Alex Casey farewells a truly confounding season of the reality television juggernaut.
(To be read aloud in traditional Married at First Sight final vows style, aka with the cadence and confidence of an eight-year-old doing a school speech about the invention of the telephone.)
Married at First Sight Australia,
From the very first moment I laid eyes on you, I knew that we were in for a rocky ride together. Your first episode featured a proud trad wife, a brazen misogynist, a ghosting Frenchman, and a drunk sister of the bride who threatened production because she didn’t get a pescatarian meal. Little did I know back then that these were the four horsemen of the MAFS-pocalypse, and what was to come over the next three months would test me ways you have never tested me before.
With every day that passed in the experiment, things seemed to get worse for us. There was Tim, the unsuspecting PE teacher who said he was looking for a natural, confident woman – but later clarified he actually wanted someone petite and blonde. There was the groomsman who was irate that Tony should have been “awarded” a woman much younger than him. There was Jake, who had no qualms saying: “I’m not racist, but I do like Caucasian people mostly.”
Where more sensible people would have tuned out here, I stayed loyal to you. We’ve had some good times together over the years – Lucinda Light and the Tin Man, pasta a la Troy, Nasser doing the vacuuming in his underpants. I clung onto these transcendent moments of hope and happiness while Adrian manipulated Awhina through his mumbles, and even when Paul punched a hole in the wall and got nothing more than an extra furrowed brow from expert John.
At times, I actually felt like you were gaslighting me. You showed me footage of a “footsie” between Adrian and Sierah at the dinner party, and then never returned to it again. You suggested an emotional affair between Dave and Veronica, but you left that one hanging too. Where I don’t blame you is for the incomprehensible storyline of Ryan and Jacqui – one day alien anthropologists will study that footage to figure out where and how humans went so wrong.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been some happy memories from our time together. When Rhi and Jeff saw each other for the first time and realised they had been matched with an old flame – “Hi Rhi”, “Hey Jeff” – was one of the great rom com reality moments in recent years. I also enjoyed how much fun the editors had with Ryan and his katana sword, and that dinner party where Teejay wouldn’t stop calling Beth “darling” despite his tepid feelings.
Darling, in the words of Jacqui, I tried my ass off – “my literal ass” – to try and make things work between us. I made huge personal sacrifices, missing enormous chunks of zeitgeist pop culture in The White Lotus and Severance, all because you demanded so much one-on-one time every week. I’ve long believed that reality television provides insights into the human experience that no other genre can, but this season has made me think that perhaps we have gone too far through the looking glass.
A decade ago, you felt like a true social experiment, one with the potential to enlighten and educate people on the parts of themselves and their relationships that they might not have otherwise reflected upon. But in 2025, after a long day of headlines about the horrors of humanity, the last thing I want to see are the horrors of humanity in a cocktail dress and too-tight suit pants, barely kept in line by three half-asleep experts who seem to have given up on their professional fields entirely.
Married at First Sight, you have emotionally manipulated me, breadcrumbed me, and lovebombed me. To quote our New Zealand representative Jacqui once more: in a world of red flags, you were the red carpet. I don’t know exactly what that means, but rest assured I will be taking time over the coming months to reflect upon this sentiment and reassess our relationship status. I’m sorry Married at First Sight Australia, but this is where we go our separate ways. It’s not me: it’s you.
