I bet Gia, the girl who has become a reality star for all the wrong reasons wishes she had never signed up for the MAFSAU experiment.

You can tell from my profile I do like to watch the glamour and psychology producers of reality formats manage to deliver in the Bravo Franchise real housewives, Love Island and Married at First Sight. I have watched the latest season of Married At First Sight in it’s entirety and reviewed it near the beginning and the fights began erupting, not between the couples necessarily but between the cast, and mainly the women, of which cast member Gia paired with Scott was usually at the centre.

But I don’t think even producers could have predicted how she would provide them with the most exposing content of all in their new end of experiment challenge, “Is the grass greener” where participants attend a dinner party and are introduced to another potential match the experts had lined up for them at the beginning of the process.

The task is pitched as a confronting challenge to see how each person responds to a new potential match and to enable participants to test the strength and validity of their feelings to their existing match.

The men particularly Scott, Gia’s partner and David, Alissa’s partner surprisingly felt so uncomfortable facing this challenge, they chose to remove themselves to not threaten their existing relationships. In contrast it was their partners Alissa and Gia had the most fun meeting their new matches. Alissa connecting with her new guy on social media and Gia going as far to say she would date her guy James on the outside, and telling him she would be available and done with the experiment in a week.

Producers of the show must have been jumping for joy to capture these exposes on camera. The behaviour so revealing and ruthless on the part of the women it became too brutal to own. It does make you realise how unconscious their behaviour is when both women are clearly pretending to be working on relationships without real genuine feelings behind them or so in secure and unstable in their existing relationships they are seeking validation from anywhere, perhaps in an attempt to make existing partners not delivering the adoration they have been taught to expect in Disney movies, jealous.

The twist, no one knew, thought about or even considered the camera capturing everything would later be shown to their respective other halves, and boy when they were, did the shit hit the fan.

The camera doesn’t lie. (Even though the edit sometimes does.)

When David tackled Alissa on her behaviour she didn’t even acknowledge his feelings or accept how her behaviour might have hurt him. Instead she got defensive, blew the whole thing up and blamed him for it. But why? Was it just a massive ego, no empathy or compassion, does she just not like him? Does she really think he’s a weak man? There’s been a question mark around him the whole season about his job and more importantly his bank balance.

And that was the less explosive and least dramatic ending of the two.

Gia made up some cockamamie story about being unable to stay for the last two days of the experiment when she’d managed 3 months already and gave Scott an ultimatum she was leaving with him or without him. Again why? Was it on reflection she couldn’t face being exposed yet again and looking like she was the bad one, unable to really explain why she had behaved in such a way.

Scott woke up just in time and decided to call her out and stay put. Scott is definitely coming out as the good guy in the edit, but it’s a TV show so you just don’t know. We know Gia has told him she loves him and he hasn’t said it back. Not a good position for any women to be in.

Of course he was devastated on camera when he saw the evidence on film in front of him, Gia hustling to be someone else’s trophy wife was not a pretty watch. In her defense we might not know what pushed her to be like that. The edit this season has focused on the women’s feuding and the men’s more devious behaviour has been kept from the narrative. We all know men cheat and like to control in real life.

Gia’s first question to suitor James, how much money did he make and would he pay for everything because that’s what she expected. Was this a dig at what she wasn’t getting from Scott?

If so it is surely going to backfire, especially if she does like him and this behaviour stems from feeling angry, hurt and insecure.

In the past every MAFS season has had it’s villain, I thought this year, Bec had been cast to take the top spot but at the 11th hour Gia has ended the season as the best MAFS villain in history, shallow, mercenary, and with one massive agenda, except is that really the truth or just the story ruthless TV producers have told us. Could Gia just be a girl not getting what she needs from her partner and that insecurity has manifested in her trying to manufacture something that Scott is unable to deliver.

She may have thought she was clever enough to keep her real self and feelings under wraps, but the truth always comes out in the end. I almost think producers came up with this final task to expose the fakery they knew was happening but were unable to pinpoint and expose for the viewer.

The “is the grass greener” task was the ultimate bait and switch entrapment scheme to catch out the cast and boy did it work. The men in the case of Scott and David unable to even participate which for men bold enough to enter an experiment like this in the first place did raise a deeper question for me why they weren’t secure enough to sit in a room with other women if they were genuine. Married men meet and talk to other women in their everyday lives all the time without ripping someone’s clothes off even if they want to.

This TV was so explosive, cringeworthy, and heart rending for the people, in this case two women, who had trusted ambitious men who either wouldn’t communicate, wouldn’t truly commit maybe believed themselves worthy of more. Or maybe it was the men, who found themselves at the mercy or ruthless women, as producers would have us believe. If this is true what they got in the end was one big old slap in the face.

It’s been a fantastic season, probably the best yet and if you’ve never watched Married at First Sight it would be one incredible weekend binge watch if you are at a loose end. It’s the final dinner party next where all will be revealed. I remember someone telling me there are always three sides to any story, my side, your side and the truth. Get TV producers involved and the truth goes out the window so you really have to read between the lines. The one thing that is true the women have come off way worse in the edit than the men Mafsau 2026. And for any women thinking of signing up they should really watch this season very carefully before doing so.

Oscar Wilde said it’s better to be talked about than not talked about. In the case of Gia and Alissa I am not so sure. Once out you cannot get toothpaste back in the tube and these girls I fear may be covered in toothpaste for a very long time.