On the first night of the MAFS 2023 reunion, allegations of a sexting scandal between a bride and groom erupt.
OPINION:
An X-rated cameo rocks the boozy Married At First Sight dinner party reunion on Sunday night and leaves us all wishing Duncan would use his alleged mask to cover Cameron’s private parts.
It’s the penultimate episode of Channel 9′s unflinching docuseries about extreme natural disasters. This means one thing: all the remaining crates of booze are force-fed to the freaks.
Chaos ensues in five, four, three, two ...
The reunion dinner party marches all this year’s contestants back into the abandoned warehouse one last time to settle the score on festering grudges. We’ve got Alyssa and her imagined versions of events. Then there’s Bronte, whose fury still burns as bright as Harrison’s gaslight. Oh, and the horny mum! Despite being shamed on national TV for ambushing her husband with sex, her horniness has not dulled.
“Mamma bear is back in da house! Woo-hoo!” she hollers while shimmying her boobs.
The countdown is on for her to make a weird sex pun that doesn’t quite make sense.
James Weir recaps: Read all the recaps and other MAFS stories here.
The freaks arrive one by one in the sponsorship Suzuki Vitaras and all hell breaks loose within minutes.
“I heard Tayla and Cam have been sexting and I think it started during the experiment,” Lyndall whispers to the others about her ex-husband.
“Sending NUDES?!” Jesse shrieks, clutching his pearls.
Only at a MAFS dinner party will a sexting scandal be unzipped before the entrees are served.
Of course, this alleged affair doesn’t come as a great surprise to us. Producers did some heavy-handed foreshadowing throughout the series and it’s around now they start playing sepia-toned flashbacks to Cam and Tayla flirting. It’s kinda like at the end of a really bad crime movie when the villain starts listing all the ways they pulled off their evil plan.
All this talk of sexting exes is put on hold when Alyssa arrives. Since Duncan dumped her at the final vows, she has learned a new phrase and she’s not afraid to use it.
“I feel like he was wearing a mask the entire time,” she seethes about her ex. “I just want him to take off that mask.”
At the cocktail party, she gathers the other wives and continues to talk about masks.
“I don’t even know who Duncan is. I honestly think he was, like, wearing a mask,” she shakes her head.
But Lyndall couldn’t care less about Alyssa’s attempts to unmask Duncan. After all, she’s on her own mission to unmask Cam and Tayla. First, she needs to nab Tayla’s ex-husband Hugo and break the news to him. Of course, she handles it with great sensitivit-
“Cam has been sexting Tayla,” she blurts to him. “And it started in the experiment!”
On cue, Tayla bursts in. She hitched a ride from Tasmania to the mainland on the back of a salmon trawler, so she’s looking fresh and windswept.
When Cam arrived at the cocktail party, he brutally snubbed his ex-wife Lyndall. But when Tay strides in? He’s the first in line to greet her. Lyndall has to use all her power not to yank his ponytail.
Now all the freaks have arrived, producers usher them into the dining room. Hopefully we can all put the drama aside and just have a civilised dinner togeth-
“WE HEARD ABOUT THE SEXTS!” Melinda and Layton gleefully declare to the table, with the same upbeat energy a couple might use to announce a pregnancy.
Cam tries to give an explanation that’s as smooth as his luscious hair.
“After the final vows, I went back home and was having a bit of friendly banter with Tayla,” he shrugs. “It was just a back-and-forth text. Nothing serious. Just a friendly chat. I’m a friendly person. So, if ya call that sexting, then, I’m f***in’ sorry, I’ve ‘sexted’.”
But Lyndall’s not letting her ex get away with it that easily. You can’t send sexts inside Trash Tower and expect them to remain secret.
“I know that you were talking before our final vows,” she says. “You had each other’s numbers. I saw you texting her.”
She says Cam even made jokes about having a threesome with Tayla.
“I mean, I’d be keen,” Tayla shrugs.
She’s excited to be a main character again. And with no one believing Cam, it’s up to her to ease tensions.
“Um … we’re friends,” she insists, playing down any suggestion of risque behaviour.
Everyone backs down a little. And then...
“I saw his c**k!” she exclaims.
Everyone gasps.
“F***!” Cam growls.
Birds gotta fly. Fish gotta swim. And Tay gotta Tay.
“Guys! It was FUNNY!” she says of Cam’s penis.
What was so comical about the doodle? Did Cam draw a face on it and make it talk on the FaceTime call, like a rude puppet? Before she can elaborate, Bronte jumps in to rouse on her as if Tayla’s a child playing with her food at a nice restaurant.
“It’s disgusting,” Bronte snaps. “Have some f***in’ respect.”
Tayla crosses her arms, slumps in her chair and humphs. “It’s not like I’m back-stabbing a friend — I don’t know her.”
Yeah! She’s barely met Lyndorp … Or whatever her name is.
Tayla continues to lie to the group and then runs over to producers to jovially confess her sins.
“Yes, I saw his willy. Who cares? We FaceTime every day,” she cackles.
It’s around now Cam starts to realise he’s losing everyone’s trust. There’s only one thing left to do: rejig his story. He says he was out at a nightclub and somehow found himself on a FaceTime call with Tayla … while naked.
“Um. I ended up on a night out … in a nightclub … and we FaceTimed and … I’ve got all my clothes off … in a nightclub. Yeah,” he states. “I don’t see what the f***in’ issue is. I was naked in a nightclub in front of every other man and his dog.”
Um … okay. But did the dogs give their consent?
Meanwhile, Harrison has brought receipts to expose Bronte. They’re screenshots of text messages and he has carefully reproduced copies of them on a home printer. He holds up a piece of paper that looks like it has a bite mark in it. We didn’t care about this crap five weeks ago and we certainly don’t care about it now. Harrison and his receipts can go on a trip through the paper shredder.
Down the other end of the table, Alyssa is determined to make this whole evening about her. It’s clear that, since she was dumped, she has spent every day using her son’s Action Man figurine as a makeshift Duncan voodoo doll. And tonight, her nutbaggery reaches new heights. She thinks Australia will hoist her up on its shoulders and celebrate her for being a strong independent woman. We ... do not. Things ramp up when she starts throwing around the word “bro”. We just know she’s only seconds away from screaming about masks again.
“You broke MY heart!” she whips her napkin down on the table and shoots to her feet. “You f***ing dumped me, Duncan! You led me on this entire time knowing that I sacrificed leaving my son for you! I sacrificed everything for you! You made me believe that there was a future for us!”
Duncan continues to be a prince. “I wished there was a future for us,” he says.
“No you don’t!” she screams.
“No. I … DID,” he corrects her, making clear he was talking in past tense.
Still, she’s not listening. “No you don’t!”
“No, I don’t NOW,” he emphasises.
It’s funny. More funny than Cam’s penis.
Alyssa’s dragged outside by the horny mum and that chick who’s always being gaslit. But she’s not done.
“No! I don’t want him to f***ing run the narrative!” she sprints back inside to ensure the narrative stays true to her own unique brand of fiction.
Here we go. In five, four, three, two …
“Take off the mask!” she wails. “You wear this mask! Duncan, I don’t even know who you are. Honestly. I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE. BE WHO YOU ARE!”
Duncan winces. “I knew coming into this dinner party, Alyssa would be -”
A complete nutbag?
“... Pretty upset,” he finishes his sentence.
Alyssa’s evaluation of the evening?
“I dodged a bullet,” she sniffs, holding her head high.
Uh-huh. If you dodged a bullet, then Duncan dodged a complete spray of ‘em in a midnight drive-by.
MAFS Australia is available to stream first on ThreeNow or on Three Sunday 7pm and Mon to Weds 7.30pm.
Ebony Lamb performs Successful Feelings. Made with funding from NZ On Air. Video / Locals Only