All the wom-en who in-de-pen-dent.
A horny mum explodes on to Monday night’s Married At First Sight premiere and horrifies all the young kids with personal tales of sex freakdom.
We’re back for the tenth season of Australia’s Next Top Freakshow. It’s astounding how the producers of this esteemed programme continue to break new ground. They’ve scoured the country to bring us the finest lunatics – luring them in with the promise of love, national humiliation and potential glassings.
“Despite the global obsession, the experiment’s sole focus remains unchanged,” the voiceover lady says.
" … To humiliate everyday Australians by destroying their lives on national television and ensuring they’ll never work in conventional jobs ever again?” we reply.
“To help people find true love,” the voiceover lady corrects us, stifling a giggle.
Tonight, all the contestants gather at bachelor and bachelorette parties. It’s an opportunity for us to get to know everyone before their lives are completely ruined.
But this recap is not a comprehensive catalogue of all the single weirdos. We will only be shining a spotlight on the top shelf freaks. And we’re not using the word “freaks” in a disrespectful way. It’s pretty much just a direct quote from the freaks themselves.
“Tonight’s gonna be, like, a Mums Gone Wild night,” single mum Melissa, 41, cheers in the back of the limo on the way to the party. “I look like the girl next door, but I actually like to see myself as a little freak in the sheets.”
Well, you are just a breath of fresh air, Melissa. We appreciate your candour – and we’re sure your kids and their classmates will, too.
Then we cut to packaged footage of her milling about her boudoir.
“I’m not a regular mum. Warning! Warning! I am sassy, I am loud and I like to spice things up,” she says while riffling through lingerie in the top drawer of her bedroom’s Kmart tallboy.
“I love role playing. Sex is HUGE for me,” she continues to share.
After just 40 seconds, we feel like we know everything about Melissa. She loves sex and her favourite singer is probably P!nk.
At the bachelorette party, she continues to be her demure and understated self.
“My dream guy is Thor. He’s big! Big … hammer,” she theatrically winks to one of the younger girls, who takes the OTT confession in her stride:
Then Melissa struts across the room and corners Sandy. Sandy grew up in a strict Indian family and is talking about how her parents are very traditional and won’t be coming to her wedding.
Something about this story resonates with Melissa, who sympathises appropriately.
“It’s like being 41, right?” she cuts in. “[Guys] are like, ‘How are you about sex?’ And I’m like – ‘Ahh, I look like the girl from next door but I’m a FREAK IN THE SHEETS.”
" … Okay,” Sandy replies, slowly realising why her parents don’t want to be seen on this show.
Melissa sees herself as somewhat of a sexy Yoda. She’s a deep well of knowledge who just wants to be … plunged.
“There’s a lot of amazing women in that room tonight and I’m the eldest out of all of them,” she tells us. “And I’m like, ‘Hey girls, I’ve been here, done that. So I wanna show you a thing or two’.”
Yeah, girls. Show some respect! Melissa saw Sex And The City when it originally aired on TV. Learn from her experience!
“Tonight my sassy side is coming out,” she continues to muse. “I feel like these baby cubs need to see where the mamma bear comes from.” Then … she roars. “Raaahhhrr!”
Melissa then sits each of the girls down for private chats where she mum-splains how sex works.
“As I get older, sex is very important to me,” she declares to one perplexed young blonde girl. “I’m a freak in the sheets, ya know what I mean?”
Melissa is a dominant personality, but she might just be about to meet her match. Melinda is 32, sells make-up on the internet and describes herself as “super successful”, as footage plays of her rolling around town in a Porsche.
As soon as Melinda enters the party, Horny Mamma Bear Melissa hooks her claws into the fresh meat. Talk turns to what kind of guys they’re looking for.
“Older,” Melissa states. “Only because younger [guys] … that’s who I’ve been f**king on a weekly basis. They’re my f**k boys. I’m actually quite a sexual person. I got multiple men. Multiple!”
Melinda looks like she wants to be run over by her own Porsche.
“I’m gonna bang my husband on the first night,” Melissa continues to over-share. “A THOUSAND PER CENT. Are you?”
Melinda laughs uncomfortably. “Probably not,” her voice is high and strained.
“Wow,” Melissa snips.
“What do you mean, WOW?” Melinda squints.
“Well, you just got married to him and now you don’t wanna sleep with him?”
“Because I don’t KNOW him.”
“What happens if Thor rocked up? Are you gonna wanna f**k him?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Melissa looks personally offended.
“Well, maybe just take your walls down a little bit, honey – you might have a bit of fun along the way,” Melissa advises.
Then she swigs her wine and tries to think of how she can weave more of her sex freak exploits into the conversation.
Now comes the point in the evening where everyone pledges undying support for one another and promises are made to never steal each other’s husbands.
“I just want us all to stick together and just be there for each other,” one of the wives gushes.
“Yeahhhh!” all the girls cheer while clinking their wine glasses.
And with that, the curse is activated. No one will stick together and everyone will get backstabbed.
Across town at the bachelor party, there’s no horny dad but there is this guy who looks like he’d play a weird uncle in a ‘90s family sitcom:
Then the bad boy music begins to play. Uh-oh! Cool Guy alert!
“Most people, when they first meet me, would describe me as pretty arrogant and cocky,” Jesse tells us as he swaggers into the party. “But I’m just comfortable with who I am. The confidence comes from being an individual. Fight the power!”
A producer asks him to list a few of his turn-offs and he doesn’t hesitate.
“Someone who is obsessed with their social media. Pumped up lips. Long eyelashes,” he replies.
Well, this is the perfect show for you.
“And powerlifters,” he continues. “They use the gym as, like, a crutch for their personality.”
Yeah. Kinda like people with top knots.
Another standout groom is Harrison. He’s a builder, has muscles and is just really down to earth.
“Girls think I’m hot,” he mutters.
But hot people aren’t immune to heartbreak. At the bucks’ party, he tells the boys about how his last girlfriend cheated on him.
Wow. That must’ve been really devastat-
“I’m so glad it happened while I’m still young and hot,” he sighs. “Imagine if it happened at 40 or 50 when all my options are gone.”
And that’s what life’s all about. Silver linings. Who will he be matched with? We pray to the spirit of Dr Trisha that he’s paired with The Horny Mum.
Now comes the time in the episode where the experts step in to match everyone. But instead of putting hours of their time into scientifically analysing the contestants, they spend days on end doing a photoshoot where they pose like Destiny’s Child … if Beyonce, Michelle and Kelly ran a regional law firm.
The experts pair Harrison and Bronte for the first wedding of the series. He says he constructs luxury homes (ie: he’s a builder) and she says she’s an online beauty educator (ie: she has a YouTube channel and owns a mascara wand).
“I think in this experiment I will polarise people,” Harrison tells us. “Some people love me. And then some people don’t like me. That’s fine. Not everyone has taste.”
We love when producers blatantly lead the contestants into saying things like this. It makes the villain edit a breeze.
We watch overlay footage of Harrison working out shirtless in a gym. Ugh. So obnoxious. If I saw that kind of behaviour in my own gym, I’d complain to the front desk, cancel my membership and take my business over to Fernwood ladies-only gym.
As Harrison gets ready on his wedding day, he continues to prove how slick and suave he is.
“The inspiration for the suit today was Daniel Craig in Casino Royale,” he informs us.
Huh. Okay. To us it looks a little less James Bond and a little more Diane Keaton. Oh, we’re teasing! As if Diane Keaton would be caught dead in a Tarocash suit.
Wedding day nerves are completely normal. Harrison seems a little jittery and producers ask him what his biggest fear is. His answer? That the experts have paired him with an uggo.
The producers serve it right back to him. “What if she doesn’t like what she sees? Have you ever thought about that?”
“No,” he scoffs. “I just don’t see that happening. Have you seen my suit?”
You mean the Diane Keaton suit?
“That suit speaks for itself,” he sniffs.
It’s around this time on a wedding day that the groom might start thinking about his soon-to-be wife – wondering how she’s feeling and what he might say when he finally gets to lay eyes on her as she walks down the aisle.
“I am a catch and I think any girl would be lucky to walk down the aisle to me,” Harrison muses as he stands at the altar.
That’s when Bronte comes skipping down the aisle and, while she does look stunned, she has no idea about the nightmare she’s about to walk into.
“I promise to give you everything,” Harrison pledges in his vows. “All of me. The bad … and the good.”
Huh. Something tells us it’ll be mostly the bad.
It’s only when the ceremony’s done and dusted that one of Bronte’s mates called Jess decides to pipe up with a key piece of information.
“As soon as I saw Harrison, my heart just sank for Bronte,” she tells us. “Because I knew that I recognised him. And he was the person I was warned about. Harrison is pretending to be someone who he’s really not. And I have proof.”
You better believe she pulls out the receipts and slaps them down on the counter like she’s returning an ugly set of sheets at Adairs.
At the reception, as Harrison schmoozes everyone, Jess pulls Bronte away.
“He really seems like he’s here for the right reasons,” Bronte gushes to her pal.
Oh Bronte.
“I need to tell you something,” Jess snips. “OK, so, I have a friend who is from Sydney. She told me about this guy that is going on to MAFS that she has been dating for the last month and a half. I spoke to her, she told me how he’s saying [he] wants to be with her when he finishes this experiment.”
She waits for a reaction.
“Yeah?” Bronte replies, intrigued at the idea of an innocent bride on this show getting paired with such a rat. She clearly doesn’t understand that she is the bride who has been paired with the rat.
“Babe, it’s him. It’s HIM. It’s Harrison,” Jess clarifies. “He’s pretty much been planning a future with this young girl. And he’s planning on being with her after this experience.”
As usual, Bronte looks shocked and surprised.
One of the producers steps in to worsen the heartache. “Get the phone out!” they instruct, encouraging Jess to air the screenshots.
There’s pics of Harrison and screenshots of messages he has sent the girl.
And then (he told her), ‘Imagine if I got you pregnant before I went on MAFS – what a scandal,” Jess adds.
This information is shocking. There’s nothing that could make it more heartbrea-
“Oh, and he has a kid,” Jess adds.
“WHAT?” Bronte screams.
“Has he not told you?” Jess squints.
“NO!”
“Oh, well, he has a kid.”
Y’know, Jessica, now you seem to just be enjoying the destruction.
“I need to confront him,” Bronte declares while storming past the dried fauna arrangements and through a macramé archway towards her husband.
“Who’s the 20-year-old that you have on the outside?” she interrogates her husband.
Harrison knows exactly what to say to calm her down.
“I was seeing a NUMBER of girls before I came on this,” he shrugs. “I was seeing MULTIPLE women at a time.”
The confrontation descends into an argument over who has been more blime-fibe-eb.
“You’re blindsiding me with this!” he yells.
“I FEEL BLINDSIDED,” she yells back.
At a cosmetic injectables clinic somewhere in Perth, Tracey Jewel’s ears are burning.
MAFS Australia is available on Three and ThreeNow 7.30 pm Sunday - Wednesday.
The film satirises tech moguls trapped in a mansion as chaos erupts outside.
