We’re just three weeks in and Married at First Sight Australia has never had more monsters to vanquish. It’s long past being a social experiment, and can barely even be called a reality show any more, writes Alex Casey.
When Married at First Sight first began, it was a true social experiment. Gift ved Første Blik first premiered in Denmark in 2013, where two psychologists, an anthropologist and a priest(!) picked singles based on their backgrounds and attitudes to meet at the wedding altar. The first season featured only three couples and was eight episodes long. No dinner parties, no confession boxes, no bombshell weddings, just nervous blushing Danes all the way down.
Since then the format has gone global, but no territory has made it their own quite like Australia (though shout out to the New Zealand MAFS ratking). The tenth season of Married at First Sight Australia has come in suitably hot for its aluminium anniversary (a metal with high thermal conductivity). Three weeks in and we’ve already had not one, not two but three “Girl on the Outside” storylines. We’ve also had late night rendezvous, a groom screaming “HALLELUJAH” in rage and a toaster on fire.
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This week on Married at First Sight Australia, somewhere between Shannon telling his wife “you are a good looking girl, just not in my eyes” and Harrison mansplaining female pleasure to a sexologist, I realised something crucial. Not only are we no longer watching a social experiment, we aren’t even watching a reality television show anymore. After gorging exclusively on affairs, drama and the word “gaslighting” for so long, MAFS Australia has fully mutated into its grotesque yet completely unmissable final form: a Monster of the Week show.
Think The X-Files, think Buffy, think Doctor Who. Think any show where a small group of heroes has to defeat a new monster each week using their powers combined. In The X-Files, Mulder and Scully battle a human/flatworm hybrid named Flukeman who spreads his toxic larvae through his mouth. In MAFS, the experts battle a human/flatworm hybrid named Harrison, who spreads toxic lies, also through his mouth. Fascinatingly, both also appear to have emerged from the sewers.
“The basic structure of the average Monster of the Week story starts with the characters living their normal lives,” explains the website Game Rant. “But traditional problems will have to go on hold when this week’s new threat appears.” This is why we only ever get glimpses of those Married at First Sight couples who are actually having a nice, regular old time, like Ollie and Tahnee reading their One Direction book, or Layton trying to light a candle using a toaster. All of that goes out the window (quite literally for the toaster) when the week’s monster takes shape.
What makes the MAFS monsters even more challenging to defeat is that they are often double-headers. Early on we saw Harrison immediately reveal that he had a girl on the outside who he had been sleeping with right up until leaving for his wedding. As if that wasn’t enough monstrosity, we also had Jesse, whose list of things he doesn’t like in “chicks” was so long that it could have been copied from the deepest recesses of incel Reddit. One alpha, one beta, a huge amount of villainy for the heroes (in this instance, the MAFS experts) to vanquish.
Alessandra Rampolla, Mel Schilling and John Aiken love to remind us that they have a combined 60 years of relationship counselling experience. (Side note: The Real Pod has over 24 years combined reality TV recapping experience, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.) Using their unique powers of sexology, blazer-wearing and eyebrow furrowing respectively, these heroes were able to hold Harrison to account for his lying and manipulation, and coax Jesse to push aside his jealousy issues and dislike of star signs to give his wife Claire a chance. A victory, but not for long.
Because as soon as one demon is defeated, another is sure to rise. “Pitting the heroes against a new foe every week allows the show… to avoid growing stale,” writes Game Rant of the monster genre. Enter personal trainer and fedora-wearer Shannon, who practically started sprouting werewolf hairs and oozing goo as he freely admitted to everyone he was still in love with his ex partner. Here, Aiken had to dive deep into his arsenal for their face-off. “This is unacceptable,” he barked from beneath a heavily furrowed brow. “It’s selfish, it is disrespectful, it is beyond belief.”
Sadly this only made the monster stronger, as Shannon doubled down and told his wife Caitlin that if she had “blown him away” with her looks, he wouldn’t still be in love with his ex. “On occasion, these villains return reformed,” writes TV tropes. We await to see his next couch session with the experts, where our group of heroes will be sure to use powerfully stern looks and extremely simple yes or no questions to bring down the latest bogeyman. Because, as we know, each monster must be “expeditiously defeated” before the plot can move on.
Many of the MAFS monsters can be spotted a mile away due to their commitment to tight ripped jeans, gaping muscle singlets and never wearing socks with their shoes, almost as if they are ready to burst from their clothes into their final form at any moment. That said, you can’t always tell where the next nightmare is coming from in a MoTW show. “Often a larger villain waits in the shadows,” writes Game Rant, “but they could also just be coming out of the woodwork on their own.” Eyes on Adam, who has had flashes of evil from the start but is yet to truly transmogrify.
It is guaranteed that there are more monsters lurking in the shadows of MAFS. Because, as is true of all other longstanding Monster of the Week shows, there is no limit to the format so long as there is a creative team behind it who can insert new villains and a group of heroes that can destroy them. Which brings us to the most galaxy brain parallel of all: “Individual monsters might later turn out to be part of a larger story arc,” writes Game Rant, adding that often the reveal of the “main” mastermind villain is a big, shocking twist, for both audience and cast alike.
As for MAFS, that twist is already hiding in plain sight: the brave heroes who vanquish the scary monsters each week are the very same people who invited them here in the first place.
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