Chris Soules finale of The Bachelor may have been the most awkward finale in Bachelor history. It was painfully obvious that the Bachelor was head over heels in love with Becca Tilley, but she was just not able to reciprocate the feelings. So Chris chooses his second place girl Whitney Bischoff instead.
To be fair, Chris knew that he came with a lot of baggage and needed a woman who could handle that, aka 12,000 pigs and a 6,000 acre farm in the middle of nowhere!!!
It’s pretty unusual for a girl to make it to the finale who is not going to be a sure thing. So this was a Bachelor first.
So I was thrilled to get Chris Harrison’s take on the situation:
“Chris seemed to be conflicted down to the final moment. Were you nervous about his choice? Harrison: I was pretty positive he was going to choose Whitney. I honestly saw him choosing Whitney in Bali. We didn’t really show much, but his breakdown in Bali was over Becca and Kaitlyn, and it had nothing to do with Whitney. She was always safe and the front-runner from that week on. I think he did a very good job of keeping his mind and heart open to the possibility of Becca, but he was more intrigued than anything. Becca shows you one thing, but can’t articulate it, and it’s frustrating for a man coming off a date with Whitney who is so in touch with her emotions and knows exactly where she is and where she wants to go.”
Chris Harrison—always the diplomat. It sounded like on the AFTR episode that there was a lot of pushing going on behind the scenes to get Becca to fall for Chris and it just didn’t happen. I have no doubt that if Becca told Chris that she was in love with him and was ready to start a life with him there would have been no contest.
“Whitney flew under the radar. Looking back to Night 1, are you surprised she ended up being the one?
Harrison: Definitely. If you go into Night 1 and the first few weeks, Whitney was the slow burn. It was such a crazy, dynamic group of women that it was so easy to be over-shadowed. But at the end of the day, that’s not why Chris was there and that’s not what was going to last. To be honest, Britt was the front-runner early on and for quite some time, but she slowly sabotaged herself and was her own worst enemy.”
Britt was definitely a front-runner and I think she did what she came to do—get cast as The Bachelorette. I think her self-sabotage was out of desperation. If she walked off ABC likely would not have chosen her to be the lead. So I think she played it pretty well. She is an actress after all!
