Married At First Sight Australia 2023: James Weir recaps episode 24

The alarm is raised on Married At First Sight as one wife escapes without a trace and another is dumped by text.

OPINION:

A Married At First Sight wife is unceremoniously dumped by text while another goes on the run in the middle of the night and flees the country — leaving all of us wishing she took the rest of the freaks with her.

OK, fine. Flying back to Tasmania isn’t technically “fleeing the country” — but she travels across an expansive body of water without telling anyone and that’s just as dramatic.

She could at least show some manners and send a txt, like Harrison does to Bronte when he tells her to hit the bricks.

James Weir recaps: Read all the recaps and other MAFS stories here.

All the MAFS freaks are bussed out of the Southern Highlands retreat and back to Trash Tower. … Everyone except Taylor, who has disappeared. Rumours start going around that she has fled the mainland and hitched a ride on a trawler back to Tasmania.

“I received a message from Tayla,” Claire holds up her phone. “She just wrote, ‘Hey Claire. Everything got so hard with Hugo acting like he did. I feel so overwhelmed. I went back to Tassie yesterday morning.”

Tayla doesn’t say in the text if she managed to rescue her sex bag from Trash Tower or who to bestow its contents upon.

Maybe we should mail the sex bag to the horny mum.

Speaking of surprise text messages, Bronte has also received one – but not from Tayla. No, the txt she received was from her husband – informing her she has been dumped. She should’ve just treated it like a text from Myer about their stocktake sale and replied with: UNSUBSCRIBE.

We find Bronte slumped on the couch alone. She seems devastated. So we make her relive the pain for our personal entertainment. She says things took a turn on the final night of the retreat, when all the other couples accused Harrison of being fake.

“All of a sudden, he wanted to speak to me about our future – saying he wanted reassurance,” she says. “I don’t know how much more reassurance I could’ve given him. (I say to him) ‘I want a family, I want a marriage and I’m willing to move’. But that’s not enough for him. So, fine. (I’m like) ‘Do you want me to go home?’ He stormed out, txted me saying he can’t trust me and this relationship is done.”

We stroke her hair sympathetically and ask thoughtful questions, like, “Did he at least use a funny GIF?” and, “Did the text say: I’m sorry, I can’t, don’t hate me?”

Would you like us to bring Josh back into the experiment for you to marry?

At first we’re excited. Finally! We don’t have to put up with Harrison at tonight’s dinner party. But it turns out he’s still here and insists on travelling with Bronte in the sponsorship Suzuki Vitara.

Is this part of a grand scheme to drive him off a cliff?

When they arrive, the door to the warehouse slides open and Bronte furiously strides away from her husband as the girls rally around. She breathlessly tells them about the txt dumping. Everyone gasps. Even Melinda holds her in an embrace. It’s sweet … but we kinda wish they’d all dance around while screaming, “Toldja! Toldja! Toldja!”

… But seriously, we all toldja.

Just as the alcohol from the cocktail party pre-game starts to kick in, producers herd everyone into the dining room so the freaks can use their utensils as pitchforks on Harrison. It goes nowhere.

Harrison tries to out-Harrison himself and Bronte continues to fall into the trap by getting wound up to the point of hysteria, thus allowing her husband to point and say, “See? You’re always so unreasonable when all I’m trying to do is communicate”.

“I wanted reassurance, I wanted clarity around what our relationship would look like in the future,” Harrison tells the group about the break-up. “So I’m trying to have that discussion but Bronte gets up, walks out of the room and says, ‘I’m leaving, I wanna go home’. And that broke my trust. This is the problem I have in this relationship – you continuously break my trust.”

The thing is, Harrison doesn’t actually believe what he’s saying. He has just come on here to troll the experiment armed with inflammatory tactics learnt from Reddit forums frequented by Joe Rogan fanboys. He’s trying to get a rise out of Bronte as well as the other freaks and us. He’s the Alan Jones of dating shows.

When you possess enough red flags to make an entire outfit.

Of course, Bronte plays into it and storms out of the dinner, leaving her husband to shake his head at what he’ll brand as manic tendencies.

“I’m outta here. I’m done. I’m f***ing leaving,” she sobs before slumping on the concrete floor of a corridor.

Hon, please get up – this floor has not been cleaned in the 10 seasons this show has been on air.

Back at the dining table, Harrison continues to gaslight the group and Claire yells at him while ferociously wielding a chunk of bread.

The world’s top lawyers say juries are 15 per cent more likely to believe you if you wield bread while making a point.

Harrison then pulls a Jesse and tells her to shush.

“You are literally the loudest mouth in here with the worst relationship,” he spits before bringing up her affair. “Bronte told me that you stayed to repair your image and you have absolutely no attraction to Jesse – you guys don’t have any intimacy. Why would Bronte lie to me?”

Claire almost chokes on that hunk of brioche. Jesse starts to break down and admits he too doubts Claire’s intentions.

They’re breaking up before our very eyes but we don’t even have time to care because we’re suddenly distracted by the clip-clop-clip-clop sounds of high heels clacking down the concrete hallway towards the dining room. At first, we think it’s Dion from last year’s season, but then the silhouette of a menacing figure appears in the shadows and everyone gasps: Tayla’s back from the dead. … Or, Tasmania.

Dun dun duuun!

“I did a runner at four o’clock in the morning on Friday,” she shrugs.

Some alone time in the pristine fields of Australia’s island state was exactly what she needed. But then she got bored and decided to jet back to Trash Tower to terrorise her husband one last time.

She tries yet again to make him the villain – accusing him of being … well, a Tayla.

“You completely shut me out and you really let me down,” she whines, rewriting history. “But I will give this a go. I believe everyone deserves a second chance if their heart is in the right place.”

Hugo digs deep and summons the powers from Claire’s fairy cards. He takes a deep breath and smiles. Then he dumps her. No txt message required.

Tayla can swim back to Tassie with her sex bag.

So … we’re guessing there won’t be any break-up sex, huh?

MAFS Australia is available to stream first on ThreeNow or on Three Sunday 7pm and Mon to Weds 7.30pm.