Mike serves Heidi a crap sandwich on Married At First Sight.
Mike serves Heidi a crap sandwich on Married At First Sight.
Married At First Sight's arrogant husband has force-fed his wife a crap sandwich during their vow renewal ceremony and recited a detailed list of gripes before surprising us all by trapping her in the union.
"This is actually just exhausting and I've had enough," Heidi sighs to us in the opening scenes on Tuesday night and it's exactly what we've been muttering about this show for the past five weeks to anyone who'll listen.
Mike also has some thoughts.
"This is hard work," he confides in us. We say the same thing when we find out tonight's entire episode is dedicated to Mike and Heidi's vow renewal ceremony.
Wowsers. A whole episode dedicated to Mike and Heidi — a couple so irritating we've barely mentioned them in any recap for the two month duration of the series. What a punishment. What could they possibly do to warrant their own episode? Heidi probably tells her government housing story again.
As they pack up their apartment to spend a week apart, neither of them want to take responsibility for the unopened jumbo pack of Lifestyle Ultra Thin condoms that we find in the bathroom cabinet.
Ultra thin and ultra unnecessary.
Heidi puts on her finest Piping Hot boardshorts and wheels away all her emotional baggage to sift through it and make an informed decision.
When you require both checked and carry-on luggage for all your emotional baggage.
Over the course of the week, we just sit around Mike and Heidi's separate sad, single-person living rooms watching flashback footage of all the times their relationship sucked — so basically all the times Mike got mad at Heidi for telling her boring government housing story.
Mike's stressed. He becomes so overwhelmed he lets out a sigh and runs his hands through his tattooed hair.
Your tattooed hair is very luscious today.
"It's just not gonna work. She doesn't want what I got. I hate saying goodbye. This is why I'm single at 44," he weeps. We agree with him and then leave to go check on Heidi.
Up on the Sunshine Coast, Heidi can't stop thinking of all the cons attached to her relationship. She forces herself to come up with at least two pros about Mike.
"If he sees rubbish on the ground, he'll pick it up. And he pats dogs," she says, squinting as she racks her brain.
These two hastily recalled positives have made her rethink everything. Maybe she does love Mike. They could create a beautiful life together — walking around, picking up rubbish and patting dogs and not doing much else because literally everything else they do causes a fight.
Heidi is needy. Her relationship is tumultuous and toxic. Still, if Mike abandoned her and took the chaos with him, she wouldn't know what to do. She lives for the drama.
"For him to walk away and say no … It would destroy me," she sobs, even though they literally hate each other.
Because this is the final vow renewal, there is no more money in the budget for a fancy destination ceremony. They literally just drop him off at some swampland on the side of the highway and tell him to walk until he finds a dry-ish clearing.
There'll probably be a bitchy lizard who can heckle the ceremony for us.
When he finally stumbles into a clearing, Heidi is waiting. She looks down at her note cards and begins reciting a definitive history of how she came to be here in this exact moment — beginning with her government housing story.
'You probably don't know this but ...'
Because Heidi is needy and loves the drama, she chooses to stay. And now it's Mike's turn. We want him to say he's hitting the bricks just so we have something mildly interesting to talk about around the office ZipTap tomorrow morning.
At first it seems like he's gonna leave because producers have done that thing where they write his vows like a crap sandwich.
The crap sandwich is the basic formula for the Married At First Sight vow renewal. Here's a basic template: "When I first met you, my heart skipped a beat HOWEVER you're annoying and I can't stand you BUUUUT I have no other options so I guess I love you."
So I guess it's your typical wedding vows. The crap sandwich is designed to take you on a journey. But during the middle bit of Mike's crap sandwich — otherwise known as the crap part of the crap sandwich — he lays it on a little thick. He just starts endlessly listing all the irritating things Heidi has done and all the ways she has wronged him.
"I wanted to be the best person I could be for you but I struggled to make you happy. You told the experts I was inconsiderate," he informs her. "You told me you didn't trust me. And that hurt a lot. It was a difficult moment for me.
At the last dinner party, I was left guessing as to our future. Several times during that night I hoped you might support me."
Wow, it's really brave of you to share your suffering at this inappropriate time, thank you Michael.
"Often there was only glimpses of the radiant Heidi I loved so much … I am concerned that only glimpses are not enough to sustain me," he says coldly, before suddenly moving to the next stage of the sandwich.
"Yet neither of us were willing to walk away. Heidi, forgive me. I can't walk away. Heidi, I love you," he declares, choking back tears.
Heidi's so relieved Mike stayed that she immediately forgets about the crap sandwich that has been slammed in her face.
"I love you so much," she gushes, launching in to kiss him.
