Our reality TV experts at The Real Pod are obsessed with Married at First Sight Australia. Let us count the ways.
Married at First Sight Australia has been on New Zealand screens for two weeks now, and it’s already difficult to imagine a world without it. Three’s four-night-a-week, 90-minute episode extravaganza has already delivered raging brothers, eyebrow piercings and televised deflowering – and that’s before we even get to last night’s dinner party. Remember when Melissa thought she’d forgotten her wedding dress? Feels like decades ago.
Lucky for you, our reality TV podcast fanatics at The Real Pod are here to count down some of the most memorable moments so far. With nearly four years of reality TV analysis under our belts, we’ve truly never seen anything quite like it. Here are some of our favourite moments so far.
THE BEST
When Matthew got so horny he had to go to hospital
Virgin Matthew has 29 years experience not having sex and is probably the sweetest boy to ever willingly enter this cathedral of chaos. He was having a nice bubble bath with Loz, his new bride when he broke out in a cold sweat and had trouble breathing and called a nurse who suggested he go directly to the hospital. After a long night in the emergency rooms it turned out he was just horny, an ailment he and Lauren soon cured in what was legit one of the sweetest things ever to air on the TV. / Duncan Greive
When Lizzie heated her pizza in the toaster
Say what you will about Queen Elizabeth, but there’s no denying that she is an innovator and a scholar in the crucial socio-political realm of next morning pizza reheating. After scratching her 756th day of being alone onto her hotel room wall and belting out ‘all by myself’ in a huge hat, it was time for breakfast. As casually as Sam waltzed back into the dinner party, she produced an old piece of pizza. “No text message,” she told the camera, “nothing at all.”
Then, she jammed the pizza slice into the toaster and changed the world forever.
I have a couple of questions here. Are the toppings going to melt straight down into the toaster causing a small fire? Would it be better if the toaster was on its side? Why didn’t she wrap it baking paper? Wait, would that start a small fire too? When this whole MAFS thing blows over, I’d love a Mythbusters spinoff episode where Lizzie busts open the best ways to eat sad, single foods. Nutella? By the spoon. Chocolate? Bite off a family block in huge chunks. Icon. / Alex Casey
Ines and everything about Ines
Even by the extreme standards of MAFS AU, Ines is a specimen. No one has ever been less filtered. When asked ahead of the wedding how she was feeling, she answered with a single word: “horny”.
This condition immediately ceased when she saw Bronson’s small eyebrow piercing, which prompted her first words to him: a request for its immediate removal and the first of many references to Britney’s “mental breakdown”. Basically, it did not make her horny.
There was a brief dinner date respite when Ines asked Bronson “would you root me?” and he babbled about personality and she replied “YEAH BUT WOULD YOU ROOT ME?”. Otherwise, the honeymoon was sexless and sad, not helped by Bronson’s enormous canary yellow Australia onesie, a very effective chastity belt.
It was a very dirty dinner party for Ines, though. She talked about how much she’d like to root Sam aka beelzebub himself A LOT. She predicted partner swapping. She predicted a sex party. She predicted an orgy (apparently these are different things?) No one else was game, but she shapes as this season’s Davina – only much, much hornier – and it’s extremely fun to watch. / DG
When the music stopped at Jules and Cam’s wedding
I have died, every day, waiting to experience a moment this romantic. I don’t care if producers purposefully hid the cassette tapes, or if it was planned by Cam hours in advance, or if there was actually music playing the whole time and the editors simply did an absolute number on us with the mute button. There is nothing worse than music cutting out, especially when it is during a big important moment. For me, that moment came during the unauthorised Shrek: The Musical that I was performing in as a tween. ‘I’m a Believer’ cut out right as (not) Shrek and (not) Fiona were walking down the aisle. We froze, we giggled, and then we kept dancing.
When the same happened during Cam and Jules’ first dance, you could imagine my anxiety. Also, not a neg, but Jules legit looks like Princess Fiona when she’s in hot human mode. The pair stood there awkwardly, all eyes on them, thrown into the fiery pits of performance hell with nothing to cling onto but a stranger they just married. “No-one else is here,” said Cam, taking her hands, “it’s just me and you.” As the guests shuffled uncomfortably and the silence sharpened its knives, ready to murder them both, Cam began to boogie. A gentle boogie, an extremely dorky boogie, but a boogie nonetheless. Then, she giggled and also began to boogie. Then, everyone got up and started to silent boogie. I’ve never seen anything as lovely – not in the films, not in the poems, and not in the so-called “books”. / AC
The new lab where they pretend it’s a real experiment
Test tubes! White coats! An iPad! It’s SCIENCE dammit. / DG
When Matthew sang at the wedding
Honestly, murder me and make Matthew sing ‘Sway’ at my funeral while waltzing with my rotting corpse. It’s my dying wish. The 29-year-old virgin took to the microphone during their reception to announce that he was all in on the experiment, and ready to do all the things he had never done before (SEX and SINGING). He then started to sing the Dean Martin classic, basically a jacked, sexless Bublé with nothing left to lose. His voice was treacle. His voice was the brown note. His voice was perfection. It doesn’t even matter that he forgot the words halfway through and went silent – Cam and Jules have got a solution for that. / AC
When Martha got in the pool
“Shit”
When the edit was out of control
Two examples of too many to count: 1) When disgusting cretin Matt was praising his new bride Heidi (before he got too hot to listen to her talk for 3 minutes about being kicked out of home at 16) and they intercut it with a lengthy shot of a toilet door accompanied by audio of her and her bridesmaids completing the torturous ‘going toilet in a wedding dress’ routine. 2) When Satan Sam was pretending to listen to Elizabeth’s patient explanation of why five days with no contact from her husband mightn’t be the best way to start a marriage and they overdubbed echo FXed audio of him explaining what he was thinking (the thoughts were not at all good). / DG
When Lizzie’s bridesmaids suggested there might not be phone reception in NZ
I mean, she’s not entirely wrong. If the funeral was at my Dad’s house in Featherston, he might have had trouble on the ol’ WhatsApp. / AC
When Melissa gave commentary on all the couples
Current working theory is that Ines is the incredibly unreliable narrator, while Melissa is meant to represent the feelings of the viewer at home. Her commentary on the dinner party was unbelievably cool and funny while often physiologically improbable:
On Matt: “If Jason Statham and Bruce Willis had a baby”
On Cameron: “Cameron is a six, or whatever they hit in cricket”
On Martha and Matt: “I want them to have my babies” / DG
THE WORST
When Mike shut down Heidi because he wanted to swim
Don’t you just love it when you decide to rip open the most damaged part of your soul, hoping to pour it into the open arms of your life partner, only to have them pat you like a dog and tell you that they aren’t your therapist? Heidi and Mike’s conversation on the beach during their honeymoon was one of the most infuriating things I have ever seen in my life – her, sharing her childhood trauma, and him, staring at the big blue and longing to go in the drink. The way that he was constantly trying to wrap her up, cut her off and shut her down is one of the most condescending things I’ve seen on reality TV, and sadly something that many women can relate to. Yurk. / AC
When Sam called Lizzie “big”; when Sam did anything at all
Sam tried valiantly to seem like a nice person, but that lasted about 12 minutes before he revealed that he doesn’t “normally date girls as big as Elizabeth”, but that was fine because he could get her running or something. From then on he somehow got much worse, running off to New Zealand because his ex’s Mum had died the literal day after their wedding. Cyrelle spoke for all of us when she cast doubt on every piece of that story.
While away he communicated precisely nothing to his distraught pizza cooking innovator wife Elizabeth, then returned with a “honey I’m home” to the dinner party. From there he provided a perfect dictionary definition example of gaslighting in telling his wife “you’re being a bit of a diva, you should just relax” and a million other nasty, undermining lines. When he sought solace with bald man Mike afterwards, he suggested that “Women have emotions; men, logic.” / DG
When all the blokes wore boardies to bed
AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE! WHY WHY WHY??? / AC
When Mick’s best man tanked the speech
You knew Broxy was trouble when he walked in. Coal black eyes which never once blinked, he had this fidgety energy, like a social terrorist with an unholy mission to complete. Turned out that was an all time nightmare of a best man speech. There was viagra. There was a tented sheet. There was furious masturbating. There was Mick, looking like he wanted nothing more than to be buried down on the old farm. Then there was Jess’ dad who played no role in the first 20 years of her life but was now fiercely protective of “my baby”. He said that speech “was fine out on the paddock” – not true, but funny – while his extremely hot and scary son looked like he was ready to murder the whole room. He somehow restrained himself, but poor Mick may never win over his new inlaws now they know the true depths of his weird and sexy larrikin past. / DG
When Sam gaslighted Lizzie at the dinner party
If you thought Mike’s day at the beach was bad, allow me to introduce you to Sam at the dinner party, swilling his wine like a washing machine while entirely dismissing every thought and feeling of his new wife Elizabeth. “You’re so angry, just relax, just breathe, there’s nothing to be angry about, you just gotta calm down,” he said, as Lizzie began to tear up about her week alone, while everyone was away canoodling on their honeymoon. “How old are you?… You’re carrying on a bit… You’re being a bit of a diva so you should just relax.” I don’t care how sharp his beard is and how piercing his eyes, Sam is legit the ugliest reality TV character in the history of ever. / AC
When Cyrelle’s brother confronted Nic at their wedding
Nic has recovered from testicular cancer, but was slightly reticent about explaining precisely how sick he’d been. Cyrelle’s brother wasn’t having any of it: “So what, if you get a little cold or flu or something, you’re just gonna leave?” He was basically a shithead the whole way through, boycotting her wedding only to appear at the last minute so he could berate her right through. Why couldn’t he be more like his cool dad, who said nothing and just wore a backwards Diesel cap at dinner? / DG
When Port Douglas brought out the worst in someone on a reality TV show… again
Put Ines and Sloane out to sea in Port Douglas and see who comes back alive. / DG