giving him attention.'"

Rycroft said this wouldn't have happened if she were the Bachelorette.

"I would have let him go," she said. "If he doesn't want to stay here and not fight for me, I'm sure as heck not going to make him stay and dwell on the fact that he didn't want to be here when there's all these other guys that do."

But then Rycroft also admitted, "It's much easier from this point of view than when you're in it, so I probably would have done exactly what she did and felt sorry for myself."

The Dancing With the Stars alum hopes Ashley has at least learned something from the Bentley debacle. "The most beneficial thing to come out of the Bentley situation is she's so going to grow from that, and then she's going to look at it and go ‘Stupid boys,'" she said.

Read more: http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b249209_bachelorette_ashleys_bentley_obsession.html#ixzz1QJDA8Ydf