A boozy MAFS dinner party has ended in tears and tantrums — and left the experts gasping in shock.
A boozy MAFS dinner party has ended in tears and tantrums — and left the experts gasping in shock.
OPINION:
A Married At First Sight husband flips the tables on his wife at Monday night’s boozy dinner party when the mystery of his secret girlfriend is investigated by the show’s high-powered businesswoman, who finds a string of discrepancies after combing through the facts of the scandal like a profit and loss report for one of her kajillion-dollar conglomerates.
It culminates in an episode of rehashed drama that’s about as satisfying as the lukewarm leftovers the contestants are being served. Thank god the horny mum is here to ask the kids uncomfortable questions about their sex lives.
It’s the final day of the honeymoons and everyone packs up to head home for the first big dinner party. In Fiji, horny mum Melissa is still reeling from her husband’s sex lie.
“There’s a few things I’d like to get off my chest,” she says, without any hint of sexual innuendo.
Everything was going great until Josh lied to Australia and told us he hadn’t slept with Melissa when, in fact, he had. In an attempt to defend himself, he quotes that old lady from Titanic and says it has been 84 years since he has talked about sex. Or something like that.
“It’s never been something that I’ve talked about in 40 years,” he shakes his head.
Sorry Josh, but there’s no such thing as privacy on MAFS. You belong to us now. By the time you leave this show, all your intimate details will be archived on the internet for your great-grandchildren to Google.
Oh, c’mon, Josh. When you’re 80, it’ll be beautiful to look back at the time you lied about having sex on national TV.
In an attempt to find some common ground with her husband, Melissa offers her own lie.
“I’m quite a private person myself,” she tries to sympathise.
Girl, we’ve heard you talk ad nauseam about Thor’s penis. C’mon now.
A horny wallflower.
All the couples pack their belongings and we witness the most disturbing thing we’ve ever seen on this show: dirty sneakers chucked among clothing and underwear in the main compartment of a suitcase. People who don’t wrap their shoes in plastic bags and store them in the separate lid compartment shouldn’t be allowed to date.
This is what the inside of a MAFS contestant’s head looks like.
Back in Sydney, the rehashing truly begins. It starts while all our couples are getting dressed for the cocktail party. Producers make Jesse shush Claire again. Then they make Harrison and Bronte dredge up the fight about which one of them is a dud root.
And then at the cocktail party, Bronte decides to give everyone a play-by-play of how her best friend tried to sabotage her wedding by spreading a rumour that Harrison has a secret girlfriend.
What do you mean, Melinda? It’s like God Of Thunder is in the room with us!
Josh Hemsworth.
By the time Foghorn Claire stomps in by herself, she’s raring to rehash. The girls immediately gather around her and she bravely shares with them her harrowing experience of being shushed.
“It started, I guess, at the airport going to our honeymoon,” she sniffs. “We were in the bookshop and we were, like, having such a laugh.”
She says they were mocking book titles when, suddenly, everything turned and her life changed irrevocably.
“And then he’s like, ‘Can you shush? You’re really loud.”
We cut to the experts, and they’re more shocked than they were when that farmer dunked his wife’s toothbrush in the toilet.
Meanwhile, producers are making Jesse’s Uber do laps of the block to ensure he’s late, thus allowing Claire enough time to turn the group against him.
“In the back of everyone’s minds, they’re gonna be like, ‘He’s a jerk, he’s done something wrong’,” Jesse sighs.
Oh, Jess. You’re wrong. It’s not at the back of our minds — it’s at the total forefront.
By the time he arrives, dinner is being served and he takes a seat next to his estranged wife. They completely ignore each other – which is good for us, because we cannot bear to sit through that damn shushing story agai-
“When we were in the airport, about to jump on the plane, we were in a bookstore and making jokes about the books,” Jesse starts rehashing the argument again.
“And I noticed that Claire, as far as I’m concerned, was talking pretty loudly. And I said-”
“Shush,” Claire cuts him off, to finish the story. “Can you shush.”
Everyone is shocked. It’s like the C-word scandal of 2019 all over again.
To be fair, Bronte is never not shocked.
But Jesse’s still convinced he can win back the crowd.
“Then we went on to the plane and we were having a great conversation but I just knew the row in front, the row behind … and probably two rows in front and the second row behind … there is no way they could not hear what Claire was saying. She is a loud person.” Then he turns to his wife and shrugs. “I’m not attacking you.”
Yeah, Claire – not everything’s an attack. Learn to take a little constructive criticism and dial the volume down to a dull roar.
It’s astounding that grown adults would behave like this on a TV show. Thank goodness high-powered businesswoman Melinda is here to bring some class. She changes the topic of conversation to something a little lighter: how she’s not attracted to her husband Layton, who’s sitting directly next to her.
The horny mum Melissa pipes up with some unprovoked sex advice for our mogul.
“From an outside opinion: you’re beautiful, he’s handsome — I don’t get it. I don’t understand,” Melissa comments.
Melinda stares at Melissa with a blank face and tries her hardest not to scream a cliche businesswoman insult. Something like, “I could buy and sell you 10 times over, faster than you could make an inappropriate sexual innuendo!”
‘I eat spreadsheets for breakfast!’
“I don’t have the physical attraction,” she reiterates to horny mum Melissa.
But Melissa doesn’t listen. She has sex advice and she’s doling it out, whether Melinda wants it or not.
“Intimacy is huge for me,” Melissa begins, and OH GOD WE KNOW. “Maybe let a few walls down … just be open. Intimacy is huge. And it makes people grow fonder. BUT, you’re gonna have to navigate that one on your own timewatch – and there is no timewatch. Just because Betty would do it on the first night with him and Beryl doesn’t — it doesn’t matter.”
Wow. Yeah. Timewatches, that’s exactly right. That advice is really philosophical, thank you Melissa. Also, Beryl sounds totally frigid.
It’s around now Melinda’s looking for any excuse to escape Melissa’s sex-ed class, so she decides to desperately insert herself into Harrison’s drama with the alleged secret girlfriend. In front of everyone, she asks Bronte if there were text messages confirming the rumour.
“I haven’t seen them. He deleted everything,” Bronte explains, smiling at her husband, whom she still believes is innocent.
Harrison says, after the wedding, he messaged that no-good troublemaking girl who claims to be his secret lover and told her to never contact him ever again. Then he deleted her number and threw his phone in the sea because he’s a loyal husband who would never betray his wife.
Melinda raises an eyebrow. “He’s openly admitted that, one week prior to coming in here, he was sleeping with someone. It just doesn’t make sense. I think I believe Bronte’s friend.”
“I just want you to show me that you’re in this as much as I am,” he shrugs innocently. “I just want you to show me that you want this.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the Married At First Sight gaslight has been officially ignited for the year.
Bronte basks in the glow of her gaslighter.
Down in the CCTV monitoring dungeon, the experts lose it.
“He’s flipped it!” Mel Schilling screams. “He’s flipped the script!”
Yeah, you three did this.
A lightbulb flicks on in Bronte’s head. Making this marriage work had become so important to her that she was willing to just believe anything. But now the truth is blaring all around her and it’s impossible to ignore — just like Foghorn Claire’s voice.
MAFS Australia is available to stream first on ThreeNow or on Three on Sunday at 7pm and Mon to Weds at 7.30pm.
