It feels like this is going to be a looooong Married At First Sight week, guys. This confessions business is wild – if one couple doesn’t crash in a fiery heap at the end of it, I’ll eat an old, congealed cod.
No I won’t but you know.
Anyway! Everyone is chipper. And by that I mean most couples are on the brink of throwing their partner’s valuables off the balcony into a compost bin. Sam and Cam are still not living together. Coco and Sam are on the super outs. Bryce and Melissa are… weirdly ok?
Melissa says she’s still a little upset about the hotness ranking but only a “2 out of 10”. They move on to the next challenge, sharing horrible past details about their lives with one another! Because I always bring up shameful or traumatic moments from my past with new boyfriends in the first week!
She explains that over the last twelve years, she’s been on/off sleeping with her ex – including while he was married, although she says she didn’t know he was married at the time. Bryce is shocked into silence and while he doesn’t get angry or upset with her, he definitely doesn’t take it well. Which is pretty hypocritical, as Melissa points out, because he cheated heaps on his ex and expected Melissa to take it well. So. Toxic masculinity, eh?
Thankfully we then pivot over to everyone’s favourite couple, Booka and Brett. Honestly, dump everyone else from this show and just have these two (and I’ll also accept Joanna and James, and Coco solo, and Belinda/Patrick).
They’re doing a new game where they have to stick things they don’t like about the other person, and then things they do like. Brett goes first and struggles to find things he doesn’t like about Booka, settling on her intensity (saying he wants to just have relaxed fun sometimes not deep convos) but mainly tells her she’s beautiful, she’s smart, and that he loves how unapologetically herself she is. It’s just SO adorable and SO cute and I SO want them to get for-real married at the end of this thing.
Then we head over to Coco and Sam. Sam apologises, and then they sit down to watch Coco’s audition interview, in which she talks really openly about how she has never been complimented by a boyfriend, never told she was beautiful and how much that hurt her. He then half-heartedly tells her she’s beautiful but it feels like WAY too little, too late. Coco cries and tells us watching it back re-affirmed for her what she does want from this experiment. It’s totally not Sam, by the way.
Anyway! Cam and Sam go for a golf game and seem to be getting along a bit better. Russell, the hero of this experiment, ranks the women based on their barbecue preferences not their looks. God bless that man. Alana and Jason watch Alana’s audition interview. Belinda tells Patrick she hates how loudly he chews apples, lol. Bec’s got the shits with Jake because he turned the light on when she was sleeping (big mood, a worthy argument).
Joanne and James are the next to do the hotness ranking, and Joanne puts Jake in first place with James after him, which James hates. I mean, no one wants to feel SECOND hottest but also Jake is literally a Greek God so… Anyway, James gets huffy but eventually realises he was being a bit stupid, buys her flowers and explains how he has trust issues. They make up.
Meanwhile Booka and Brett have sealed the deal and honestly couldn’t be more loved-up. They are so bloody cute? And Brett is such an angel, honestly if Booka wasn’t with him and I didn’t want them married for the next 50 years I’d be going down to that serviced apartment block and screaming for him to take me out.
Finally we get to the cheating scandal! It’s really not explained as to why Coco is inviting Cam over for a chat – he tells us he and Boy Sam work in construction (??? isn’t Sam a fashion designer?) and that they know each other from around the traps. Aside from this there is literally no reason for Coco to confide in him but that is MAFS, baby!
Anyway, it kind of makes sense when they sit down – Cam basically gives her background on Sam and what he knows about him, saying he can be disrespectful to women and a bit of a pig. For Coco it’s reaffirming her own experience with him, but then he’s making her laugh and she’s saying she hasn’t had this much eye contact with Sam in their whole time together… it kind of turns a corner.
In the end they both agree they would have been better suited together, and I mean we can all see where things are going here, right?
One last thing happens – Bryce and Melissa patch things up after he got pretty judgy over her sleeping with her ex for years. When a producer asks her is she was happy with how he spoke to her, she says “I don’t know any better”. Oh man. I’ve said it before but this woman should not be on this show! Don’t put vulnerable people on shows like this, period.
Tomorrow? Commitment ceremony! The experts tell Bec she’s not empathic! Someone tells Sam he’s a dick!
Melissa Mason is digital editor of marie claire. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
