Dean and Davina's dalliance dropped jaws on MAFS. Video/Three
What was meant to be the final freeing step in a secret affair has ended in tragedy for Married At First Sight's cheating contestants as Dean publicly exposes his fling with Davina before ditching her in favour of his wife.
For the second consecutive week, Tracey is whacked in the face with a revelation that leaves her screaming, "I'm blindsided!". Only, her Kylie Jenner lips slightly muffle the pronunciation so it sounds more like, "I'm blime-fibe-ed!"
And we all know exactly how she feels. Love is an untamed beast and she can buck you at any second. Show me one person who wasn't blime-fibe-ed this week when Jennifer Aniston broke up with that Canadian prime minister Justin Theroux. You just can't predict these things.
Let's be honest, the Dean-Tracey-Davina-Ryan mess is the only reason we tune in to Sunday night's episode.
We open to dimly-lit scenes in the bedroom of Dean and Tracey. Please note: Tracey has splayed her body down the centre of the bed while Dean balances his body on the edge of the mattress. After tolerating endless nights of this kind of selfish behaviour, I'd cheat too.
As the soft morning light begins to flicker in and they lay half-awake, we notice the sheets look rather passionately entangled.
But how could that be? This week, Dean imposed a Turnbull-style bonk ban for his marriage and, last night, he took a giant leap forward in his affair with Davina at the dinner party.
"At the dinner party ... Tracey and I had fun. And then after, we both had a couple of drinks," Dean whispers to us. "Last night, one thing led to another and we were intimate. And it was much more than just sex. For the first time, really, it was intense. I hate to say it, maybe the experts are kinda onto something. She's actually a really cool girl and maybe there's something there."
We cut to the lounge room where Tracey is showing off a radiant post-sex glow.
Maybe she's born with it.
"Going into tonight, I think I've got nothing to worry about ... We're in a good place," Tracey tells us. Oh Trace, you just foreshadowed your own drama.
Meanwhile, Dean is grappling with what he should do. Last night, he hatched a plan with Davina that would see them both choose to leave their partners at the commitment ceremony. But now these sudden feelings for Tracey have derailed that scheme.
"Either way I'm gonna be the bad guy," he says, somehow unaware he already is.
We all take individual Ubers to the commitment ceremony because maxi taxis are for losers, and, for the thirteenth episode in a row, Ashley mirrors my own attitude to relationships back to me.
'Why am I still trying?'
Gab blows Nasser's cover as a sex god and tells everyone that, despite his constant implications they've banged, they haven't even come close. She says Nasser hasn't shown her any sexual attraction. If Nasser didn't follow such a strict skincare routine, he may look more shocked and embarrassed than he does.
Maybe she's also born with it.
For some reason, the men on this show aren't great at sex. It's also a problem for Blair and Sean, Justin and Carly and the elderly couples.
When Justin and Carly are invited up to the couch, it's basically just 10 minutes of Carly screaming, "YOU WON'T EVEN TOUCH ME!" while Justin sits far away from her and pats her on the back with a broom handle.
'There, there.'
While we listen to these clowns crap on, Davina gets super bored and sits back picking her fingernails, biding her time until the moment comes for her to destroy several lives.
'Can I crush Tracey's heart yet?'
When it comes time for Jo to hit the couch, she decides she's going to let loose and have a go at everyone around her. She's rehearsed what she wants to say all morning while straightening her bob in the bathroom mirror and she has some cutting lines she can't wait to throw at both Sean and John Aiken. She adopts the same no-nonsense attitude of every mum I ever had to serve during my years working at a Just Jeans.
Jo has many questions. But mainly, she wants to know why the F she was paired with this boob:
'Margh.'
Over three weeks, Sean has refused to talk to Jo and requested to live in a separate building to her. And she's finally taken the brutal hint. Unable to fight anymore, she realises life alone on her recliner-couch drinking beer is more than enough. In fact, it's aspirational. So they dissolve their marriage.
At last, Dean and Tracey are invited up and I'm so excited I pull out a stadium-quality confetti gun from behind my couch and fire it at the television.
The experts know about the mess Dean and Davina have created but they have to pretend like they don't. So they ask innocent questions to inflame the drama. They're aware of the self-imposed bonk ban and ask Dean and Tracey if they've started having sex again.
Dean reveals the details of their overnight romp and Tracey shows off her smug post-sex glow just in case we didn't see it earlier.
I have the same glow after a facial.
Immediately, we cut to Davina. She can't believe the man she wants to steal had the gall to sleep with his wife.
"There's something I need to tell Tracey that's related to all this. I need to come clean with something," he begins.
He tells the group he and Davina caught up for an innocent drink. The finer details of the date are skimmed over. There's no mention of the thigh touching, the groping, the neck nuzzling.
"Davina told me that she's kinda into me and, if things didn't work out with you and I, maybe there's something there," he tells Tracey, almost removing himself from the affair.
Sitting metres away, Davina listens as the man she was prepared to throw everything away for weakly twists the facts. This wasn't the plan. They were both supposed to leave their partners tonight and become Australia's most hated couple. If Dean can go rogue, so can she.
"Can I cut in?" Davina says. "This is before I [could] see you for who you are now."
She begins to tell everyone the plan they agreed on last night but Dean cuts her off. He denies everything. But Davina shouts over him and reveals their scheme to dump their spouses and continue in this exquisite competition together, as a couple.
"How could you do that to Tracey? You made love to her last night!" she yells.
At this point, emotions are running high and we can barely keep up with the amount of dramatic revelations that are spilling out.
My emotional journey throughout this whole blow-up can be told through these facial expressions provided by Mel Schilling:
'I'm honestly not judging you this is just my face.'
"I'm too old for this shit! Seriously. I'm just … too old," Tracey says, touching her face to check if the stress of this situation has caused any wrinkles she should urgently tend to.
"Our attraction is, I feel, a little bit more of a superficial thing," a stone-faced Dean tells Davina. And in one final slap down, he informs her: "You know what? Last night, chatting with you, it made me really appreciate what I have with Tracey."
It's not fair and Davina can't believe it. It's like Instagram just suspended her account because one stupid troll reported a particularly spicy butt pic as inappropriate.
"I got stitched up. I got really stitched up," she cries to us.
At this point, the village starts going wild and they attempt to overthrow the experts.
"He's a playa!" the lady with the Geri Halliwell hair yells.
"He's played you and he played her!" the overly-tanned man who loves Olay face cream screams.
As Dean and Tracey are shuffled into a separate room to discuss whether they'll remain in the experiment, Davina and Ryan are summoned to the couch.
Grilled by the experts, Davina tries to get sympathy but ruins it when she says something usually only uttered by contestants on Big Brother and Survivor.
"At the end of the day, I'm here for me," she says bluntly.
Davina holds up her card with the word "leave" scribbled on it. It was meant to be the final step of a dark plan that would free her into a life of love and happiness. But it has only trapped her.
Ryan's card reveals his decision to stay. They'll remain in the competition for another week. Whether their storyline will involve lasering off their new matching tattoos remains to be seen.
As Tracey and Dean return to the couch, everyone is expecting them to leave. Their relationship is too much of a mess to repair. But that wouldn't be fun for us. So they stay.
"I can't deny what I feel," Tracey says as we all look at her confused. We don't understand Tracey's decision. But we're not going to ask questions.
What she has with Dean isn't a relationship. It's a situation-ship. That's a term gifted to me by a rapper-slash-actor from Atlanta whom I had a five day romance with last year when he was in town playing a superhero no-one has heard of at a Comic-Con convention. It's also the name of his debut single that's available nowhere.
Upon his return to Atlanta, he started messaging me saying he wanted to move to Australia so we could be together. His WhatsApp messages went un-replied.
But that's the risk you take in a situation-ship. There are no promises. Only hope. Just ask Tracey.
