On The Project on Monday night, Sam Frost said she felt "a bit played". 

The putative "former fiance" was of course referring to the square-jawed Bachelor Blake Garvey, who less than one week earlier had proposed to her in front of an audience of 1.4 million on national TV, and then developed a bad case of cold feet and decided to call the whole thing off.

The Project audience was 100 percent behind the telegenic and gracious 25-year-old, and the nation, with just a little bit of help from Ten's stablemates at Studio 10, launched into a collective condemnation of the "jackass", "love rat" and "douchebag" who had played with this young woman's heart, dignity and vulnerability.

While Blake's wearing the blame, little is being said about the network which opted to air the cringe-worthy marriage proposal in full knowledge that it was nothing more than a sham. The Blake-Sam relationship was well and truly over when the finale aired. 

It isn't the first time that a TV production has been blindsided by an unexpected turn of events in the hiatus between filming and broadcast. When it was revealed that Michael LaHoud had fabricated his criminal past in the documentary Once Upon A Time In Punchbowl, SBS and the producers had no option but to re-edit the show.

Indeed, Ten faced a similar problem itself in 2010 when a contestant on The Biggest Loser was charged with child pornography less than two weeks before  the show's launch. The material was reworked so there was no trace of the offending contestant.

In this case, however, the network proceeded with the broadcast, seemingly prepared to exploit the unedifying spectacle of Sam being jilted at the altar, so to speak, and Blake transform from Australia's most eligible bachelor to its number one cad. The Perth real estate agent is unlikely to add "as seen on The Bachelor" to his business card in a hurry.

As Debi Enker observed presciently, as it turns out, in a recent Fairfax column: "The Bachelor Australia cynically appeals to our worst instincts. It gathers a group of women and sets them up to compete against each other for the affections of one purportedly desirable man. Then it preys on their hopes and insecurities, constructing situations that invite conflict and waits for the claws to come out."

But so far at least, everything is playing exactly to the rule book of The Bachelor and a network in need of a ratings uplift.

Having managed to keep the proverbial genie in the bottle right up to the moment that the finale and its faux-proposal aired, Ten then kept Blake and Sam under wraps and milked the "bombshell" for everything it could.

Sam and Blake's tell-all confessions on The Project on Monday night delivered a whooping peak audience of 1.9 million viewers (by a wonderful coincidence, on the very night that Ten lauched its new drama Party Tricks). The revelations continued on Tuesday night, when Sam repeated her appearance on The Project. Ironically, the wash-up of the proposal-that-never-was and the narrative of the jilted-heroine-getting-on-with-her-life is playing bigger and better than episodes of The Bachelor.

Even when the rumour mill erupted with racy claims that one of the also-ran contestants was pregnant with Blake's child, it was the girl herself who took to Facebook to shut down the innuendo-laden allegation.

In light of how faithfully everyone is sticking to the script here, the rumour of Ten handing Sam a second bite of the reality-TV apple as The Bachelorette (Sportsbet is offering odds) is nowhere near as far-fetched as it first appears. If her goal is to further her TV career, she's playing her cards just right.

But as we wait for the Bex and a good lie down to kick in and calm us from this latest eruption of the reality-TV volcano, let's not kid ourselves about exactly who's playing who.

SMH