Anthony tries to smooth it over with Nadia. Photo / Channel 9
Married At First Sight has reached its ugly, sweaty and boozed-up zenith at a reunion dinner party that resulted in several fiery confrontations.
At this point, I don't think anyone actually likes each other. But contracts were signed so everyone has to come back. And that means EVERYONE: That chick who ditched her husband after their wedding night and ran away. The entrepreneur. The girl with the Legally Blonde accent.
"It's going to be quite awkward," expert Trisha observes as she watches everything play out on video link from the underground garage with the other experts. Trisha, that's quite the understatement you classy dame.
As the evening kicks off, the first few people to filter into the room have a cobwebbed history - some of their storylines overlapping in tales of heartbreak and rumoured willie pics.
When Nadia walks in alone, we're all confused. Why is Nadia alone? Anthony doesn't let her venture outside of a five metre radius without him.
The girls huddle around and she promptly reveals all.
"He dropped me like a hotcake" she says, and I immediately picture the McDonald's hotcakes.
Moving into the dining room, the alcohol continues to flow and Sharon reaches that point in the night where she feels so sorry for Nadia she just starts repeatedly telling her how beautiful she is.
After an uncomfortable amount of time passes, Anthony decides to take a seat next to Nadia and offer a very stilted apology. He talks to her like she's a child he's never met before.
Nadia's natural reaction is to not reply and instead pretend she's getting food out of her teeth for the whole ten minute apology.
Nadia refuses to give Anthony a reaction and instead waits until she's off camera to yell at us as if we're the ones who threw hotcakes at her or whatever.
"I KEEP MY COOL! I'M CHILL! BUT SERIOUSLY?!" she says, seeming absolutely not chill.
She then later makes the declaration that Anthony is "such a f***ing douche". And that's not me taking creative license. There's even subtitles just to make it clear.
But that wasn't even the worst of it, because in the season finale which followed immediatley after the reuninion, everyone is locked in a warehouse again and made to face the experts to explain the mess they've made over the past two months.
Burning questions are answered. For instance, Nadia is forced to recount the final dark moments of her marriage with controlling husband Anthony where - after the cameras stopped rolling - he threw hotcakes at her or something.
I should note, everyone on Monday night's finale is seriously glazed in sweat. Obviously, it's because of the exhaustive conditions I've been reading a lot about lately. Come to think of it, all the contestants also look like they're concentrating real hard to not pee themselves tonight. And at one point, I swear, I hear Mel Schilling scold Lauren and Susan off-camera for acting like schoolchildren.
It's been four months since they all began this experiment. And we're all thinking: WHY. ARE. WE. STILL. HERE?
Our mood is swinging somewhere between Lauren and Andrew.
We watch a montage of the wedding days again and while that's playing I go to the fridge and get a bag of grated cheese.
The psychologists tip toe into the whole Anthony and Nadia mess rather delicately, pointing out that Anthony had a lovely reaction when he saw Nadia for the first time.
At that moment, Nadia breaks down.
She cries about everything. She cries for what could've been. She cries about giving her heart up only to have it broken. And she cries about Anthony throwing hotcakes at her or whatever she said happened.
All of a sudden, Nadia walks out.
We wait.
The sun sets and rises again.
She then returns.
The experts have had to stall for quite a while and, now Nadia has returned, they delicately attempt to get her to talk about the drama. Partly because it's their job as psychologists to ask but also because they know this episode is screwed without all the Nadia/Anthony gear.
"It's very confusing. It's a really fine line between sincerity and truth," Nadia says.
"Because at the end of the day, I guess it's the fact that he says all the right things but there's no substance to it."
The experts know we're only here to watch the mess between these two unfold, so they decide to slowly squeeze the juice out and come back to them later.
Next up, Michael is propped up on the couch and the experts replay the footage of him asking for a lady with tiny ears who weighs three kilograms and he basically tells them "so what".
It wouldn't be right of me not to point out Michael has a major perspiration issue tonight.
Not to be a brat, but I screengrabbed a photo of him, imported it into Photoshop and circled all the incriminating moist patches.
If he stands up, I'm sure there'd be an unfortunate damp patch on the backside of his fitted chinos, too.
I don't have all the facts. Maybe he's nervous. Maybe it's because of extreme conditions and a lack of toilet breaks. Or maybe Michael just needs to apply an F-tonne of Rexona.
No one really can say.
We catch up with John and Deb next, and they've truly been up to some exhilarating things. Deb tells us she's been walking on a beach. And John is still not Polynesian.
Speaking of which, we watch archived footage of all the times Deb realised John isn't Polynesian as per her request.
Deb's given the opportunity to defend her desire for a man from the Islands. She rolls her eyes and says it's not as ridiculous as it's been made out to be.
"When I applied I wrote down what I wanted in a man ... I did say someone from the Polynesian islands and I said someone of Italian heritage and also someone from Canada or Texas," she explains.
It all makes sense now and, suddenly, we understand Deb's severe disappointment when John rocked up and he wasn't an islander in double denim with a cowboy hat named Mario.
It's all about context, dummies.
We then move onto Cheryl and her first husband Jonathan. The experts dredge up the issue of the texting scandal between Jonathan and Scarlett even though it was solved weeks ago.
It's so boring I start smooshing the tiny shards of now-warm grated cheese into my thumbnail.
Just as Cheryl think she's escaped, the experts make her stay and her second husband Andrew is wheeled out.
By now, we're in our thirteenth hour of the reunion and everyone's starving and deprived of air and is clamouring for a cracked window. At one point, I see Simon being made to wash expert John Aiken's car but you probably didn't see it because it was a quick cutaway.
The experts decide it's the perfect opportunity to show the entire room the much-talked-about footage of the infamous "boys' night".
Andrew reacts appropriately.
Watching the footage means seeing Andrew make this gesture again.
After weeks of pretending like he didn't remember a second of the boys' night, Andrew's forced to respond.
"That was pretty brutal actually. Brutally honest." he says. "That's not me. That's not who I am."
"Things weren't going to well so I was staring that way," he later giggles and none of us are entirely sure what he means but I think it may be another comment about Cheryl's boobs?
I don't know. Me and Mel Schilling make the same face.
The experts then open it up to the group and go to Sean for his opinion even though he's already given it at the dinner party weeks ago and again at the commitment ceremony and again in several piece-to-camera monologues.
Honestly, I'd rather have a ten minute conversation about Susan's side-ponytail.
We then U-turn this fun bus back around to the Anthony and Nadia situation.
A seven minute montage of Anthony being a wanker is played.
They're then called up to the couch and the experts make Nadia explain those dark moments where Anthony threw a hotcake at her.
"The cameras stopped rolling and Anthony switched off," she begins. "He basically just cut it. It was quite brutal. I was incredibly hurt by the situation. You didn't give it a chance. And you didn't give me a chance outside of this whole experiment. Instead you ran away."
Anthony offers a stilted apology with no emotion and Nadia doesn't accept it.
As heartbreaking as the moment is, it's three in the morning and some of the other contestants keep begging for a food break so Nadia's told to stop crying and to move back to the group couch please.
As one final kick in the face to Nadia, the experts wheel Nick and Sharon out and declare they're still together and make them say they love each other in front of all the losers who didn't find love.
But there is a silver lining I think we can all take away from this mess. It needs to be noted that, out of everyone, Nick's benefited the most from this series.
His complexion is positively glowing. His posture's improved with the confidence boost. He's got highlights.
It's a truly remarkable transformation.
And really, isn't that all we want from a dating show?
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