MAFS groom Cam storms off during final vows on tonight's episode.
OPINION:
The insensitive Married At First Sight husband who has spent the last three months refusing to hug his wife is given a taste of his own ice-cold medicine during Monday night’s final vow ceremony when he’s triumphantly dumped and issued a slap-down that provokes a hissy fit as wild and unruly as his ponytail.
While there aren’t any literal toys to throw out of the pram, this husband comes close by tossing his vow cue cards at his ex’s feet and stomping off before barking at a producer to start the car so he can crap off back to his FIFO work in Darwin.
The only thing that would make it better is if the wife yelled after him: “C U in the NT!”
James Weir recaps: Read all the recaps and other MAFS stories here.
These final vow episodes are always a snooze – jam-packed with rehashed chitchat, fake emotional pondering and sepia-toned flashbacks. But the producers know we’re only here for one thing: to witness Lyndall ripping strips off Cam.
And, for once, they don’t muck around. We whirl through the other two ceremonies like they’re Maccas drive-thrus and we’re criminals in a stolen getaway car, frantically speeding through to gather road trip snacks.
Not even five minutes into the episode, Evelyn is marching across a random garden to an alfresco altar to meet her husband, Rupert. She looks miffed. Perturbed, even – like us when our getaway car screeches out onto the highway and we look in the brown paper bag only to realise those teenage Maccas morons gave us the wrong order.
“It took you six weeks to take me on a single date and that was only when I asked you and that says a lot,” she snips.
“Someone who sees my worth would’ve put his ego aside and fought for me as I have fought for you. So, for this reason, I choose not to continue on this relationship.”
Rupert’s reaction?
“Um, OK,” he shrugs.
We can predict it already: he’s about to sledge her the same way she just sledged him.
“A platonic connection alone is not enough to sustain a healthy and loving relationship,” he says through stops and starts and stutters. “I feel I have truly tried to build this foundation with you, but the pressure was only on me. I didn’t think you were putting your best foot forward. I really do hope you find the love of your life.”
And that’s the end.
“Thank you,” Evelyn replies, as if she has just negotiated her way out of a dud business deal.
Then she struts off, keen to get home and throw out any outfit her ex-husband described as “unhealthy piss yellow”.
Next is Tahnee and Ollie, but we don’t even bother RSVPing to their ceremony. We know they’ll stay together, so there’s no point in attending. Doing so will just make us feel queasy from all the cuteness. We’re not in the mood for sweet. We want salty.
Enter: Cameron and Lyndall.
“I’m not falling in love with her,” Cam grunts to a mate while hanging out at the barramundi farm.
He’s back in the NT for a week to think about what decision he’ll deliver at the vow ceremony. But there’s really no point. He has already made up his mind.
“Is she fallin’ for you?” his mate asks.
Cam shrugs. “Yeah.”
Somewhere along the way, he has started talking about his wife like she’s some big, needy desperado. All because she wants a hug. And to shampoo his ponytail.
Later on, as the sun sets over the murky barra swamp, he starts to laugh.
“I just don’t think Lyndall is gonna fit in my life,” he smiles. The camera pans around to show all the empty, crushed cans of Great Northern on the ground. “I’m just waiting to get hit by lightening. Put me outta my misery!”
Oh, doll. You have no idea the electrical bolt that’s about to hit you.
Cam jumps on a plane and heads back to Sydney to pull the pin on his marriage. Minutes before the ceremony, he continues to show his trademark sensitivity.
“How much thought and time has gone into your final decision?” a producer asks.
He grunts. “About 10 minutes.”
“I think maybe Lyndall will disapprove of my decision,” he adds. “But … I don’t miss Lyndall. That’s the hard truth.”
It’s around now we start to giggle because the actual hard truth is he’s the only one who doesn’t know his hard truths are about to be cancelled out by Lyndall’s hard truths.
Cam thinks he’s holding the upper hand. But when Lyndall starts walking towards him in the middle of an abandoned parkland, we know things are about to change. Her head is high and her shoulders are back. She’s more confident than we’ve ever seen her.
Showing zero emotion, she greets him and swiftly pulls out her speech that has been printed on reams of A4 computer paper.
“Unfortunately, at one point or another, the man I met at our wedding started to fade away,” she says, cutting right to the chase.
She reads the laundry list of bad behaviour – how he roused on her and stormed out of rooms whenever she tried having deeper conversations. She recalls how he completely withdrew and refused her touch. Then there was the time he scolded her to “stay in ya lane!”
“I drove myself insane trying to figure out how to be the partner you wanted,” she says, building up to her first slap-down. “I’ve realised that there was never anything I could do to be the partner you wanted – because you simply don’t want one.”
Then she brings up her fight with cystic fibrosis and how, thanks to a medical breakthrough, she has been given a new chance at life – and she’s not wasting it on an affection-phobic FIFO worker with a ponytail.
“I won’t spend another moment of that life restricted – not by my condition, not by my body, not by fear and certainly not by you. So, to put it plainly, stay in your lane – and I’ll stay in mine,” she declares. “I wanna build a life I’m proud of – and that life does not include you.”
The judges raise their scorecards. It’s tens across the board. The only note from the adjudicator is that, maybe next time, she could yank his ponytail.
Cam looks like someone just pissed in his barra swamp. “Well said,” he mutters, sarcastically.
He reaches into the pocket of his blazer to pull out his own vow cards but Lyndall promptly informs him it’s not necessary.
“Before you start,” she interrupts. “I just feel like, no matter what you say today, it’s only gonna disappoint me again. And I think I’m just done.”
He’s so shocked he practically spits out his Great Northern. With a look of disgust, he tosses his vow cue cards at his ex’s feet.
“Here ya go – you can have that then,” he snaps, before dramatically pivoting away and storming off.
Of course, because we’re in the middle of a random parkland, he has no idea where he’s going.
“Hey, get me in the car – I’m outta here!” he grumbles at a producer. “That’s me done.”
There truly is nothing left to say except, C U in the NT!
MAFS Australia is available to stream first on ThreeNow or on Three Sunday 7pm and Mon to Weds 7.30pm.
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