Married At First Sight, the latest highly controversial reality series to confront Australian audiences, made its debutlast night, and as any rational person (hello, you) knows, the only thing more fun than watching a controversial reality series is dissecting it on the internet.
The show, based on an American reality TV series, which itself is based on a show from Denmark, is themed around the idea that arranged marriages often work better than love matches.
In the Aussie version, four couples, none of whom have met before, are asked to tie the knot, before coming to grips with the more difficult question of whether or not they can stand each-other.
However you feel about this idea, that’s still a pretty fuck-off amazing premise for a reality TV series, and the kind of thing that’s guaranteed to draw a lot of response, both positive and negative.
Last night saw two of the couples meeting at the altar, and who’d have thunk it, one pairing seems like a match made in heaven, while the other is fairly clearly heading for disaster.
That obviously doomed couple would be placid farmer Lachlan and control freak Clare, whose wedding day meltdown – “I didn’t ask for roses … why do they fuck me over on everything?” – made social media light up.
Even Nine’s own Tracy Grimshaw was a bit sceptical:
Even before it aired, the show had drawn strong reactions. A Change.Org petition, calling on Nine to Axe Married At First Sight before it aired, reprimanded the show as “morally unsound.”
“It is appalling that we live in country that will not support marriage equality but will support a television show such as this!” the petition read, with many angry that strangers in Australia can get married, but committed gay couples can not.
On Monday’s edition of Today, a pair of “relationship experts” showed up to spruik the show, only to face similar criticism from an exasperated Karl Stefanovic, who shouted “people are going to be appalled by this!”
So, do we as a society want marriage equality? Or do we want ridiculous reality TV spectacles? As usual, the Old El Paso girl is on the money. Por que no los dos?
Last night’s Married At First Sight debut was a huge ratings success, drawing 1.134 million viewers, which means there’s a lot more of this in our future.
