‘Married at First Sight’: 1 Big Change That Could Fix the Show for the Better
Married at First Sight Season 17 is limping to a close. The chaotic Denver-set season of the Lifetime reality series resulted in no lasting marriages but did produce plenty of animosity between the cast members, which was on full display during the two-part reunion.
The ‘Married at First Sight’ Denver cast tried to ‘control the narrative’
What went wrong with MAFS Denver? Couples struggled with a lack of attraction and intimacy, different religious beliefs, and general negativity, among other issues. But the issue apparently went much deeper than just a bad batch of matches. At the reunion, Brennan, who was married to Emily, claimed that the entire cast had agreed to “band together” in an attempt to control the show’s narrative.
“Let’s not give the producers the control to spin the narrative however they want We were like, let’s take control for ourselves and tell our story the way we wanted to,” he said. “Our goal, collectively, was to get through this together in the best possible way.”
While the cast might have thought that working together off-camera would make them look better on TV, the plan backfired. Accusations of lying and manipulation started flying at the end of the season of continued through the reunion. Figuring out who to believe was nearly impossible, as frustrated Married at First Sight expert Dr. Pepper Schwartz admitted during part 2 of the reunion, which aired April 17.
“I can’t get into a that’s true and that’s false thing,” she said. “It’s gone on too deep, too confusingly for me to try to take that role.”
The ‘MAFS’ cast needs to spend less time together
It’s possible that the Married at First Sight Denver couples were doomed from the start. But some of the negativity might have been avoided if the cast had not been encouraged to spend so much time together.
While MAFS is supposedly about individual couples and their relationships, the show has gradually incorporated more and more interaction between the entire cast. In early seasons, newlyweds went on separate honeymoons and didn’t live in the same building when they returned home. Now, there are group bachelor and bachelorette parties and an all-cast honeymoon with group dinners and other shared activities. Once the cast returns from their trip, they all move into separate apartments in the same building. There are other all-cast activities throughout the season, including dinners and a couples retreat.
Understandably, cast members tend to bond as they go through the unusual and intense Married at First Sight process. But in the Denver season, they may have bonded too much. Aside from the agreement to deceive the producers, four of the five women developed a close friendship as they navigated their challenging marriages. By the time the reunion rolled around, they’d formed a united front against the men. The tension between the male and female cast members was thick, with host Kevin Frazier calling it “the most contentious reunion in Married at First Sight history.”
While marriages like Brennan and Emily’s and Clare and Cameron’s likely wouldn’t have worked out no matter what, there might have been less anger and fewer hurt feelings if the cast hadn’t constantly been comparing notes on their relationships. Several specific conflicts (such as Cameron and Brennan’s alleged attempts to go on a double date while still married) could have been avoided entirely if castmates weren’t socializing and gossiping together.
This isn’t the first time that intra-cast relationships have caused problems. During the show’s San Diego season, Alexis overhead a conversation between her husband Justin and Morgan’s husband Binh. She reported the conversation to Morgan, leading to serious problems in Morgan’s relationship with Binh, which ended in divorce after about a month. In season 14, Alyssa immediately rejected her husband Chris but refused to bow out of the process so that she could move into the same apartment building as the rest of the cast and hang out with “my girls.”
While the group dynamics end up producing plenty of drama that makes for compelling reality TV, it seems that they do little to help the actual marriage succeed. In some cases, spending time together as a cast only contributes to negative feelings and bad vibes. In the future, keeping the cast separate could improve the show’s success rate, which has been dismal in recent seasons.
Can the Denver cast heal after ‘MAFS’?
As for the Denver cast, they would likely do well to put their Married at First Sight experience behind them. That might include letting go of their friendships with each other. During part 2 of the reunion, MAFS expert Dr. Pia Holec suggested that if the women wanted to heal, they needed to move forward on their own, not as a group.
“While I can respect the desire to be coming together as a unit to support one another, I worry about how that’s adding more and more and more fuel,” she said. “And so I want to encourage you all to lean into that place of, ‘I’m healing. And I’m on my healing journey.’”
But moving forward is easier said than done. “I think it’s healthy to have a little bit of hate,” Emily says in a sneak peek at the upcoming “Where Are They Now?” special.
“These women do not want to heal,” says Chloe, seemingly speaking of the other women from the Denver cast.
“I wish them everything they need to be different people,” she says later in the teaser.
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