‘Married At First Sight’ Recap: The Wives Are Carted Back To The Husband’s Homes; Are Sad

In the olden days, a marriage was agreed upon when a man had negotiated a good price and a father had provided a substantial dowry. Once the man had successfully bartered, the young maiden would accompany him to his dwelling, uprooting her life to accommodate her husband. What a time!

Anyway, Married At First Sight was on again last night.

It’s been a month since these kids were married, so a voiceover says that it’s time to move into “the next confronting phase of the experiment” which sounds lovely. The wives have to stay in their husband’s houses for a week. This is interesting in that looking inside people’s houses is interesting, because everyone is secretly weird at home.

For instance, maybe you think that your ex-Army husband is quite an ordinary, vanilla guy, and then you get to his house and he has a home gym with a bust of a man’s muscly chest.

Alene is going to Simon’s house in Ipswich. She has never stayed in the country “not even one night” and starts complaining about the humidity immediately. They walk in and oh my god, Simon has been robbed!!! Oh no wait, that’s just his house.

Simon doesn’t have any stuff, which is highly suspicious. It’s not that he can’t afford stuff, he just never bothered to get stuff. There are keys in his freezer and only sugar in his fridge, which is either very disturbing or the most complex modern art sculpture I’ve ever seen.

Alene spends the first visit opening up cupboards and making fun of Simon’s possessions.

Everyone’s favourite anti-bullying couple, Sean and Susan, are in regional Queensland which the producers choose to make out to be the most desolate place in the world/a place where you would certainly be murdered. When Susan starts talking, literal violin music places. Just in case you wondered where this thing was going.

When Susan arrives at Sean’s farm, she immediately screams: “OH MY GOD WHAT’S THAT???” and points to the bloody remains of something on the grass, which is actually leftover lasagne for the dog. Susan can’t even comprehend why you would leave leftovers for a dog on the grass. Then she points to some spiders on the ceiling. “Do you have air con?” she says. “Windows is what we call them!” says Sean, pretending that he doesn’t want air con because it’s not the farm way. Everyone wants air con, my dude.

Susan wants to go on a date. Sean suggests a frozen meal for dinner. “That’s… not a date,” she says. Susan is not having a nice time.

Jesse and Twin #1 go to his house in Adelaide. Much to Twin #1’s dismay, Jesse is one of those 31-year-old guys who lives at home. “Staying at his mum’s house… is not ideal,” she says. Jesse’s mum is so excited that she leaves two boxes of Lindt chocolates in Jesse’s room (apparently she’s a millionaire) and assorted soaps.

Meanwhile, Twin #2 is meeting her husband Nick’s friends. She is worried that these are the friends that he goes to the strippers with sometimes three times in one night. “People who are a bad influence are a detriment to one’s life,” she says. Hm, fair enough. “If you hang out with a bunch of drug addicts you are likely to be a drug addict,” she says. Wait, that doesn’t sound right.

Anyway, upon meeting his friends Twin #2 immediately starts listing all the shitty things he has done since the show started. “JAMES USED TO GO TO THE STRIPPERS HEAPS TOO!!” Nick says, pointing to his friend James. “Wait, what?” says James.

At another dinner, Vanessa is meeting with Andy’s friends (“basically they’re my friends” Andy says, which seems highly suspect). Andy has a friend called Tommo. Tommo is mean. He says he is “protective” which everyone knows is a nifty excuse to use when you feel like being a bit mean.

“I bet you don’t cook and clean!” Tommo says to Vanessa, a person he doesn’t know. Tommo is then very offended that Vanessa doesn’t ask a single question about him and scoffs at the thought that she could survive the Gold Coast.

He also doesn’t think that Andy could move to Melbourne. “NO WAY, IT’S TOO COLD, IT’S TOO RAINY, THERE’S TOO MUCH AFL!!!” Tommo says. Bloody hell, Tommo.

Nadia is going to Anthony’s house. “What do you expect my place to look like?” says Anthony. Nadia says, “Hm” which isn’t an answer. Anthony’s house has a big ‘A’ near the door. It’s entirely decorated in black and white. In short, it’s exactly how you would imagine Anthony’s place to look like.

Nadia prepares some food and asks if the lettuce that was in the fridge needs to be washed. Anthony acts like this is the stupidest fucking question that has ever been asked in the history of human interaction. “No, I don’t. I don’t wash lettuce, Nadia,” he says sarcastically. “Is that a real question??” She makes an “omg” face at the camera.

Anthony tells the camera that he “just had a wifi meltdown in the apartment”. This is a very important stage in a relationship. As Hemingway (??) once said: if you want to judge a man, judge him on how he reacts when there is any technical failure in his home. And Anthony… well, let’s just say we got the measure of him.

Okay, so Anthony’s internet stops working when he is trying to put a bet on a horse race. This annoys him a lot. He gets very mad at the woman on the phone, who is trying to figure out why there is a red light flashing on his modem. “How many times do I have to say the same thing,” he says, aggressively. “WWW.LightIsRed.com.”

“I want it fixed immediately and when this doesn’t get fixed immediately, we get frustrated,” Anthony explains later, referring to himself in the third person. Nadia quietly plays on her phone presumably Googling the escape routes.

“I would like to say you were helpful, but that would be a lie,” Anthony says to the woman after she has fixed his internet problem. “That woman was possibly the most painful woman that God ever put breath into,” Anthony says, then continues betting.

“Who is this guy?” Nadia asks herself for the 20th time. Oh, boy.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and Andrew are still together! They are in Perth and Andrew is taking Cheryl for a picnic on the beach. “You look beautiful, as usual,” he says. She’s like, “Thanks, whatever”.

Andrew is being forthcoming about how much he’s into Cheryl, but she doesn’t seem as sure. Then he pulls out a guitar, and she makes this face, which same.

“I wrote you a song while you were in the shower!” Andrew says. “Does it sound good?” she says, which I gauge is not the appropriate reaction to someone saying that they’ve written a song about you.

The lyrics are like: “Sitting next to you, girl/It’s impossible to know” except that it’s VERY possible to know how Cheryl feels, because she makes a variety of faces suggesting that she is mortified and wants to die.

Then Andrew tries to kiss her and she says, “No, I don’t want to kiss you”.

You can tell that Andrew thought this song would take him to kiss city. They stare at each other for a while in silence.

At the farm in Queensland, things aren’t going well for Susan and Sean. “You can’t lay in bed all day!” Sean says at 5am. Sean says that he doesn’t even eat breakfast, as if he is attempting to make things seem as uncomfortable as possible.

Sean decides to take her into town and they go to a cafe called “Scoops”. Susan says she has time for Scoops — in fact her whole life is motivated by finding the time to go to Scoops — but Sean says he rarely has time for Sccops. They have very different lifestyles. Susan reckons they might have to call it quits.

In other worrying relationships, Alene is having a great time in the sort-of country. Simon teaches her that the lamb she eats in the big city are actually baby sheep (this has never occured to her). However, Simon doesn’t tell Alene that he likes her, like ever.

They go to Simon’s friend Katie’s house and Katie asks Simon how he’s going with it all. Simon says, “I don’t like when people ask those particular questions”. Huh? Katie explains that she just wants to know how it has been — possibly the most benign question one human could ask another human — and Simon says very defensively, “I’m not going to answer that just yet, because I feel like it’s invading my personal space right now”.

What?

Sensing an opportunity, the producers ask him, “Dude, why didn’t you just answer the question?” and he looks like they’re asking him to swallow a live python. “I don’t know Alene well enough yet,” he says, annoyed.

Alene tells Katie she’s worried that he is so guarded. Katie tells her to “peck away at him” which sounds painful. “THIS IS NOT REALITY” Simon says to Katie, privately. Katie is all, “can you be normal” because talking about the future is normal. Something is going on here.