After voluntarily calculating his total number of hook-ups and revealing the three-digit figure, one sex-crazed Married At First Sight husband storms off Tuesday's show in a moment so dramatic it overshadows the annual Hot Or Not list.
To say we're disappointed is an understatement. We live for the annual Hot Or Not list. It's our version of Time magazine's most influential people. It should be given room to breathe with a dedicated episode.
Yes, forcing the contestants to rank each other from hottest to nottest is despicable. It's toxic and completely unhealthy. And if this were the early 2000s, we the viewers would all get to SMS in our own votes to determine the nation's Hot Or Not list — and then the bottom three would get eliminated for no reason.
It's Confession Week! This is our favourite time of the Married At First Sight season. A whole seven days is dedicated to making the contestants hurt each other's feelings with brutal truths. Confession Week is The Honesty Box's bitchier cousin.
The first task involves each contestant writing a personal letter to their partner that offers a glimpse into their soul.
"I love sex," Andrew recites his letter to wife Holly. "I love exploring sex and I love celebrating sex. I'm a very sexual person and have had roughly 350 sexual partners in the past."
That list is longer than a Chemist Warehouse receipt. We have questions. So does Holly.
"So … 350 …" she shakes her head as she tries to do the calculations. "Do you … keep a list? Or is it a … mental note?"
Andrew sits back in his chair and shrugs. "Well, I've been single for seven years of my life and there's 52 weeks in a year. Sexual partner every year for seven years. That gives you about 350 … seven (multiplied by) five — that's how I roughly came to that number."
Mmmhmm. Mhhmm. Photo / Supplied
"Is that … one a month?" she clarifies.
Andrew widens his eyes and slows down his Texan drawl to help clear up the confusion. "That would be one a week."
This is all very interesting information. We're just wondering why he's so keen to share this fun fact right now.
"To be honest, in a roundabout way, you would benefit from my experience in the bedroom," he informs his wife. "Slide it up a little and get more heat in the bedroom and have some passion! Tex wants that!"
It's a nice catchphrase he's coined for himself, but Tex Wants Sex would've been a bit snappier. Tex Wants Sex! See? It rhymes. People love rhymes. Rhyming slogans will work better on the T-shirts we hope Nine's publicity department start handing out in shopping centres.
This is Tex. Tex wants sex. Photo / Supplied
"There are some things off limits," he adds about his bedroom antics. "No pegging."
OK, nix Tex Wants Sex. We've found a new slogan for the T-shirts.
Holly's horrified. "I don't know what that is," she says of pegging. "I'll have to Google."
But before she can fall down a pegging rabbit hole on the internet, she has to read her letter to Andrew. It's an emotional and raw reflection on her desire to have a baby.
When she's finished reading the note, Andrew looks at her with understanding eyes and says he supports her. But once she leaves the room, he acts like she just tried to peg him.
"I have a daughter already. And I can sense that there's an urgency with Holly to have a child. I feel like it's almost too much pressure on me," he rushes to tell us. "We're still getting to know each other and I'm just not there yet with her … I'm just not sure that's what I want."
And we get it. The slogan is Tex Wants Sex — not Tex Wants Baby.
Down the hall, Samantha and Al are handed an envelope full of their co-stars' head shots and told to rank them in order of hottest to nottest.
"I'll start with least attractive," Al says. "Holly, I'll put last because she's just too old for me — like a mum. She looks like a mum."
Strangely enough, it's this exact quality that propels him to place Selin in the number one spot.
"The MILF is first," he bites his bottom lip. "When I heard she's got kids, I was like, Ooooh."
We expect a lot of things from our MAFS contestants but consistency is not one of them.
For Samantha, Mitch is placed down the bottom of the list while Tex Wants Sex and Princess Anthony take out the number one and two spots. She places her husband at number three-ish and, as payback, he places her in first place — purely to make her feel guilty. Because that's what marriage is all about.
We're just glad that the Hot Or Not challenge is done behind everyone's backs, otherwise it'd be extremely hurtful.
Can't wait for the Hot Or Not ranking system to find its way into school yards across Australia this week. Photo / Supplied
Not all the couples are forced into curating their Hot Or Not lists tonight. Why? Because the experts have found a better way to hurt their feelings.
Tamara's Married At First Sight audition tape is played for her husband Brent. It's rough- and-ready footage — shot on an iPhone while Tamara sits in the front seat of a vehicle. We assume she'd pulled up in the car park of a Westfield and that the clip was filmed just moments after she lashed out at a Myer sales assistant.
"I think I have a lot of confidence in myself and I do think that I'm a catch," she says in the video before detailing how her friends would describe her.
" … That I'm a bitch — probably because of my honesty. I'm really fussy now with what I want. I definitely don't wanna be with someone who doesn't have a good career or has no money. If a guy wears fake designer clothes. If they drive a really ugly car. And don't have a good job or money. Like, I'm just so not interested."
For Tamara's Hot Or Not list, instead of ranking the other husbands, can producers please just make her rank their cars?
'And he can't work in retail.' Photo / Supplied
Any thoughts, Brent?
"That's a terrible thing to watch — coming out of someone's mouth. Drives a shit car? Jeez, that's horrible."
Yes … but … there were also some positive things in the video. Like … the car park lighting. Anyway, we cross our fingers and pray Brent drives a used Yaris, just so we can see Tamara's face.
"He came out of bed and slept on the couch," a distressed Holly whispers to us. "He's distanced himself."
He really has. Producers keep showing cutaway shots of him on his computer. Who knows what he's Googling. Anything but pegging, that's for sure.
A no pegging zone. Photo / Supplied
"I've been thinking a lot after she read her letter to me," Andrew eventually tells us. "It made me feel anxious. I know she wants a child — immediately. It's urgent for her. And it's put a lot of pressure on me — urgency is not something I'm ready to deal with. I don't wanna give her the wrong impression so I am trying to put distance between us and let her know in a certain way that I'm kinda pushed back a bit."
Well, that's a very mature approach. It's definitely not something you should have a gentle conversation with her about. Better to just ignore her completely. She'll get the hint.
But Holly doesn't get the hint. She just pushes and pushes until she has him … pegged. He explains to her that his decision to completely freeze her out was done out of kindness.
"It's more of me being empathetic towards your situation and I wouldn't wanna waste your time. I feel like, I'm not the one," he says … sorta breaking up with her?
It's brutal. Holly allowed herself to be vulnerable with her husband by revealing her one true wish and he has just discarded her for it. There's only one way she can get payback: By ranking him as number two-and-a-half on her Hot Or Not list.
All married couples should do this task weekly. Photo / Supplied
But dropping Andrew down the list doesn't hurt him the way she hopes it would.
"When you say to me the words, 'I don't wanna waste your time', it means, 'You're out!'" she sobs.
"Holly, I'm trying to have a conversation!" he hits back.
They spend the next three minutes yelling over each other about the technical criteria required for an interaction to be classed as a conversation.
"I can't even finish a bloody sentence!" she yells across the dining table.
Tonight's tears can't be blamed on the annual Hot Or Not list. Photo / Supplied
Tex did not come here for this. Tex came for sex.
"I'm going home. I'm done," he storms out into the hallway and bashes the silver buttons on the elevator. "I can't deal with it. I'm done. I'm going home to my daughter. That is not something I wanna deal with. Send my stuff to me."
Holly doesn't get to finish her sentence. And she probably never will.
