HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Another week of The Bachelor. Another shocker.
This time it was contestant Ali Fedotowsky abruptly leaving Monday night's episode just minutes before Jake Pavelka was to planning choose his final three contestants at the evening's rose ceremony.
''I just found out that I have to choose between staying here and going back to work," a crying Fedotowsky tells Pavelka in his hotel room earlier in the day about the ultimatum facing her.
Struggling with what to do, the Massachusetts native pressed Pavelka to see if she might be the last "woman" standing.
''Ali, life is about minimizing your regrets," he tells her. "And you just have to weigh which one is going to be a bigger regret...Selfishly, I would say stay here and take a chance on me, but I can't right now guarantee you that I'm going to put a ring on your finger."
"I can't look you in the eye and tell you that I'm not going to,'' Pavelka then added.
Still unable to come to a decision, Fedotowsky asks to speak to Pavelka once again as the rose ceremony is about to begin. It is then that she decides she can't risk walking away without a job and love.
''I have to go,'' the advertising account manager tells Pavelka, before later admitting in her limo exit, ''I hope I made the right choice.''
One person questioning if Fedotowsky indeed made the right choice is Bachelor host Chris Harrison. He said the couple's hometown date, which included a trip to her late grandmother's home, was "as an emotional moment as we've ever had on this show."
"There is no doubt in my mind that these two were falling in love with each other. Which makes what happened that much tougher and unfortunate," he wrote Tuesday in his Entertainment Weekly blog.
Harrison said the conversation between Fedotowsky and Pavelka just before the rose ceremony lasted "at least two hours if not more."
"I will say this for Jake, he really laid it out there for her," said Harrison. "No, he didn't profess his love and promise that she was the one but he did flat out say more than once 'I don't want you to go.' On more than one occasion during the conversation I was positive Ali was going to stay. At one point I almost walked in because they had pretty much come to that conclusion. But in the end she chose her career over Jake and chose to leave. She said it herself best, 'I don't know if I made the right decision.' "
"That moment between the two of them at the limo was all anyone needed to see if there was any question as to how they felt about each other," he added.
Fedotowsky's decision to leave meant no rose ceremony for the first time in the ABC show's history. It also meant Vienna Girardi, Tenley Molzahn and Gia Allemand will be the trio heading to St. Lucia as Pavelka looks to determine the two finalists for the finale airing March 1.
Who is the right woman for Jake Pavelka? Click here to vote in our watercooler poll.
Photo credit: Craig Sjodin / ABC
- Comment
