I can't find people to discuss all fourteen volumes of The Wizard of Oz, so I'm not sure how you hope to find people who can discuss a TV show.
Never heard of the show, but something about the premise feels very early 00s to me. Or maybe I just lost track of the fact that these sorts of reality shows never went away.
I know what you mean. It's on its 11th or 12th season or something, so it's been around for awhile, at least.
It sounds like some psychologists had a brilliant idea for a study, but the Ethics Committee at their University said absolutely not, and so they sold the idea to a TV network.
I both read all of the Oz books as a child and read many of them to my own child, and am delighted to discuss its bizarreness. I am equally ill-prepared to discuss the horrors of the modern reality show genre.
It seems to me that there are 2 kinds of people that would go on this show
1) People desperate to be on TV.
2) People desperate to get married.
I guess there's a 3rd group --
3) People desperate to be on TV and to get married.
My guess is that the people in group 1 probably aren't the best spouses.
I actually know someone who was a bride on this and she is definitely category (1).
Have any of the people on the show been married before? I can imagine a couple of different versions: one for never marrieds, one for people who already have been married and divorced, and one for geriatric types who have been married a long time and want to try something different. My priors:
1. Results for the never marrieds would be the most random
2. The already divorced group would have a bunch of pairings that wouldn't get past the second week (been there, done that, fuck this) offset by some people earnestly doing the "I messed up the first time so I've got to try harder to do it right this time" having maybe too much patience with respect to pulling the plug
3. The geriatrics would essentially be making the decision "Well, it's this or going back to my old marriage or being alone until I die" which is a somewhat different calculation*
And as a parent I would be horrified by my kids being involved in something like this but would, unh, let's say "lack standing" in my children's eyes to make any comment on it (see below)
*At the time my wife and I married we already had a 1 year old child and had never lived together, despite knowing each other (dating, on and off) for 9 years. We're still married 38 years later but to put that in context, I do recall a voice from the back seat commenting to one of his siblings that "You know divorce must be really bad if our parents are still married." Meanwhile, my more courageous brother heads into getting ready for his 4th marriage.
I suppose someone must have done a study on the personality profile of people who sign up for these type of shows. They've been around long enough that the pool of subjects is pretty big.
11: The seasons that I watched were exclusively Never Marrieds. And no pre-existing kids, thank fucking god.
I wonder if there are enough children of couples who met on reality shows by now to make a reality show about them.
There's enough children of couples who met on Unfogged to make a blog about them.
(I just mean that it's a nontrivial set.)
9, 10 Yeah you can't drop that and not drop the deets too.
9/10: Yes!! Which season? (I haven't seen any season set abroad, nor anyone with a non-American accent.)
Is this where I mention that my cousin was the first Bachelor of that series? He's now married to someone else entirely, having declined to marry the person he wound up with on the show, and they just had their third kid.
He reports having enjoyed it but thinks it's better that he was in an early season.
It didn't go well, apparently: https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/reality-tv/married-at-first-sight/i-got-hammered-exmarried-at-first-sight-star-nadia-stamps-big-gripe/news-story/42d97f09e3c0c80f97c9e8753b762e7d
Well, isn't it going to be a pretty good bet that you'd get a wife pretty enough to be on TV? They're not actually showing non-pretty women on TV are they?
23 Jesus, the dude has a fash haircut.
22: My good friend's cousin was also the first Bachelor, if I remember correctly. I wonder if you are cousins? Any Quaker relatives in Virginia?
The Canadian Bachelorette (J/ill/ian Harris) is a good/prolific poster on Instagram if you're into that kind of thing (I am).
Quaker relatives in Virginia: correct, that's my family.
Over the ten completed seasons of MAFS, 34 couples have been chosen for the experiment. Out of these 34, 21 chose to stay married on Decision Day, at the end of the six- or eight-week experiment. As of mid-April 2020, however, only nine couples are still married, making for an overall success rate of 26%
This format has been adapted for TV shows in over 20 countries. The possibilities for cross-country comparisons are endless!
Huh, it's based on a Danish series, Gift Ved Første Blik.
22, 26: Wait! Nathan, are you sure you aren't hydrobatidae's good friend?
No, he's the Quaker in Virginia. Do keep up.
31: The Danish translates to "Who is this stranger in bed with me?"
Apparently gift in Danish means both "married" and "poison".
I saw an episode once and had the distinct impression that the couples were matched though an algorithm intended to maximize television ratings, not marital happiness. Specifically, ratings maximization demands a higher level of intra-couple conflict than marital happiness optimization.
The even more outrageous premise is 90 Day Fiancee. They bring people from other parts of the world to the U.S. on fiancee visas, which last for 90 days. So the couples have to get married within 90 days, or one of them has to return to their home country. Being from different countries, and often not having complete fluency in a common language, the cultural conflicts/misunderstandings make for great television! Plus the gold digger element and the immigration fraud element.
Being from different countries, and often not having complete fluency in a common language, the cultural conflicts/misunderstandings make for great television! Plus the gold digger element and the immigration fraud element.
And the self-selection effect in the kind of Americans who try for these sorts of marriages in the first place.
Jesus, the dude has a fash haircut.
Yeah, and it's popular among a bunch of twenty somethings. Even among lefties. But to me it's still fascist.
There's a picture of my grandfather and his brothers with that haircut.
yes. "I'm poison with her" would work as an epitaph for a lot of marriages.
90 Day Fiancee has a very dystopian-fiction feel to it. But then so did Big Brother when it started.
"Celebrity Innocence Project" would be a good one. Teams of C-list celebrities are each assigned to a death row inmate and have to get them reprieved. Each week the audience votes on which team has made least progress, and they lose and get kicked off the show (obviously dooming the prisoner).
I told our mutual contact and apparently we were both at her wedding.
I've totally guilty pleasure watched this. And I agree on the questionable ethics -- though I disagree on the manufactured drama. I feel like they knowingly or with reckless disregard for background checks set people up with abusive assholes just for the storyline
But then, after binging Unreal, it's hard to not be cynical...
Also, the variation I would find interesting be theee choices for each... contestant? One picked by "the experts, " one by the parents, and one by the oerson's best friends.
It's a very fine line between a fash haircut and a fuckboy haircut.
45/46: which seasons? I've watched 8 and 9, and bailed on 3 for being too excruciating.
RWM has been watching Married at First Sight too, and I find your final 25% category just so infuriating. In both seasons she's watched there's been exactly one guy like this and I want to kill them both. It doesn't help that I found both of their wives crush-worthy.
The other thing I find infuriating is the couples who don't have sex. The whole premise of the show is that you're married, it's not a marriage if you're not having sex. The main problem with the show is that you can't get divorced earlier. If it's been like 2 weeks and you're still not having sex, annul the marriage then.
RWM has been watching Married at First Sight too, and I find your final 25% category just so infuriating. In both seasons she's watched there's been exactly one guy like this and I want to kill them both. It doesn't help that I found both of their wives crush-worthy.
The other thing I find infuriating is the couples who don't have sex. The whole premise of the show is that you're married, it's not a marriage if you're not having sex. The main problem with the show is that you can't get divorced earlier. If it's been like 2 weeks and you're still not having sex, annul the marriage then.
If it's been like 2 weeks and you're still not having sex, annul the marriage then.
Or if she won't produce a male heir. And if the Pope is stroppy about it, declare your supremacy.
51: Needs more doors.
52: One does not simply walk into more doors.
50: I am so curious to know if we watched the same seasons!! Ask her for me?
Charlotte (Season 9) and Philadelphia (Season 8).
OMG those are the same seasons that I watched! Ask her if she loves Kristine and Keith from Season 8 as much as I do, and if she loves Keith (but maybe not so much Iris) from season 9 as much as I do. And ask her if she wants to commiserate on how awful we feel for Kate and Amber, respectively.
I have been waiting for so long to dish about these people!
Oh I'm here to commiserate with you directly about Kate and Amber. (I didn't watch most of it, but was in the room enough for that!) They both seemed so lovable and their "husbands" were absolutely the worst. At least Amber got what seemed to be a genuinely fun honeymoon before it all went so wrong. Luke was just so so mean to Kate for just no reason at all, and she just seemed so sad about it. I just wanted someone to love her!
RWM's worry with Keith and Kristine is that there's the whole thing about his unrealistic med school plans that Kristine is so invested in (from RWM's time as an academic advisor the whole go to nursing school in order to then go to med school is a common student weird plan that doesn't make any sense or work: just go to med school or go to nursing school and become a nurse!), but she thought that Keith's attempts to actually improve was genuinely admirable. Iris drove me crazy, you can't be saving yourself for marriage if you're already married! RWM says Keith and Iris were stunningly hot and he was a catch, but she didn't deserve him cause she couldn't get over her own shit. I really had trouble getting my head around how someone could square saving yourself for marriage because its sacred, with going on this ridiculous show where marriage isn't even a little bit sacred. But in her case I think the religion is just an excuse for being afraid of bodies.
I think that's exactly right. Iris has some super weird avoidance thing and needs to do some introspection about whether she's actually gay, asexual, or what, and has used religion to go a very long time avoiding the whole topic altogether.
I think that Keith #1 doesn't maybe actually want to go to med school, and might be caught in an exaggeration that he told to the producers. He wants to have babies and have a 9-5 job and bask in the light of his beloved wife.
I'm glad Jasmine and Will broke up, because I think ultimately he wanted someone more intellectual and she wanted someone more emotive and talkative.
I think both Jasmine+Will and Iris+Keith2 were matched up because visually it seemed like they "ought" to work.
I think that AJ+Steph will have a long happy marriage, and good lord he is intense. I am deeply suspicious of Jamie+Elizabeth staying together just for the fame, but hey, if they ever were able to develop a deep enough trust for each other that their horrible fighting became less damaging, then maybe they could have a real thing going.
Deonna+Greg are really lovely together. I think that's everybody!
Oh: and at least both Matt and Luke got their asses truly handed to them at the 6 month follow up episodes? They were both raked over the coals and it was very satisfying.
If you guys are going to watch any of the other seasons, I'd watch it with you guys. I just need a discussion buddy. Otherwise I think I've had enough of the show on my own.
(I like the format of the later seasons better than the early ones, fwiw.)
I think 59.2 agrees with our conclusion, the only problem is that Kristine doesn't seem comfortable with his actual level of ambition.
Yeah, AJ+Steph seemed happy even though he was super annoying. She just seemed so happy to be in a relationship that she wasn't annoyed with him. My only worry is that after 10 years of marriage she'll be like "wait, why did I do this when he's so annoying?" Yeah, Jamie and Elizabeth were incredibly toxic, it was hard to even watch them.
I'll pass on your email to RWM.
It's possible that everyone else in her life is so annoying, he doesn't even register.
...but something about the premise feels very early 00s to me
I remember the time well. I was afraid that if I pissed off my wife, she's arrange for gay men to come to the house and make fun of how I shaved.
Speaking of marriage-related reality show trash, I watched an episode of Don't Tell the Bride recently. It was an engrossing trainwreck. The show gives an engaged couple enough money (~£12k) for a wedding, on the condition that the groom plans it all--including planning the hen night and picking the dress--and the bride is completely in the dark until the actual ceremony (she tried on the dress for sizing, but that was it). Completely pernicious. It's a machine to wreck lower-class couples' marriages before they start, allowing everyone to tsk tsk their plight. "don't tell the bride $bride and $groom divorce" is a common google search suggestion. Just an awful thing I won't watch again.
Still. In the episode I watched, the groom decided they'd get married on a plane and then skydive out. The bride was not a skydiver and seemed like she might be afraid of heights. (I sincerely hope that was kayfabe.)
Jesus Christ, dalriata, is that really a thing? If you gave me £12k for a wedding I'd bank 11.5k and spend the remaining £500 on a reception at Noodles Plus. You couldn't possibly spend more because it only holds about 20 people and the booze, if any, comes from the supermarkets down the street.
The most painful show I saw was some kind of a copy of "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" The contestants were asked a series of progressively harder questions for more and more money. Only instead of being generic trivia, they were questions about the individuals's lives. There might have even been a lie detector attached to the contestant. I watched part of one episode on an old tv with a broken remote. The game show host asked one man: "Was your wife really the one?" I leapt for the TV to turn it off before he answered. I just couldn't bear it.
65: 14 series so far; it's hopped around networks since BBC Three went off the air. Unfortunately they don't actually give the groom cash, they just pay for the decisions that the groom makes that they approve us. It's like having somebody have fiduciary duty over you who only allows you to make the financial decisions that are sufficiently entertainingly bad.
This is the recent episode that got the most attention for being a horrid clusterfuck.
66:. I have a vague memory of this show. Did someone confess to murder to win the grand prize?
68.2 sounds like a rejected idea for a Borat movie.
68.2 They're dressed like they're in Midsommar, not like elves. This guy wants her to kill him.
Did you get to the end of the article where she forgives him and says something like, " your cruelty and selfishness touched a special place in my heart.". I think that's called the M-spot.
I'm crap with names. There was an early season, though, with a David and Ashley that would fill me with rage. The manufacturerd storyline was basically how frigid she was and he was such a nice guy who was trying so hard. But the entire time I got such a creepy vibe from him and thought, "Well of course she doesn't want him to touch her." And she was the villain the entire season. Then at some point after the season was over it came out that he had some sort of criminal record involving domestic violence.
I think my favorite "couple" was Sam and Neil. By the end of the season, you couldn't help but like them both. They didn't stay married, of course, but apparently remained besties afterwards.
That was the season I bailed on! Season 3. That's the season I was referring to when I said that they weren't paying enough attention to whether or not there was any attraction by the woman for the man.
David and Ashley were just awful. I didn't make it much past the honeymoon. I felt like she'd been totally shortchanged by giving her someone who she just had zero attraction for. In the few episodes I watched, he seemed like a perfectly nice person, but she was put in a terrible bind of feeling obligated while clearly acting like a cat that does not want to be crammed in a kitty carrier.
Sam and Neil were also excruciating on the honeymoon, and basically for the same reason - she was being such a jerk, but she also was put in an incredible bind, and didn't have the wherewithal to navigate "kind honesty" to Neil. I truly don't think the experts gave half a thought to whether or not she'd find him attractive. I did read some spoilers that she redeemed herself, like you describe, so I'm willing to grant her props for getting over herself and finding the good in the experiment.
I really, really liked the woman in the remaining relationship, Vanessa. I heard that she and Trey eventually broke up, though, post-show.
I kind of gave Sam some leeway because there was something about a close family member dying right before filming started. She was definitely being an asshole, but I chalked it up to lashing out in her grief. Neil, Neil was just so damned patient and sweet.
Oh, Vanessa and Trey. They split up and then there was a spinoff "Married at First Sight:Second Chances" where she got to pick her own match Bachelorette style. Yes, I watch a lot of trash TV.
An ancient wisdom says: "Don't worry too much as to whom you are going to marry, the next day you will discover you married somebody else". Not always true, but often true.
I thought the ancients were all about picking the partner whose dad had the most cows.
At least it's got a replicatable metric.