Why The Golden Bachelorette's Pascal Ibgui Thinks The Franchise Is Doomed

Wednesday's "Fantasy Suites" episode of The Golden Bachelorette took an unexpected turn when one of Joan's three then-remaining suitors — Chock Chapple, Guy Gansert, and Pascal Ibgui – "self-eliminated."

In the parlance of reality TV, "self-elimination" occurs when a contestant on any sort of competition show elects to leave it of their own accord, rather than being voted off or sent home in accordance with the "rules" of the franchise.

Self-eliminations are perhaps most associated with The Bachelor franchise, for fairly self-explanatory reasons — as a show focused on "finding love" and entering into an ostensibly committed relationship, contestants are just as likely to lose interest as the lead.

In this case, Pascal self-eliminated, and Golden Bachelorette fans suspected that a very wedding-like bonding ceremony frightened him.

In a confessional from that episode, Pascal admitted:

"Talking about feeling emotion, I wasn't ready for that ... I appreciate the thought behind it, and I did my very best to show her who I am, but my wall’s still up.

"I'm guarded. I'm scared. I’m not ready for that."

Pascal was direct with Joan when he broke the news, saying:

"I know what love is. I’ve experienced it, you’ve experienced it, and I’m caring about you as a friend.

"But I’m not in love, you know, and I just can’t be there, and it’s hurting me because we have a good time together. I need that spark, and I just don’t have it."

Afterward, Pascal made a gentlemanly attempt to shield a tearful Joan from the cameras.

Now that he's out of the running, Pascal has given some "shockingly honest" feedback about the franchise and his experience in interviews.

Pascal Thinks The Golden Bachelorette Can't Work

Glamour published a candid interview with Pascal after his stunning departure.

In it, he continued expressing remorse for potentially hurting Joan's feelings, and said leaving hurt him, too.

Pascal also explained why he tried to chase the cameras away:

"When I saw the show, I saw she was hurt by that because she said [to the cameras], 'I’m maybe not worthy to be loved.' That was not my intention. My intention was to tell her that I’m not where she need me to be, and I don’t think if I could get there. I’m sorry if I misled her or misinterpret myself, but I told her from the beginning that I was guarded and it was going to take me time to bring down my wall.

"That’s why I told the camera to get away from me. I was very angry. I know the words not in love is very hurtful. I would rather try to be very diplomatic. Unfortunately, she got hurt. I got hurt because emotionally that was very difficult for me, too."

Pascal had more to say, though, including his view on why the Golden Bachelor and Golden Bachelorette are uniquely poised to fail.

Pascal contrasted them with The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and pointed to one extremely important difference:

"I said from the beginning, if you take a 25 to 30-year-old kid who doesn’t have a pot to pee [in], doesn’t own a car, who are in between jobs, who rent an apartment, who’s looking for an identity … it’s easy to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to move to LA, I’m going to move to New Orleans, and we’re going to make a living together.

"But when you are like me, established, I have a business, I have real estate, I have my friends, I have my routine, I have my health club, I have my connection … I ain’t going to move anywhere."

He didn't think the "golden" part was the problem, though, proposing a localized version of the franchise:

"Chicago’s got 13 million people. You tell me you can’t find 25 widowed or divorced people in that age group? Because [at] my age, I want to wake up with somebody, I want go to bed with somebody. I want to take a walk with somebody. I don’t want to get [on] a plane to go see somebody every two weeks."

Fans of The Golden Bachelor might recall that Pascal's view is not all that speculative — "where to settle" is exactly what tanked the franchise's first lead Gerry Turner's short-lived marriage to Theresa Nist.

Why The Golden Bachelorette's Pascal Ibgui Thinks The Franchise Is Doomed

Pascal Thinks The Golden Bachelorette Can't Work

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