I Loved Married At First Sight Australia, But It’s So Toxic I’ve Switched Off

My family, as a rule, hate reality TV. Staying with them during lockdown, they often ask why the hell I take such an interest in Celebs Go Dating/Keeping Up With The Kardashians/whatever other ‘vacuous shit’ I’m watching. But they finally understood why I love the ridiculousness of reality TV when I started watching Married At First Sight Australia. One night, we all stayed awake until around 4am to watch countless hours on catch up.

The sixth season of the show is currently airing on E4, and has been for over a month. (There are 40 - yes, 40 - episodes.) It isn’t just my family who have taken an interest in this show. Somehow, it’s managed to captivate audiences who wouldn’t usually sit and watch people couple up on TV. During one particularly chaotic episode, my sister received a text from her boyfriend’s mum, asking if she was watching the hellfire unfold. My dad has been discussing MAFS with his friends, who also can’t quite believe they’re watching it.

It might be because the contestants are older than the usual participant that more unconventional audiences are watching. But - combined with lockdown - it’s probably just because there’s a tonne of drama and the characters (complete with Aussie accents) are a very, should we say, interesting mix. These are people who, even if they didn’t know it, were born for dramatic TV confessionals and having meltdowns on camera. In terms of drama, it is absolute God-tier reality TV.

But I’ve stopped watching. More than halfway into the so called 'experiment', I have lost all interest. It isn’t because I can’t be arsed to watch the rest, it’s more that I don’t really want to. With MAFS being so dramatic, it comes at a very cruel cost, with the cast, instead of the producers, paying the price.

It was something I was aware of, and blissfully ignored, until the overt bullying of Billy, by Susie, proved too much to bear. It was genuinely uncomfortable hearing a woman repeatedly berate a man for being awkward (which, guess what, speaking as an awkward person, you can’t help!). It made me think about the show a lot, and why it makes such good TV. And whether that’s right.

Billy and Susie, despite their very clear differences, and Billy’s unhappiness, are still in the experiment. Because at the ‘commitment ceremonies’ where individuals decide if they want to stay or leave, if the other person in the couple wants to stay, they’re forced to too. Even though the participants in the show are being paid (not a lot), for many, when they’re in quite obviously doomed pairings, it seems like they’re being held against their will. Surely, if somebody is so unhappy they should be allowed to leave?

But that would be boring TV, wouldn’t it?

It would also be tedious television if the couples were matched well. To keep the premise of the show intact, there are two couples who seem to genuinely like each other - Martha and Michael and Cam and Jules - and as a consequence, their existence on the show is mostly drama-free. The rest have been cruelly put together to create storylines. It’s highly unlikely that farmer Mick and Jessika would be together in the real world, and so, predictably, she is cheating on him with (new husband, keep up) Dan. Don’t even get me started on the underrated queen of the series, chaotic Melissa, who was robbed of a chance at love when she was matched with spiritual Dino. (Who, when they decided to part ways at the commitment ceremony, read a poem - which Melissa looked slightly disturbed by - including the line: ‘When the next guy who slams you’.)

To add to the mismatched drama, it’s also been claimed producers lend a helping hand to the drama. Since the explosive episodes where Sam cheated on Elizabeth with Ines, he has said their affair was completely staged. '[The producers] pulled me into a dark room, a black room, and asked me to do the Ines thing. They set that up,’ he said, speaking on his Instagram story after the scenes aired in the UK, adding that he didn’t sleep with anyone on the show.

Sam was a villain in this situation, no doubt - but in my opinion, it’s often the women who come across worse than the men. The women - Ines and Jessika - who cheat on their partners are seen as scheming, they both made the first move, while the men involved come across much more passive, almost as if they don’t have a choice. It’s like the women are willingly set up as hate figures. Or to be ridiculed. Elizabeth and her hair extensions have been mercilessly mocked online, but why was she wearing them in the first place? You would have thought, when you’re going to be shown to millions of people, that perhaps producers might have intervened and had her hair done. Purely so she wouldn’t be bullied. Of course, it’s not nice telling someone to sort your hair out, but, equally, it’s far worse not doing anything about it at all.

Last night, my sister watched MAFS while I was in the sitting room - the rest of my family also appeared to have lost interest for similar reasons - but I wasn’t hooked to the TV. Instead, I was glancing at my phone, and at one point, started to work on my laptop. I could see in the corner of my eye that Cyrell and Nic had broken up and Dan had got with Jessika again - but I didn’t care enough to actually watch. I’d much rather go back to the other vacuous shit I watch, which, somehow, feels marginally less cruel.

READ MORE: Married At First Sight Australia: What Happened To The Couples From Season Six?

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