Jason Mesnick The Bachelor

It's been four weeks since Jason Mesnick dumped Melissa Rycroft for Molly Malaney on The Bachelor's "After the Final Rose" special. It was a stunning TV event, but all parties have moved on and seem to be happy with where they are in life.

That hasn't stopped Jason's Bachelor predecessor, Matt Grant, from sharing his unsolicited, boring two cents on the season finale almost a month later.

Specifically, Mesnick's move of going off-script and unceremoniously breaking up with Rycroft and romancing runner-up Molly was not smart, Grant says.

“This guy kind of committed suicide,” Matt Grant opined at The 23rd Genesis Awards in Beverly Hills on Saturday night. “He’s a nice man. I’ve met him quite a few times. But I think he should have gone about it differently.”

Seen here with interim fiancee Shayne Lamas, Matt Grant is critical of Jason Mesnick for his Bachelor actions, but acknowledges that it took guts to follow his heart.

The world is still watching anxiously as Mesnick and Malaney continue their courtship while the jilted Rycroft struts her stuff on Dancing with the Stars, keeping an eye on everything as the three resume life away from The Bachelor cameras.

Matt Grant, however, does give Mesnick credit for facing up to his mistake early on. “Ultimately, he had the [guts] to say, ‘I screwed up.’”

The London native, who says he’s still dating his publicist Sarah Robarts - admits he was lucky in his role on The Bachelor: London Calling. “I had an easy ride. I had a great group of women; we all just got on fairly well.”

Grant proposed to that skank Shayne Lamas but their engagement ended in July of last year after she reportedly cheated on him numerous times.

It’s been nearly a month since Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney sparked both shock and outrage by rekindling their romance from on national TV - at the expense of Jason’s jilted fiancée from The Bachelor season finale, Melissa Rycroft.

So how are Jason and Molly doing now?

“Molly and I are happy,” Jason says.

In a remarkable move, the Bachelor couple spent a few days this month getting to know each other without cameras. Novel concept. In one of the few chances they have had to see each other, Jason flew to Milwaukee to visit Molly at her home.

They kept busy meeting her friends for drinks (“They gave him the stamp of approval!” says Molly), taking romantic strolls along Lake Michigan, and “grilling out.”

“I’ve learned new terminology,” Jason Mesnick says, laughing at the Midwestern word for barbecuing. “It’s normal, right, to say ‘grilling out’?” Molly insists with a laugh as the two snuggled up on a sofa in Molly’s living room.

Molly Malaney has been doing some cooking for Jason, who loves her signature recipe for Cheesy Chicken. And Jason has been trying to tempt Molly, the meat-and-potatoes all-American girl from Michigan, to try some new foods at restaurants.

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When the dust settled after a highly-rated and "shocking" season of The Bachelor, it was Molly Malaney who bested the competition and won Jason Mesnick's heart.

But how does that compare to what her two runners-up received?

Fan favorite Jillian Harris landed her own show as the next star of The Bachelorette. After being spurned on the "After the Final Rose" special Melissa Rycroft scored a spot on Dancing with the Stars and is already a bona fide hit.

Molly Malaney won a relatively handsome, upper middle-class guy with a decent job and a four-year-old son. We wish Jason and Molly all the best, and think they got a bad rap and make a great couple, but we're just sayin' ...

Who really won this season of The Bachelor?

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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