Something odd happened in Reality TV-Land last night: reality. Or at least it sure looked like reality, or what passes for it on ABC's weepfest The Bachelor. Hunky Jason Mesnick (pictured) permanently forsook his nice-guy status by reneging on Melissa, his first choice to be Mrs. Mesnick, in favor of Molly, his #2 — and doing it all after he'd just been seen proposing to Melissa on national TV. Was he put up to it? Did he know all along that he was going to dump #1? The unaccountably obsessed rumor-monger Reality Steve swears it was all a plot (ABC knew Mesnick wanted Molly more, but convinced him to string Melissa along and then announce his real preference), but Melissa's anger and Molly's shock looked real.
Whatever happened behind the scenes, the online comments in response to host Chris Harrison's blog on EW.com make for glorious reading. Jason and ABC get all kinds of opprobrium heaped on them, Melissa is accorded martyr status, and fans make classically WTF statements like this one:
"…we don't want to see a lovely woman humiliated on television"
We don't? Isn't that the whole reason people watch this show?
More comments from Harrison's EW.com blog after the jump:
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2009.