Was Jason Mesnick’s controversial change of heart on Monday night’s finale of The Bachelor staged to create ratings bonanza? “No,” according to Mike Fleiss, the show’s executive producer.

Fleiss says producers have “zero” influence in selecting the woman who wins the final rose.

Jason, a 32-year-old single dad from Seattle, has taken a beating in the court of public opinion after he proposed to Melissa Rycroft in New Zealand only to dump her on the After the Final Rose Special, taped six weeks later, because he still had feelings for runner-up Molly Malaney.

Molly and Jason are now dating.

(Take notes, there’ll be a quiz on this later.)

“The great thing about unscripted television is that it’s unpredictable, and that’s what this was,” Mike said of Jason. “It caught us off guard. It caught the viewers off guard.”

The producer also defended the network’s decision to air the emotional moment when Melissa was dumped on national television.

“First of all, it is a TV show and that was the defining movement of the series. To not put it on TV on would be strange when you consider we are doing a TV show and these people signed up to do a TV show,” Mike says. The real difference here was [that] his decision to break up with Melissa involved the other party in this situation, Molly. So it was all part of our ‘Bachelor’ universe. [To us] it seemed weird to turn the cameras off. We try to tell a complete story. To have that go on and not let the viewers be a part of it, I think, would have been a mistake.”

He adds, “They had been talking and seeing each other. I think it was clear to both of them that there were problems with the relationship at that point,”. “As I understand it, they were all but broken up prior to the show. I don’t think she knew that she was going to give him back the ring, but I think she knew they weren’t going to be together.”