I’m Bitchin’ with Mitch: How “Married at First Sight” Got It Wrong in Season 15
If you’re like me — and nearly everyone else these days — you spend your post-dinner evenings mainlining Netflix, or YouTube or Hulu or what-have-you. I think about the Great Depression and what a boon that was for the then fledging film industry. People had had enough of bad news.
Hey! Just like us!
I don’t even feel guilty about this pleasure. I mix my light and fluffy entertainment with the occasional hard hitting documentary, so I can rightfully say: I “watch documentaries” on Netflix. (And frankly, Netflix and some of the other streaming services and networks have put out some excellent and important documentary films. I list a few* below, starting with the one that really took the filters off my lenses: “The Great Hack,” about the Facebook disinformation and influence campaign that produced Brexit.)
I also like to watch cult documentaries, or documentaries about “big money” people who seemed respectable, or “too big to fail,” getting busted. These seem very serious, educational and like they will keep me out of trouble.
Also, the bad guys tend to lose in the end. Bad, cult-y, molesty guys losing in the end is my most favorite fantasy ahead of the coming U.S. election. Because in my outer reality—here in the US of A, around the world—we can’t seem to get rid of them. … WTF?
But I tend to default, when the outer world is too much, to sappy reality TV shows. “Queer Eye” has been a favorite, and most recently, “Married at First Sight.” “Queer Eye” is a sweet, generous tear-jerker all around and I cannot believe that I did not get born a gay man so I could end up in the Fabulous Five with the BEST FREAKING JOB IN THE FREAKING WORLD.
No fair.
I love “Married at First Sight” because I learn about relationships from it. I know that sounds like me saying “I watch documentaries on Netflix,” but I do find it totally fascinating to watch people from very different backgrounds try to really commit to love over a very short period of time, even though they are total strangers. Each person is really challenged by their belief systems, their pasts and apparent limitations and it’s heartening to see so many of them work so hard to get past all that for the sake of love with someone they just met at the altar.
It’s also a multi-racial show (although it does not steer queer) and I find that healthy and enlightening. Any one couple — no matter their race, ethnicity nor economic status — can show up as totally grounded and sane, or as needing dramatic therapeutic intervention post haste. “Married at First Sight” feels like the kind of society we want to end up with, with lots of interracial equality, friendship and support.
It’s also a great distraction from topics I am usually focused on as a resiliency coach, journalist and activist — the climate crisis, mass extinction and the current democratic crisis in our nation. (I use “democratic crisis” as a euphemism here.)
But Season 15 rocked my distracted, fantastical world a bit. For the first time (given the seasons I have watched), a real environmentalist entered onto the “Married At First Sight” (MFS) scene. I was like: What? What is happening?
This guy, “Mitch,” was worried about the plastic straws everyone was using too much, and asking his new wife to bring a re-usable cup to the coffee shop.
My first thought was: That’s cool.
But here’s the thing. It was not cool for all the other participants on the show; not for the MFS counseling team (Pastor Cal and Dr. Pepper) and certainly not for Mitch’s new wife, Krysten.
I don’t know why, but Mitch was paired with a very made-up, main-streamy type of gal who liked to wear bright, almost neon outfits (very tight, but not unusual for MFS wives) and whose big ambition in life was to buy and flip houses. Don’t get me wrong. She was fun, smart, sweet, funny, sexy and attractive in her own way, ambitious and totally trying to commit to and love Mitch.
But I could see trouble brewing from the beginning and, in the end, as the season wrapped up, Mitch was painted as the tyrannical weirdo who had the gall to really, actually care about single-use plastics, our ecosystems and marine wildlife.
How bizarre and awful!
Somehow, everyone ended up on Krysten’s side at the end, thinking Mitch should have relaxed, changed … adjusted. But I cannot imagine that, on his initial questionnaire form, Mitch did not write: “I like natural women who don’t wear much makeup and who care about the environment and social issues.”
It wasn’t Mitch’s fault that someone at “Married” (Pastor Cal? Dr. Pepper?) felt like they could override Mitch’s values with their own obliviousness and unconcern. Somehow, though, this point was never raised. And Mitch took on all the blame.
As these couples jetted from San Diego to an all-inclusive resort in Puerto Vallarta, you could see Mitch wincing constantly over all the waste and excess. I winced too. I’ve just been to San Diego on a college tour with one of my daughters and the massive freeways, car culture and urban sprawl freaked us both right out.
I watched as Mitch really tried to rearrange his own head to accommodate and value his new wife and her odd little dog. But I also saw how his fundamental value system was going to be forever at odds with this woman. I think that’s why he decided to get divorced in the end — even though they liked each other a lot and were even having a bit of sex.
So, the marriage did not work out and many jokes were made in which Mitch was the butt end of said.
It all made me want to yell at the TV.
“Mitch is right, you guys!!!” I was shouting (in my mind). “You all are the crazy ones!”
Indeed, our whole society is crazy and upside down — when we now have microplastics even in most male testicular tissue, and as we lose tens of thousands of species per year (200 per day at least). The producers of this show seemed to want to maintain the illusion that everything will be OK if we just ignore these unhappy facts.
The truth is that, not only are most other species on the planet currently at risk of extinction, but because we are interdependent with them (and dependent on a stable climate), our own species is at risk, and it is at risk right now as I write. Those couples who want to have kids (or actually stayed together and had kids) on “Married” need to know this.
But maybe all TV shows, even if they are running commerical-free on Netflix, are ultimately all about supporting the status quo, out-of-control consumerism and “endless growth” economies we have become accustomed to — not just in the U.S., but globally.
I don’t mean some shows aren’t less impactful. (“Survivor” strikes me as pretty bare bones.) But in the end, the whole idea behind the mainstream media, it seems, is to keep us caught up in a neoliberal capitalist system in which Money is our religion … and care, compassion for the less fortunate and other species, frugality, empathy and self-sacrifice are afterthoughts and just … weird.
Interestingly, “Queer Eye” also produced a show in which the Queer Team had the chance to “makeover” a young climate activist with the Sunrise Movement. That episode was actually pretty cool, with Bobby Berk, the home makeover expert, visiting second-hand furniture shops for the first time, it seemed; and Tan France, the clothing expert, finding his way into a vintage clothing store. There was even a little bit of tearing up and some panicked anxiety over the state of the world; and you could tell that the Fabulous Five were going to be happy to wrap up that episode and get back to their regular, high-glam shopping habits.
I don’t know why I’m complaining. After all, by watching these shows, I’m trying to escape too.
You’d think I’d be upset to be bothered during my favorite “Calgon-take-me-away” TV shows by the intrusion of the outer reality that has been wearing me down a bit.
But my days, my life, are about balance — not denialism. We can enjoy life and the mostly very abundant worlds many of us in the U.S. find ourselves in (if we do), knowing that “our cup runneth over” and not needing a whole lot more.
We can pay attention to the actual facts of our global situation (in fact, we must), downscale our lifestyles, engage in some kind of systemic change efforts, and go out and have some fun every day, too.
Maybe our TV shows could start to bring more balance in and welcome our “real” reality while embracing a lifestyle that might be more geared toward fixing it.
Maybe the “Married” team should bring Mitch back and find him a partner who is really suited to him and who cares about life on Earth (at the Big Picture level). Then, we would all see a role model couple to laud and to emulate, instead of to mock and eviscerate.
Until then, like Krysten was saying for the whole first half of her short marriage, I’m still “on Team Mitch.”
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*Excellent and important documentaries on streaming services:
15 top documentaries on the climate crisis, free to watch
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-top-10-documentaries-about-climate-change/
Thirteenth on Netflix, on U.S. racial history
The Great Hack, on the use of Facebook to swing elections via disinformation.
“Totally Under Control,” on the Trump Administration response to Covid 19
Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us, on the white supremacist movement in the United States
Get Me Roger Stone, on Roger Stone, political operative, Trump supporter, a major leader of the U.S. kakistocracy
