Dumped! Betrayed! Humiliated! For a week now, the reality TV universe has been obsessed with The Bachelor, and an “After The Final Rose” special that many perceived to be little more than an act of public humiliation.
While the show’s season finale and the reunion special were
shown back-to-back on March 2, six weeks had actually elapsed between the
finale, when Bachelor Jason Mesnick chose Melissa Rycroft to be his bride,
and the special, during which he announced that he had changed his
mind and professed feelings instead for runner-up Molly Malaney. With more
than 17 million viewers watching, Rycroft arrived at the “After the Rose”
special holding — not wearing — her ring, and Mesnick confirmed the
suspicions that the engagement was off.
As Rycroft fought back her tears, and as Mesnick turned to Malaney, the
show’s fans took to the Internet in a rage, decrying Mesnick as a “jackass,”
a “playboy” and a “bastard.” It was clear that this particular chapter of
reality TV struck some as a little too real. Yet creator and executive
producer Mike Fleiss says the fireworks of March 2 reflected not the worst,
but the best, of the genre. “I’m not really surprised by this, it’s just a
sign that the show is working,” he told TIME. “That’s really your job, to create
television that the whole country will sit down at one time and watch
together. But honestly, I really don’t see the difference between [Jason]dumping Molly in New Zealand and then dumping Melissa [weeks later] in
Glendale.”
Some would say the difference is that Malaney knew there was a chance she
could get kicked off the show during the actual competition, while Rycroft’s
departure occurred long after she had already been picked as the
winner — and purportedly gotten engaged. But Fleiss insisted that Mesnick’s change of heart hardly came as a
shock to the bride-to-be. In the weeks leading up to the reunion 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 says, he heard that Mesnick might be
interested again in Malaney — whom Fleiss had already approached about
taking part in the next season of The Bachelorette.
All of of which set the stage for the most
unpredictable “After the Final Rose” event in the show’s history. Opting to
film the show without a live audience for secrecy reasons, and unsure of how
Malaney would respond to Mesnick’s affections, Fleiss said there was plenty
of uncertainty when cameras started rolling — just not when it
came to Rycroft. “She knew they were essentially
finished before walking out on that stage,” says Fleiss. “But still, doing it for real and
making it official and handing back the ring brought out real emotions.”
In various interviews, as well as in e-mails between Mesnick
and Rycroft that were leaked to the press, the Bachelor has blamed the
production crew for some of the emotional fallout surrounding his choice of
Malaney, saying that he was obligated to dump Rycroft in front of the
cameras. But Fleiss says that’s only half the story: “We didn’t want Jason
to necessarily spill the beans prior to taping, to keep it as real and raw
as possible. But he’s a good guy and didn’t conceal anything — he let her
know before that show that he didn’t think this relationship was going to
work.”
Fleiss seems to be basking in the buzz of the past week , but he also claims the emotional outcry that’s accompanied
this season’s Bachelor denouement is a sign of the passion this new wave of
reality TV contestants is bringing to the set. At one time, he says,
it was next to impossible to recruit plausible contestants, or even hosts,
to reality TV projects. But as the genre has grown
increasingly mainstream, producers have been able to find people who are more than mere
exhibitionists.
And with this new pool of talent, Fleiss says the emotions involved have become more complicated, and engaging. “Believe me,
I’ve seen Bachelor couples stay together who really didn’t care about
each other,” he said. “Some of them feel an obligation to the show to try to
be a couple, since we spent literally millions of dollars as their
matchmakers and sent them all over the world.”
But rather than playing to the expectations of producers,
or viewers, says Fleiss, Mesnick dared to reveal his true emotions, and to
acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that love is not always a programmable
enterprise. “More than any other Bachelor in history, he was committed to
love and to truly following his heart even though he knew he was going to
have to go through hell to do it,” Fleiss said. “It’s really a romantic
notion, that he sacrificed chunks of his popularity to at least try to be
with the woman he loved.”
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