Before we launch into tonight’s MAFS/whirlpool of emotional turmoil I’d like to humbly and gratefully acknowledge each and every person who pointed out that our dirt bike king Russell actually pronounced Moët correctly (did I know it was pronounced Mow-ett? I did NOT). In this house we attribute credit where credit is due! Thank you for your diligence!
Okay enough with the pleasantries let’s get grubby. This week is something called “confession week” which, once again, seems like subjecting these poor contestants to completely gratuitous psychological distress, but we all know that’s what makes for riveting TV so yeehaw I guess??
The couples are all moving in together – like literally together, they’re all being housed in the same building, in near-identical soulless timeshare-ass-looking apartments. Can’t see any flaws in this plan!
The producers have strategically placed copies of the couples’ wedding photos in their rooms, which prompts Alana to tell Jason that he “actually looks really handsome in this photo. You look like, uh…” and he goes, “DENZEL WASHINGTON.”
nailed it
My beautiful baby lizard. Never change.
In Bryce and Melissa’s apartment, he’s wearing an unfortunate hat and they’re drinking from a simply enormous bottle of what I can only assume isn’t Mow-ett.
hurvblghagugehalgh
Sweet baby angels Belinda and Patrick are having their naivety exploited once again, with the voiceover lady intoning ominously that this is the “first time ever” that Belinda’s lived with a man. She makes it sound like living with a terminal illness, which, well…
Anyway Belinda glides around the apartment exclaiming about she “can’t believe how big it is” and Patrick gets a gold star for not making the joke that I definitely would have.
I SAID, I can’t BELIEVE how BIG it IS
They both seem to be getting along. Belinda makes a cute joke about how the bed will be good for cozying up, and Pat’s like, “And there’s a smoke alarm in case things get steamy.” The boy is developing some game! More gold stars for everyone!
Meanwhile Samantha is moving in to her Accor Premier Sadcation Club lodgings alone. She misses her kids. She wonders why she’s doing this. I’m wondering when the producers are going to go threaten Cam with disembowelment for breaching his contract. Surely he’s not logging enough screen hours to be holding up his end of this demonic agreement?
“It was real marriage for me,” says Sam, and sorry, my sympathy has hit a bit of a wall there, because if you’ve ever even heard of MAFS in your life you would understand that the marriages therein are orders of magnitude less real than, for example, the one between my cat and my dog.
pictured: me, mid-2020
Everyone’s gossiping about Cameron and Samantha. Alana and Jason are just glad it’s not them. Jason reckons it’s irreparable. I’m liking this new confidence on him! AFL Himbo Jake thinks Cam just worded things wrong. Generous as always.
Meanwhile, our resident Pilates instructor/firecracker Coco gets treated to a fun little gym montage, complete with GarageBand guitar riffs. She missed doing her leg lifts! Sam/Marshall Mathers IV stands there like a numpty, as usual.
babe can you pass me my GameBoy I left it in your bumbag
MAFS is setting up Sam and Coco as the major conflict for this ep, and yeah I’m pretty ready to see things come to a head here. Coco has been an unanticipated source of depth, intelligence and perception disguised in a fun, ripped, mouthy-broad wrapper, while Sam has taken every opportunity to be a grotty little demon. Remember when he told Coco he dumped his last girlfriend because she didn’t have big enough tits? Or when he decided last night’s dinner party was the perfect time to get a perve in on Alana? I want to see Coco crush his head in a thigh press.
you get comfy, I’ll be right back from definitely not the steak knife drawer
Oho, here comes Cameron, who’s apparently “cooled off” (been dressed down by a harried production assistant). He’s still in a towering snit about the dinner party, because he reckons Sam acted out of line. They take up their usual positions as far away from each other as possible.
please remain 2m apart while torpedoing your relationship’s remaining goodwill
Sam tries to suggest they move forward, but Cameron has all the give of a brick wall. He’s still sore about being accused of having a one night stand. She’s trying her best to explain how she felt – but he reckons that her talking about it at the dinner party is “as low as low can get” and there’s no coming back from it. Hilariously, he’s like, “I’m not here for drama after drama.” Mate, you should be expecting an invite from NIDA any day now, ‘cos your behaviour so far has been an absolute masterclass in drama.
He storms off again, although where to I have no idea.
hey babe got room in your life for a totally low-drama bloke
Sam accurately suggests that it’s difficult to deal with someone who drops in, decides he can’t handle the convo, and buggers off again. “We’re not doing FIFO,” she sighs. Whatever. My engagement with Cam has gone from amused exasperation to total disinterest. He’s boring and predictable and she deserves better. NEXT.
Belinda and Patrick have clearly been given a Myer gift card and are bickering inexpertly in the homewares section. Belinda wants a pink bedspread, no, rainbow, no, FOXES! Patrick, in his most adult human moment yet, wants none of these things. The fool.
“I feel like we just got married, we just had our honeymoon, shouldn’t the husband be like, Yeah, I’ll go with what you want?” says Belinda haughtily.
incur the wrath of the sea witch at your peril, mortal
Our other MAFS punching bags, Beth and Russell, are getting pummelled by the indignities of an organic food store. Does Russell want a kombucha? Have a guess.
if I wanted to eat grass I’d have married a lawnmower
Bryce and Melissa are shopping as well, which seems to consist of sweeping an entire display of condoms into a basket and calling it a day. “Don’t want any surprises on this experiment,” says the hat. I’m sure Channel 9 would love to legally own the offspring of one of these couples but I personally support Bryce and Mel’s commitment to remaining preg-not.
just the essentials (frangers and fluids)
Everyone gets tucked into their brand-new bird-patterned Myer sheets (Belinda wore Pat down), absolutely oblivious to the trials about to be visited upon them. Here it is: “Confessions Week”.
Expert John Aiken uses his best high school counsellor voice to explain that Confessions Week is a brand-new addition to the experiment designed to “fast track” the couples’ relationships. “The sooner our couples are forced to confront and confess their true feelings, thoughts and secrets, the sooner they’ll get to know each other on a deeper level,” he nods. There is a knot in my stomach. I fear for the lives of these reality TV dolts, I really do.
ethics are for bitches and i ain’t a bitch
Oh god it’s true: Alana and Jason, and Melissa and Bryce, have both received envelopes containing photos of all the other brides and grooms. They have to arrange them in order of hotness. This is a literal form of torture lifted straight from Satan’s Big Book of Torture Tips.
ha ha kill me
Emissary of the Underworld John says this exercise will force the couples to navigate something something sorry, I can’t retain anything he’s saying because I’m still feebly trying to pull myself together after being OBLITERATED by the NERVE this program has to attempt to sell BLATANT REALITY TV DRAMA PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES as RELATIONSHIP BUILDING EXERCISES.
Alana rates the blokes not just by physical attractiveness but by their qualities – namely that they are good communicators and they look her in the eyes when she’s talking to them. Our little lizard Jason tries his best to take this in but appears overwhelmed by the hotness of AFL himbo Jake, who Alana gives the top spot to. Don’t worry, Jason! You’re Alana’s real number one! It’s a cute moment just cos we get to see his relieved little face when she pops his pic at the end of the lineup.
and none for Marshall Mathers IV, bye
Across the hall, Bryce is approaching the same exercise with the baffling confidence of a sex god, and Melissa is clearly fantasising about how long it’d take to saw his head off with the edge of a 4×6 photograph.
maybe if I whipped it across the room
Bryce makes the incomprehensible decision to rank Melissa fourth on his lineup of MAFS hotties. “You don’t even get a medal for that,” she says. Once again, my dude: just LIE.
“I don’t mean to offend you,” he says, “but… like I’m kind of looking at it as if I was out at a bar.” Good! That’s definitely the point of this exercise. Great work Bryce! Glad to see you’re grasping the spirit of things so comprehensively!
Mel is quietly devastated. She wishes she wasn’t so calm. She wishes she wasn’t so hurt by it.
“I know you’re probably hoping that you’re number one,” he says, and god I wish he’d stop talking. “Knowing what I know about all the other girls, as a complete package, you’re a standout number one for me. But you know that I can’t lie, I’m a bad liar.”
He sweeps the rest of the pictures off the table and chucks them in the bin, and props her picture up against the wall. I was not expecting to find these futile gestures of reconciliation quite so heartbreaking.
Oh well, revenge time! Now Mel gets to rank the boys, and she’s doing so with the decisiveness of a woman with something to prove. James, the millionaire with the Lambo, gets the top slot! Where does Bryce fit? Put him on the floor Mel! The floor!!!
No, he gets number one. Bugger it.
him?
This inequity of perceived hotness is being treated as a near-dealbreaker, and I feel compelled to say that I just don’t think this would happen if the genders were reversed. Plenty of deeply average dudes go out with superbabe women, and it’s not like those women are all suffering from macular degeneration – they just prioritise other qualities over physical appearance. Wouldn’t we save everyone a lot of heartache if we collectively decided to abandon the idea that a woman’s looks are the single most important thing to her prospective partners? We permit Catherine Zeta-Jones to love that old fossil Michael Douglas, presumably because he’s funny, charming, or possessed of some awe-inspiring eldritch powers; can’t we allow men to like their female partners for the same reasons?
Blurrgh this is neither the time nor the place to completely renovate heterosexual gender relations. Let’s go look at Patrick and Belinda write each other embarrassing letters.
we go together like peanut butter and fish sticks
This exercise, in which two couples (the others are Coco and Sam) are instructed to write each other letters telling them something they’ve never told anyone else, is supposedly designed to challenge them on two communication fronts: opening up to someone about something difficult, and the ability to listen carefully and empathise with their partner. Sounds an awful lot like an opportunity to turn genuine trauma into trash TV but okay!!!
Belinda tells Patrick that she was terribly bullied at her prestigious private high school. She says she feels ashamed that she let it affect her so badly. Patrick asks her how deep it went; she says the whole year level took part in bullying her. They made a website about her! Specifically to say mean things about her! Welp, high schools should be dismantled immediately and all children incarcerated for their own good and everyone else’s safety. Good god. Fortunately Patrick does an excellent job of listening, asking sensitive questions and empathising. He doesn’t say a single thing about peanut butter. More gold stars for this man please!
now let’s go leave bad reviews on those mean girls’ MLM schemes
Coco is wearing a cute co-ord and hoping desperately that the “incredibly rude” Sam won’t be an ass to her when she shares some of her deepest secrets.
am I pensive or am I calculating the returns window for this outfit
Back at the apartment, she reveals that she wishes she had set up stronger boundaries with her ex-husband, and that she let him treat her badly because she was so desperate for love. And then MAFS employs the most craven, grubby piece of editing I have literally ever seen, and does an internal monologue voiceover bit where Sam’s echoey voice goes “Seriously?” over Coco’s heartfelt story fading into the background. This seems… excessive, particularly when Sam does such a good job of making himself seem like Lord Fuckwit of Dick Manor all on his own.
how did this prince among men remain single for so long
“I’m yawning because I’m tired,” he lies, and Coco sighs her soul all the way out of her body.
“It’s killing me being around someone who’s so rude and so disrespectful. If you can’t respect me enough to listen to me, why are you here?” she tells the camera. I mean I think Sam has made his priorities pretty clear from the start though, right?
tits
Back in the Accor Premier Devastation Club, the producers have clearly got so exasperated with Samantha and Cameron that they’ve called in the big guns: a profoundly unimpressed John Aiken has obviously been forced to abandon his lunch plans to do a pop-up counselling session.
am I pensive or am I thinking about the parmy I had to leave behind
Sam reveals that the whole emotional connection thing has been a real trigger for her because of her previous marriage, in which she was cheated on for five years – ipso facto, no emotional connection there. Of course it feels bad to hear that her new marriage is also devoid of emotional connection on her husband’s part. She was so happy to be married again because she wants her two kids to see her in love! Because otherwise how will they learn how to love! Ah jeez there’s some emotional manipulation in my eye, hang on.
Cameron, to his credit, says now that everything’s laid out for him in terms of Sam’s past, he can see where things went wrong between them. John Aiken mumbles “and how does that make you feel” while barely restraining himself from looking at his watch.
for the love of god please someone say that’s a wrap – or get me a wrap? chicken caesar ta love
“I bottle up emotions, I switch off,” says Cam. “It’s a shield.” He says this all comes from good old-fashioned childhood trauma: his mum leaving and his dad getting sick, and him having to step into being the man of the house and present a strong front.
It’s a classic communication bungle: when Cam says he didn’t feel an “emotional connection”, he didn’t mean what Sam thought he meant. It doesn’t mean that he’s not feeling things, and so the accusation that he was only having a one-night stand hurt his feelings. Wow! Look at that progress!
“Just because you don’t show hurt doesn’t mean you’re not hurt. Just because you’re not emotional doesn’t mean you don’t have emotions. I do have emotions,” says Cam, and phew, that is reassuring.
thumbs have feelings too
Anyway this is starting to seem too much like actual therapy so let’s go look at Belinda and Patrick attempting the hotness leaderboard activity. Because they are precious little angels they rate each other number one.
this sea witch likes that which she sees
Sucked in, MAFS producers! These two are too pure for you!
Oh god they’re making Coco and Sam do it too. Heaven preserve us.
“I just think to a girl, when a male doesn’t find them attractive, it hurts them,” says Sam, the cultural anthropologist. “For women, they’re a lot more hormonal and all that sort of stuff, so definitely it stings them a lot more than a male.” My eyebrows have disappeared into my hairline.
pictured: the epitome of hormonal balance
He rates Alana #1, saying she’s small and spunky and has curves. Coco rates Jake the Himbo #1, which is objectively correct. Now they need to place each other, and obviously Sam is “going to be honest” and place Coco squarely at number four. “Any surprises?” he says, which is both very brave and very stupid as Coco is looking ready to disintegrate him.
want to see me kill a man with nothing but a resistance band
Instead, she puts him fourth-to-last. Suck shit Marshall Mathers IV. He’s so cut about it, particularly that she rated Russell hotter than him. “I just think he’s like the most beautiful angel,” she shrugs, and girl, I couldn’t agree more.
“Coco put me bottom four,” Sam huffs to camera. “I think that’s a little bit childish.” Oh??????? What’s this??????? Don’t your superior hormone levels prevent you from feeling STUNG about your APPEARANCE, my dudely friend????????
To Coco, he’s all like Well that’s your decision and you’ve made it and that’s fine and I think it’s fine and good that you’ve made the decision that is yours to make.
just two people who are completely good and fine
“I would have put him last if I was being honest,” says Coco to camera. Could you imagine the tantrum that would have ensued if she did THAT.
Back in the other temple of wife-ranking misery, Bryce is being agitated around a banana and Melissa is saying precisely nothing.
yummy, regret
Melissa lets Bryce dig himself all the way down to the water table as he gabbles on about honesty and how other blokes would have put their wives first because they’d lie to keep the peace and it’s not like that with them, is it babe? Apparently she’s willing to just… put the whole thing at the back of her mind and attempt to move on. Seems healthy! Can’t see that coming back to bite anyone!
After the little John Aiken sesh, Cam is trying to decide whether he’s going to commit to the experiment and therefore Samantha (and her kids!) or if he should bail. They sit down together in their Kmart homewares showroom and he says he wants to give things another go. Sam seems profoundly relieved and makes a cute joke about how maybe they can go to the next dinner party TOGETHER. Cam, in a moment of actual low-drama humanity, has a giggle.
social distancing measures: lifted
Upstairs, tensions are simmering with Coco and Sam. She just wants to drink her pink Berocca in peace, but he’s got something he wants to “get off his chest”. Oh, goooood.
fizzy good make feel nice
For someone who reckons getting upset over not being considered attractive is a girl’s game, Sam sure seems to be getting pretty upset over not being considered attractive! Especially being considered less attractive than Rusty?!
my mum says I’m handsome
“I thought it was a little bit of a cheap shot, I’m just being honest again,” he says.
“Why am I not allowed to have my opinions on what I find attractive?” says Coco. “I don’t understand how you can sit there and you can make all of the comments that you’ve made about me, you don’t like my body, you don’t like my shape, you find Alana attractive, and then have a dig at me about putting you in the bottom four.”
“I’m not even making a big deal out of this,” he baldly lies. “We’re just having a conversation.”
“You’re allowed to literally rip on me for the last two weeks – I have not said one thing negatively about you,” she says. “I have never ripped about your personality, I have never ripped about the things you say to me, I have never, ever said anything about your physical appearance. ”
He’s like, If you can honestly say that you think that’s where I should go on the lineup, then I’ll say that’s cool. She’s like, Honestly, that’s where I think you go. He says, Cool, in the world’s tiniest voice. Omg! I remember this scene from Fleabag!
There’s a tense pause. Then: “Do you not like my physical appearance?” asks Sam, and chuckles like Ted Danson in The Good Place. I’m genuinely unnerved.
Coco says it’s literally the angriest she’s ever gotten, ever. She packs a cute little sports bag and leaves. Sam does the cattiest wine sip I’ve ever seen.
little bitch juice, yum yum
And that’s the end of that episode! What chaos will next ep wreak on our undeserving couples? Heavy hints in the preview that Coco and Cameron are going to end up being naughty with one another, which is deeply unsurprising and exactly what you get when you dump a bunch of drama-fuelled emotional toddlers in the same apartment block. See you then!
