Why we've decided to no longer endure Married at First Sight

you see, there's heterosexual nonsense and then there's harmful nonsense

So, Married at First Sight is pitched as an “experiment” - that’s the way the experts talk about it, it’s the way they justify this kind of trite simplification of marriage, this weird torture that they put people through for the edification and entertainment of the Australian public.

In a similar way, our decision to recap this series was also an experiment. Neither of us have ever watched Married at First Sight before, and neither of us particularly wanted to. But we’ve been Bachelor and Bachelorette recappers for a long time, with many of you, our wonderful audience, following our recaps of those shows since our early days on Junkee. The comparison between the two shows is obvious - both dating reality TV shows, and at various times, both ratings monsters, although now the Bachelor franchise seems to be waning, while MAFs just keeps being a juggernaut, beloved of the Australian public. It seemed logical to give it a try.

But, as you may have realised from our recaps, we have not been enjoying the show so much. It’s hard to tell - we’re aware that part of the enjoyment of our recaps is our mutual breakdown as we’re forced to think about a world of nonsense far too deeply than it was ever meant to be thought about. And yes, Patrick at least is something of a boy who cried wolf, constantly claiming every episode is the worst thing he’s ever seen - he’s a dramatic little prince.

We went on The Guardian’s podcast ‘Saved for Later’ and it was quite funny, because the hosts kept asking us what made the show worth watching, and we couldn’t give them a single answer. The whole thing was like “why are so many people watching Married at First Sight” and we were like… we don’t know… we don’t understand…

But as the experiment went on, we started to realise that our capacity to both enjoy and endorse this show has bled away, and with it, our ability to make the kind of jokes we like to make. It’s not enjoyable to simply detest and pity every single person involved in this show. It’s not fun to recap something which normalises people being racist and misogynistic. It falls into hate watching, and even that has it limits.

are we out of touch, or are the children to blame?

No judgement on people who enjoy watching this - but for us, recapping it is a step too far. We’ve outlined some reasons why:

we would prefer to recap this

LACK OF FUN

Bec: It’s not FUN!!! I love trash television. I love trash people. I love looking at my television and seeing what trash people are doing on it. Reality shows don’t have to be all fun all the time, but MAFS has literally zero fun. There is no lightness, there is only dark. And sorry, but I want to have fun. If I wanted to be depressed four nights a week I would start dating men myself.

Patrick: there is a DESPERATION to these people - and I think it comes down to lack of power. It’s not fun to watch people who don’t have agency - whether through their own stupidity, or the way the show’s designed, or through their own emotional trauma. It’s not fun to watch that,

EXPLOITATION

Bec: Some reality shows feel exploitative to me, and some don’t. I will watch 1000 episodes of fashionable thin women having arguments on Selling Sunset in between touring million dollar properties. I will watch 25-year-old Instagram models pretend to be interested in The Bachelor before leaving with a slew of new followers. The Bachelorette is generally full of men I wouldn’t want to hang out with, but all the power is always in the hands of the person looking for love, and the genuinely awful people get kicked out early. On MAFS, people are tied to each other in a way that removes that power.

Patrick: I remember when Angie Kent’s series of The Bachelorette had a bonafide misogynist creep as a contestant (that weird mayor of Noosa guy), and there was outrage at the fact that he was clearly sent in there to be a point of manufactured “dramatic” tension - despite representing seriously fucked and bad views, and attitudes towards women. There was an outcry that she was put into the situation of having to confront this creep, and at the same time, tell him to leave. But even then, she had the power to boot him immediately. There’s been MULTIPLE men on MAFS this season who have expressed truly toxic values, and the poor women who are partnered with them have basically been group gaslit into treating it as something they had to endure, talk through, even accomodate. On that note in fact, there’s even been women doing the same thing, bullying and belittling men in the name of toxic ideas of how men should behave. It’s upsetting.

DUTY OF CARE TOWARDS CASTING

Bec: MAFS casts some people who are not appearing for social media followers, or for career, or to just be on TV. They cast people who are older, who have clearly had a lot of relationship trauma, and who are desperate. That would be okay if the production showed a duty of care and didn’t pair those people up with partners who treat them awfully, make them feel bad about themselves, and genuinely be at risk of actual harming them.

Patrick: Remember that guy from Bachelorette… the guy who says he will piss himself because he’s so excited to see someone… and he’s a guy who clearly, in some way, doesn’t quite have the capacity to navigate television without putting himself in bad situations… so naturally the show keeps casting him, putting him on Bachelor in Paradise, etc - imagine if almost everybody cast was him, and it was done purely out of avarice and mean-spiritedness, to wring them dry for drama and entertainment. That’s what mafs felt like.

WE’RE SO DEPRESSED

Bec: IT’S NOT FUN. It’s not worth it. It’s depressing me, and it’s depressing the audience. It’s hard to make jokes when you’re simply furious about everything that happened. The world is shit enough at the moment, it’s already hard to find sparks of joy, so I’m waving the white flag.

Patrick: genuinely recapping this show made me feel sad, and considering we’re still slogging our way through the bad brains of a global pandemic, I really can’t afford to put myself in situations which will jeopardise my already tenuous mental health. To paraphrase Dido, I will NOT go down with this ship.

The GOOD NEWS

On Monday, we’re announcing the show that we’ll be replacing MAFs with, and you’ll barely have to wait for that to start, a matter of days… I think a lot of you will probably guess what it will be based on that timing, but stay tuned. We’re really excited about it!

Thanks so much for supporting us through this, thank you so much for subscribing, and I’m sure you’re gonna love this new series even more than this.

Obviously this affects our loyal and gorgeous subscribers, so feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments…