‘Married At First Sight’ Has Been Renewed For A Second Season After Just One Cringeworthy Episode
1.887 million people hate-watched it into success.
When it was announced earlier this year, Channel Nine’s new reality show Married At First Sight was met with the involuntarily projected bile of the nation. For many, it seemed to be not only the absolute apex of trashy TV, but also founded on an uncomfortable premise given its social and political context: shouldn’t we let gay people get married, before we start hitchin’ strangers for kicks?
Though it was soon revealed that the show would only be performing commitment ceremonies that aren’t legally binging, there were still larger debates about the show’s relation to the “sanctity of marriage” argument often forwarded by conservative politicians, as well as its confusing appropriation of arranged marriages. More than 21,000 people directly petitioned for it to be cancelled.
Now, that once-impressive number has been absolutely decimated by the ratings the show’s first episode pulled last night. With a peak total of 1.887 million viewers, Married At First Sight was the top non-news program of the night. Not only did it beat Masterchef; it beat Masterchef on a week featuring Marco Pierre White. This is a guy who forever looks like he’s just one bad dish away from committing actual murder.
Ingredients list for Marco's dish: Lamb Artichoke Trumpet mushrooms Fava beans Nice Chianti Pfft pfft pfft pfft pfft Clarice #MasterChefAU
— Adam Liaw (@adamliaw) May 18, 2015
This morning, Channel Nine’s Director of Programming and Production Andrew Backwell released a statement acknowledging this success. “We are all so immensely proud of this program and are pleased that it has resonated so strongly with Australian viewers,” he said. “From the outset, we knew that what we were creating was not just another reality program, rather a ground-breaking social experiment. We are thrilled that people have formed their own opinions on the value of this radical method of matchmaking.”
He then went on ahead and jumped the shark completely by announcing a second season. A second season. AFTER ONE EPISODE.
In case you missed it, all this isn’t a result of the show exceeding expectations or delivering some unexpected insight. Its “relationship experts” seemed to couple people up for this “social experiment” for completely arbitrary reasons like “They both have lots of friends!” or “They both want kids!”, and each participant’s story for getting into this sorry mess was gleefully exploited as much as you could reasonably expect.
“This loser who hasn’t had a girlfriend in 8-9 years. Look at him eating Chinese food alone. HA. WHAT A LOSER!”
So, if you were one of the nearly 2 million sorry souls who tuned in: it’s seeming increasingly likely you just hate-watched your way into a whole new year of this.
Watching #MarriedAtFirstSight was the worst thing to happen to me today and I was admitted to Hospital
— Geraldine Hickey (@geraldinehickey) May 18, 2015
Watching this #MarriedAtFirstSight abomination with my siblings. We are uniformly horrified. I can't be happier. pic.twitter.com/bdXK4Is7kX
— Benjamin Law (@mrbenjaminlaw) May 18, 2015
Whether you watched it to satisfy some morbid curiousity or mercilessly laugh at people and feel better about the fact you were also eating Chinese food alone on your couch, it’s on you.
It’s on all of us.
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Season two of Married At First Sight will premiere in 2016. Since everything’s fucked now anyway, you can catch a re-run of the first episode tonight at 9.40pm on Channel Nine.