A Quick Recap Of ‘Seven Year Switch’, Channel 7’s Trainwreck New Relationship-Swap Drama

If you haven’t tuned in to Channel 7’s new program Seven Year Switch, you are missing out on some quality trashy entertainment. The reality TV program, now halfway through, began a few weeks ago amid some controversy. The show follows the journey of four young Australian couples who have apparently “tried everything” to fix their broken relationships. The couples essentially do a partner swap for two weeks (and undergo a whole lot of therapy) to try to fix what is broken.

Yes, surprise, surprise- TV producers are once again exploiting the feelings and the intimate relationships of ordinary Australians under the pretence that this kind of therapy really works. I must admit, they try hard to keep up the pretence; throughout the show, we see small snippets of therapy sessions. Yes, the couples do make some realisations about and spot some destructive patterns in their relationships, but let’s be honest: this is, for the most part, just trashy entertainment, and I love it.

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Meet The Unhappy Couples

In the first episode, the therapists make it clear that “switch therapy” isn’t actually a real counselling technique. In fact, this is really more like a “social experiment” (aka a new and improved version of Wife Swap). In the experiment, the couples are separated for two weeks and matched with another “like-minded” partner of the opposite sex. The new couples live together for the two-week period, undergo therapy sessions every day, and partake in a series of romantic activities with someone else’s partner in the hope that this will somehow invigorate their love lives and make them appreciate their own partners.

To begin with, some of these relationships have clearly already passed their use-by-date. Jackie and Tim, young fitness trainers with their own business, are constantly butting heads. Tim is “not affectionate enough”, which we find out to mean that he barely touches Jackie and even finds it awkward to hug her goodbye when she leaves for the two-week experiment to live with another man.

Jackie wishes Tim would “buy her a gift, motherfucker” every now and then. Tim is basically a lazy shit, and prefers to sit on the floor of their home office playing with the dog while Jackie is trying to call clients and work. The night before they’re about to leave, Jackie is talking about Tim’s new switch partner. She tells Tim “if you treat her better than me, you’re going to be in shit when you get home”. Tim seems to put pretty much no effort into the relationship and Jackie is holding on to the delusion of life with a man who has said “I love you” to her only once in three years. In a text message. When he was drunk.

While I’m trying to decide which of them is more stupid, I realise that the other younger couple are also stupid in new, different ways. Brad and Tallena met on Tinder (obvs) and have a pillow on their bed which says “Live, laugh, love”, which makes me instantly hate them. Brad seems to spend all his money on boy’s toys; golf sets, a big TV, a jetski. He clearly doesn’t want to spend any money on their upcoming wedding, and in their introductory scenes is trying to convince Tallena that they can probably skip the wedding ceremony itself as it’s a waste of money. He also tells her she can’t celebrate her birthday with anyone else in their two-week break, even if she is alone, because he won’t be there to celebrate with her. He spends most of the next week without her a big sulky mess.

Sulky Brad gets partnered with bossy Jackie, while immature Tallena gets partnered with “larrikin” Tim and each new couple move to separate houses to begin their “experiment”.

The first day of the experiment, we find out that the couples need to share a bed together, which causes instant mayhem. Brad starts to cry and you almost start to feel sorry for him and awkwardly intrusive when he asks the cameraman if he can “have a minute”, until you remember that he was the one who decided to put his relationship on the line by being the lab rat in this “experiment”. We later find out that he has, on a number of occasions, taken back the engagement ring he had given Tallena while they were fighting because he felt she didn’t appreciate him.

Tallena, on the other hand, is pretty immature herself. When she finds out about the one-bedroom situation, she is not happy, and then Tim is pretty quick to claim the bed without asking her. He admits he’s not a gentleman. “Clearly” she replies.

After she’s attempted to sleep on the couch, she goes into the (now his) room at the crack of dawn and rips open the curtains, declaring that Tim isn’t allowed to sleep in seeing as she hasn’t slept at all. She reminds me of myself when I was about 13 years old.

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Anatomy Of A Clusterfuck

These first two couples seem to exist more for entertainment value, while the remaining two couples are hardworking parents who may actually benefit from the experiment, if only to have a break from their kids for two weeks and get in a few therapy sessions.

Michelle, mother of two, pretty much just wants some recognition, dammit, from her partner Jason for looking after their kids all day. Meanwhile, Cassie is essentially looking after two kids; partner Ryan and their actual 10-month-old baby girl. These two couples also switch partners. Cassie and Jason get along quite well and, to be honest, are probably the only candidates on the show with any actual brains. Michelle is having a great time with Ryan, and you get the feeling that a good night out once in a while (or a mild case of alcoholism) will probably be the cure to most of her problems, although she admits after a couple of days that she isn’t missing hubby Jason at all. Awks.

All couples seem to have the common denominator of struggling a bit financially/trying to start a business, which makes me think that their motivations for becoming part of the show were more to do with the potential endorsement deals/magazine stories that come from their involvement in the show, rather than actually attempting to fix their relationships. Either way, it’s still entertaining watching their “switch therapies” play out.

After a stressful couple of days, the four couples are sent on a romantic holiday to pretty much the exact locations that they had previously gone to with their partners, which I have to admit adds kind of a sickening (funny?) spin to the show. Predictably Brad is distraught, and spends most of the day and probably the night crying into his pillow; we don’t really know because him and Jackie go to bed at about 7pm.

Cassie and Jason ride a tandem bicycle and actually have some adult conversations. Jason admits he hasn’t had sex in over a year and it’s no wonder, because it sounds like he works about 23 hours a day.

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Tim. TIM. Please Put Your Dick Away, Tim.

Meanwhile, Tim and Tallena are having a spa together (an activity Jackie expressly forbade Tim to do), and Tim takes his pants off in the spa because he’s such a “larrikin”, at which Tallena immediately jumps out. I don’t get why getting his dick out on national television was meant to be funny, but things just get kind of awkward, and we can already picture Jackie losing her shit when she finds out, especially because she’s stuck with buzzkill Brad, who is about as useful as this show.

After their spa, Tim and Tallena decide to go and get tattoos to “remember the experience”. I don’t really think they are grasping the concept of the whole switch therapy thing. Tallena decides she will get “Everything happens for a reason”, but instead of getting the actual words, she gets the first letters of the words only. So she literally gets EHFAR written on her foot. In permanent ink. What the actual fuck. Also now I know who must have bought the pillow with the words “Live, laugh, love”. No wonder Brad is crying all the time. Tim’s tattoo is almost as bad. He gets a pair of dice with two number sixes, because he “likes to win”.

Michelle is having a great time, getting a spa treatment and going to a nice dinner with Ryan. I do feel a bit sorry for her, as you get the feeling she doesn’t get out much. Or at all. Ryan is literally like a big stupid golden retriever; cute, loving, and loyal, but he just can’t seem to deal without Cassie. We find out that Ryan and Cassie have suffered the loss of a young baby a couple of years ago, which must have been pretty tough (actual hardships, much wow) and is contributing to the distance between them.

So far, we have seen some of the couples actually make some progress but the verdict is still out on whether they will actually make it through the show without eventually burning each other’s clothes on the front lawn.

Basically there’s no doubt that the show makes good entertainment. But I’m sure if the couples had some time apart, away from their jobs or their children, went to therapy, or just grew some brains, they would probably come to the same conclusions about their relationships as they are on the show, minus the heartache of seeing their partner do fun stuff without them, or get really shit tattoos.

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Seven Year Switch airs each Tuesday at 9pm on Channel 7.

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Megan is a freelance writer based in Sydney. She tweets from @meganjaneandrew