‘Married At First Sight’ Recap: If You Don’t Know What A Horse Woman Is, You’ll Never Be One

How do you deal with stress? When I feel very nervous, something in my head says, ‘you need to take a nap RIGHT NOW’ regardless of what I’m doing. Last night’s episode of Married At First Sight? Man, did it make me sleepy. I feel like I’m still fighting off the urge to stress nap.

Anyway, the husbands have spent a week at wives’ homes. Relationship expert John Aiken reckons this will test the strength of their bond. This stage of the experiment seems to revolve around Protective Dads protecting their Precious Daughters and being mean to these spiky-haired men. The twins’ father, for instance, delights in the psychological torture of forcing Nick and Jesse to hold a piece of straw between their teeth so he can whip it with his whip.

Then he doesn’t do it!!! What a mad dog.

Cheryl and Andrew — who now hate each other, somehow — are ripped even further apart by Cheryl’s dad. Cheryl’s dad displays some truly psychotic behaviour in this episode. The things he says to Andrew are not regular. First he makes Andrew leave the house and get changed in the front garden because he somehow finds his grey t-shirt and short combo offensive. Maybe that is offensive in Scotland, I don’t know.

Cheryl tries to explain that Andrew is a firefighter. “Care factor zero,” says Cheryl’s dad. Cheryl’s dad pours Andrew a glass of whiskey and tells him to shot it “to show how many balls he’s got”. A man who saves people from fiery infernos is less impressive to Cheryl’s dad than a man who can neck spirits in a timely fashion. He does not drink the whiskey himself. “Ooh, who’s the boss? She’s the boss?” he says, when Cheryl tells Andrew that he doesn’t have to shot the glass full of whiskey.

This guy is a peach, I tell ya.

Cheryl’s dad doesn’t let up, saying ridiculous and aggressive things like “What the fuck are you doing in Perth?” and “I’m not happy with you”. In retaliation, Andrew says that Cheryl’s dad has a small penis. “Andrew’s reaction probably wasn’t good,” says Cheryl.

Even the experts are like, “yeah this is not regular”.

Meanwhile, Susan is trying to teach Sean that not living on a farm is fun because you can do things like kayaking. Good for them.

But hey, what are Australia’s favourite couple Anthony and Nadia up to!! Well, Anthony can’t compute why Nadia lives with housemates. Can’t work it out at all. Another thing he can’t work out is modern gender dynamics, it seems.

“I’m not the type of person who comes into someone’s house and helps themselves to someone’s fridge,” he says, sitting on Nadia’s couch while she shuffles around the kitchen (note: she made her own food at Anthony’s house, I recall her tossing around lettuce leaves or whatever). “So if I give you a nudge that I’m hungry, I need to be fed”.

Yep.

Anthony wants to stay in a hotel. He gets annoyed when Nadia goes shopping. “All of a sudden it became her priority and I wasn’t,” he says.

Nadia takes him paddle boarding, presumably because it’s hard to talk during that activity. He won’t stop chastising her for not having enough time to prepare food for their dinner party that night. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon and we’re laying on a beach, and you have to prepare food for seven,” he says. “It’s 1.30,” she says.

At the dinner party, Nadia tells her friends that she’s not looking for some unreliable 25-year-old, she wants a stable relationship. Anthony cracks the shits. “You married me, I don’t need to know your history, you don’t need to know mine. END OF CONVERSATION,” he says. Nadia’s friends are like “wtf”.

“I’m confident Nadia and I have a good relationship,” says Anthony. “Some couples are further along when it comes to intimacy, however. Wait, does he mean having sex? Nadia makes this face:

It’s time to catch up with Twin #1 and Nick. There’s a close-up of dying flowers in their apartment, which seems extremely rude. “Sharon and I are in a great place,” says Nick.

It’s time for the dinner party! The last one went so bad that it was like an educational film they’d show in high schools to reveal the perils of binge drinking. Cheryl and Andrew (well, mainly Cheryl ‘cos #lads) were the targets of the last gathering. Now that Andrew has decided to live in another apartment, Cheryl asks him if it’s okay if he doesn’t advertise this at the dinner party. Andrew agrees.

Expert Mel says it’s important for couples to go through lows — plus it makes for good tv!!!

On Married, the dinner party is an event in which people get super drunk and aggressive, taking out their frustrations with every single person who has ever wronged them in their lives, on each other. The contestants arrive (Andrew says, “DADDY’S HOME!!” which is all you need to know about that) and grab a bottle of prosecco and a straw each.

“It was controversial last dinner party!!!!!!” say the experts, a twinkle of hope and longing in their eyes.

Twin #1 is being nice to Cheryl this time. “Jonesy is a good mate of seven years,” she explains, something we’ve heard 20 or 30 times before. On the other side of the room, Andrew is telling Twin #2 that he had a shit time on the GC and naturally, immediately tells her that he and Cheryl aren’t living together anymore despite specifically saying that he would not do that.

“THAT’S A BREACH OF TRUST!” “VERY DISLOYAL!” the experts repeat, nodding. Then ask each other why Anthony hasn’t said anything offensive yet. “I have an internal GPS, don’t I Nadia? Nadia, don’t I? Nadia didn’t even know where we were going, right Nadia?” says Anthony. Phew, carry on.

Like The Terminator searching for Sarah Connor, Anthony’s tracking device this time locks on Sean and Susan. Anthony says that he “identified early” that while Sean and Susan were good people individually but “together they don’t work”. The problem is that Sean is a “horseman”.

“Horse people are horse people,” he explains to Sean and Susan. “You’re a horse man,” he then says to Sean, ignoring Susan. “And you need a horse woman.”

“What exactly is a horse woman?” the producers ask. Anthony is unable to answer this question. “I spotted this a mile away, he’s not a man he’s a horseman,” Anthony continues.

In case you wondered what Anthony was talking about — or whether he suspected that Sean belonged to some sort of superhuman horse/man hybrid race — he says: “Susan is not a horse woman. End of story”. Anthony loves saying “end of story” and “end of conversation” and “game over”. I wish I had someone in my life who would tell me when to stop talking, what a refreshing social role!

The boiz then ask Anthony what he thought of Nadia’s house. “I didn’t lift a finger,” he says.”If I’m hungry, you gotta feed me”. Even Andrew, who has spent the evening dragging his wife every time she’s out of earshot, goes, “ooft”.

Meanwhile, Andrew is slowly telling everyone at the dinner party that he hates Cheryl. He tells Twin #1 that he hasn’t cried in five years, but Cheryl made him cry. Then he compares Cheryl to a house on fire that is giving him “heat sickness”, so…

“THERE IT IS, THE BREACH OF TRUST!!!” the experts say, and I can’t tell if they’re exhilarated or disappointed.

In another corner of the hellmouth, Susan is attempting to do a Good Deed. Susan, not fearing death, has decided to talk to the twins about bullying Cheryl and to apologise for avoiding them, which I am certain they did not notice.

“You know how you were sorry at the time?” says Susan. “No, I wasn’t sorry,” says Twin #1. Then the twins get annoyed that Susan thinks that they SHOULD have been sorry. “SHE IS CERTAINLY NOT A BULLY, I AM CERTAINLY NOT  BULLY,” says Twin #1 in a completely rational and calm way. Uh oh.

They were just protecting Jonesy! He is a seven-year-long friend, after all.

So, the dinner party went as expected. Sniffing out the unhappiness, Anthony discovers that Andrew and Cheryl are on the rocks. “I picked that from day one,” he says, because of course he does. Anthony suggests that Cheryl could never be happy with anyone, which is lovely.

Next episode: Anthony says in front of the contestants and experts that Nadia is “frigid”!