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.
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.
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. Nice.
And that was less explosive and least dramatic ending of the too.
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.
Fortunately Scott woke up just in time and decided to call her out and stay put.
Of course he was devastated when he saw the evidence on film in front of him, Gia hustling to be someone else’s trophy wife.
Her first question to suitor James, how much money did he make and would he pay for everything because that’s what she expected.
Urgh.
In the past every MAFS season has had it’s villain, I thought this year, Bec would 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.
She thought she was clever enough to keep her real self under wraps, 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 liars and the bullshitters and boy did it work.
This TV was so explosive, cringeworthy, and heart rending for the people, in this case two men, who had trusted ambitious girls who believed themselves worthy of more. 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.
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.