Jason Mesnick

For a week, the celeb gossip universe has been obsessed with The Bachelor's "After The Final Rose" special, which some perceived as pure public humiliation.

While the show's season finale and the reunion special were shown back-to-back, six weeks of real time had elapsed between the finale, when Jason Mesnick chose Melissa Rycroft as his bride, and the special, during which he announced that he had changed his mind and professed feelings instead for runner-up Molly Malaney.

As Rycroft fought back tears, and as Mesnick turned to Malaney, many fans became enraged, decrying Mesnick as a "jackass," "playboy" and "bastard."

This particular chapter of reality TV struck some as a little too real.

Yet The Bachelor creator and executive producer Mike Fleiss says the March 2 spectacle reflected not the worst, but the very best of reality TV.

"I'm not really surprised by this, it's just a sign that the show is working," he told Time magazine. "That's really your job, to create television that the whole country will sit down at one time and watch together."

"Honestly, I really don't see the difference between [Jason Mesnick] dumping Molly in New Zealand and then dumping Melissa [weeks later] in Glendale."

Some say the difference is that Malaney knew there was a chance she could get kicked off the show during the competition, while Rycroft's departure occurred long after she had already been picked as the winner and gotten engaged.

But Fleiss insists Mesnick's actions came as no shock to Melissa.

In the weeks leading up to the special, Fleiss said he started to hear word from other producers on the show that Rycroft and Mesnick were not getting along.

Two weeks before the reunion, Fleiss heard Mesnick was still interested in Molly Malaney - whom Fleiss had approached about starring in The Bachelorette (third-place finisher Jillian Harris would eventually be tapped for that role).

All of of which set the stage for the most unpredictable "After the Final Rose" event in The Bachelor history - as host Chris Harrison accurately hyped it.

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Despite only having a few days to rehearse, Melissa Rycroft should have no problem on Dancing With the Stars, says her ex-fiance Jason Mesnick.

"I am so excited for Melissa," The Bachelor star tells Extra. "I know she's danced her whole life, and must be excited. I hope and think she will win it all."

Meanwhile, on Monday's Bonnie Hunt Show, Mesnick continued his national apology tour after dumping Rycroft on the "After the Final Rose" special.

"I want to apologize to you and to the audience and to anybody who is watching because I did something obviously that I am not very proud of and that is talking to [Melissa Rycroft] in front of the camera," the single dad admits.

"It's something that I regret and I've thought about every day since it happened ... the producers really wanted me to do it that way, but it was my decision, I take full responsibility for my actions and I apologize most of all to Melissa," he says.

The passion between Jason and Melissa was palpable on The Bachelor. But he says he knew Rycroft wasn't the right girl for him soon after the show ended.

"We had spent a bunch of weekends together and spent a week together at Christmas and all of a sudden ... we had so many silences and nothing to talk about," he says. "I think we both knew there was something missing."

Molly Malaney, the show's runner-up who is now dating Mesnick, admits she was iffy about dating him after seeing how he treated Melissa Rycroft.

"I needed to understand what happened with Melissa and him," said the 24-year-old department store buyer and Grand Rapids, Mich., native.

"I wanted to make sure that he wasn't running back to me just because it didn't work out with Melissa," added Malaney, who isn't planning on getting married or engaged to Mesnick yet, but says she's very happy with her man.

Like Jason, we can't wait to watch Melissa Rycroft dance tonight!

After a stunning turn of events to conclude an epic 13th season of The Bachelor, the controversy surrounding Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney may finally be abating.

But will the lovebirds actually tie the knot?

Some critics have lambasted Jason for publicly dumping Melissa Rycroft, who he initially offered the final rose (and an engagement ring) on the series. Similarly, many others faulted Molly Malaney for taking Jason back after the whole charade.

Given these developments, and the fact that a whopping none of the previous 12 stars of The Bachelor have wed their final rose recipients, it would seem, at least on paper, that the odds are highly against Jason and Molly walking down the aisle.

Will they beat those odds? Tell us in the survey below:

Will Molly Malaney marry Jason Mesnick?

Welcome, celebrity gossip fans, to The Hollywood Gossip Caption Contest, a Friday tradition, now in its 72nd week. Who won this week's Caption Contest?

This photo of The Bachelor's Jason Mesnick and Melissa Rycroft generated some great responses. We've chosen Denise as this week's winner. Congratulations!

DeAnna, I mean Molly, no, sorry I mean Melissa. Will you marry me?

Continuing his apology publicity tour, Jason Mesnick insists he never cheated on The Bachelor winner Melissa Rycroft with runner-up Molly Malaney before he publicly dumped the former for the latter on the "After the Final Rose" special.

It's not easy being "the most hated man in America right now," or so Jason said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show this morning, where he offered this to fans:

"I think what I want to do is to apologize to everybody out there. All the fans of the show because thank you for watching, but this was my real life."

"It was the hardest thing I've had to do," Jason said of the controversial switcheroo.

"I made some big mistakes and that's what I wanted to sit here and talk about today - the mistakes I made. But in the end I found my true love."

He also expressed regret over telling Melissa Rycroft on camera about Molly (Melissa said Jason lied about her yesterday in her own interview on Ellen).

"I completely regret doing that," Mesnick said with seeming sincerity and Molly Malaney by his side. "I regretted it every single day since that happened."

"I will regret it every day for the rest of my life. The producers obviously really wanted me to do it on the show, but I take responsibility for my actions."

Follow the jump for more reactions from Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney, and a video of their interview with Ellen DeGeneres ...

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It's been quite a week for Jason Mesnick.

More than 17 million viewers watched the single dad get down on one knee and propose to Dallas beauty Melissa Rycroft on the two-hour season finale of The Bachelor, only to dump her like 45 seconds later on the "After the Final Rose" special.

Mesnick then confessed he still had feelings for Michigan department store buyer Molly Malaney - to the dismay of Rycroft, who said in her first interview after the finale that Jason lied about Molly to her on more than one occasion.

The shocking events will be hotly debated for some time, but Jason and Molly are brushing off the haters and looking very happy on the cover of People.

In an exclusive sit-down interview with the celeb news magazine, Jason again defends his decision to dump Melissa Rycroft in front of the ABC cameras.

"That was part of the deal. I signed up for this. Your relationship is - good and bad - in front of everybody," Mesnick lied to People through his teeth.

In her interview, as well as her personal emails to Jason, Melissa Rycroft did corroborrate The Bachelor star's statement that they drifted apart shortly after they returned from New Zealand and tried to resume their normal lives.

"After we got back into the real world, we had less to talk about, and I didn't know why," says Jason, who couldn't stop thinking about the girl he left behind.

Turns out Molly Malaney shared similar feelings.

"After the finale I thought he made the wrong decision and I was so upset. I was totally shocked," Malaney says. "I thought, Gosh, it would be so awesome if he called me up and was like 'I made a mistake, I want you back.'"

"Never in a million years did I think it would happen."

After a tumultuous and "historic" season finale of The Bachelor, Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney say they are extremely happy. Melissa Rycroft? Not so much.

On today's Ellen DeGeneres Show, M-Ry is speaking out for the first time about being dispatched by her Bachelor fiance on national TV and how hurt she was when she discovered that he had been dating runner-up Molly.

When did things fall apart? Melissa says "it was pretty immediate" after the finale that Jason Mesnick realized he didn't want to be with her.

"Once we got back to the real world, we were talking about how [our relationship] was different. He kind of gave up, and I couldn't understand why at the time. Now I do - because I think there was someone else involved."

"And that is where my feelings of betrayal came in," Melissa Rycroft added.

Melissa says their engagement did not end on TV, as it may have appeared to viewers who saw him propose 25 seconds prior, but Jason was still dishonest.

The chemistry between these two faded fast after the finale.

"I knew on the night After the Final Rose [aired], I wasn't getting dumped. We had already ended the relationship and that was mutual."

"I repeatedly asked Jason, 'Is Molly involved in anything?' And when they moved up the taping of the After the Final Rose special [to January], I was thinking to myself, 'Why did we move the taping up? What's going on?'"

"I asked Jason, 'Am I going to be blind-sided by anything? Is there anything you want to tell me?' And he said, 'No, gosh no.' And the second I went out on that stage, he goes, 'P.S. it is Molly.' And I went, 'Bastard!'"

Even as Jason Mesnick initially denied he was dating Molly Malaney, Melissa Rycroft had a hunch something was going on with them.

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The Bachelor may be over, but judging by the number of comments on this site and many others devoted to the controversial ending of the 13th season, viewers can't comprehend what they just saw - and still have many questions.

The Seattle Times talked to Jason Mesnick and new girlfriend Molly Malaney in the aftermath of the "shocking" and "intimate" finales. Here's what they said:

Q: Can we start from the beginning? Last time I talked to you in early December, you were engaged to Melissa. Did you ever expect to change your mind?

Jason Mesnick: I would never have proposed if I thought I was going to change my mind. If I had a few more months things would have been different. With the time constraints on the show, at the time I thought I was making the right decision.

Q: You spent the holidays with Melissa in L.A. Was Molly on your mind that whole time?

Jason Mesnick: Initially, I tried to ignore it. Any time I would think about Molly I would be like, "Forget it." I made a decision, I'm going to get married to Melissa. But every day, I just remember thinking, okay, first of all I feel really bad what I did to Molly. And then slowly, I would say, week after week it started building more and more. It was like, now I just don't feel bad, there's a piece of me that's still gone.

Q: Did you fall out of love with Melissa Rycroft?

Jason Mesnick: Melissa is that person I thought going into it I would end up with. I guess in a way she's similar to a lot of other girls I've dated in my life, which is part of the reason why I ended up picking her. It was just something I thought I wanted when realistically, there's probably a reason why my past relationships haven't worked out. What I really needed was somebody different and it was Molly.

Q: The decision to do it on television has been what everyone has been talking about. Did you actually tell Melissa beforehand?

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As the fallout from the season finale of The Bachelor continues, Access Hollywood claims to have uncovered personal e-mails between Jason Mesnick and Melissa Rycroft, his chosen fiancee who he dumped on national TV four minutes later.

In the first of several emails, Melissa Rycroft expressed her anger at Jason following the "After the Rose" special (taped in mid-January), in which Jason dumped her hard and opted for a second chance with runner-up Molly Malaney.

While Jason's change of heart shocked viewers who saw it unfold about 16 seconds after their televised engagement, Melissa may have seen it coming.

She wrote in the e-mail dated January 19:

"Last night didn't go NEAR how I thought... I still can't believe how you can't give reasons other than 'It changed.'... You know as well as I do that you didn't give 100% to me or the relationship. I don't understand how you can walk away form something without giving it your all. But I am walking away knowing I did."

Jason hands Melissa a rose (and false hope) in the season premiere.

In the initial e-mail after the taping, Melissa Rycroft seemed quite clued in to Jason's feelings for Molly Malaney prior to his tearful TV confession:

"And getting confirmation about Molly in front of people like that was a complete classless move if you ask me - how could you do that to me after I repeatedly asked you about it? I'm not stupid, I knew about Molly... and you lied to me about it. I can't even tell you how much respect I lost for you... but it makes this whole process from here on out much easier for me."

Follow the jump to read more and see the emails themselves ...

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"You've got to be joking!"

This is how The Bachelor host-pimp Chris Harrison says he reacted when Jason Mesnick told him that he changed his mind and wanted to end things with the winner, Melissa Rycroft, and reconcile with runner-up Molly Malaney.

The shocking "After the Final Rose" special, in which Jason dumped Melissa for Molly, sparked controversy, outrage, big ratings and unanswered questions.

Did the producers know? Did they orchestrate the whole thing?

Both Harrison and The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss spoke out about it in the aftermath, and the short version is that Jason legitimately did change his mind (for reasons still unknown), but the public exchange was a total ratings stunt.

A contemplative Jason Mesnick ponders ruining Melissa Rycroft's life.

Here are some quotes from The Bachelor powers that be ...

They were just as shocked as we were: "When we left New Zealand, we were high-fiving, thinking this is great, 'People are going to love this guy and love the story,'" Chris Harrison recalls. "I talked to Jason when we got back, and things were going great. And then the next thing I hear, the producers are saying, 'He wants another shot with Molly.' And I just said, 'You've got to be kidding me!' We were all blown away."

Not their idea: "People think we wanted to pull this stunt, but we didn't!" Harrison says. "This isn't good for us. I mean, the ratings were insane and all that, but we would have much rather had him end up with Melissa and have them get married. In the long run, that's a better story for us and for the fans."

Seriously, not their idea: “It was [Jason's] choice in New Zealand who he proposed to,” says Fleiss. “But after the show wrapped, he was not in love with Melissa anymore and instead he was in love with Molly and needed to make a change.”

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