James Weir recaps Married At First Sight 2019 episode 26

During an extremely crappy date, MAFS’ cheating groom has backflipped on his affair after a secret phone call. James Weir recaps.

During an extremely crappy date, Married At First Sight’s cheating husband backflips on his sordid affair and comes to the startling realisation that his life is exactly like the sad soggy sandwich his innocent wife is making him eat in the rain.

We love symbolism, particularly when it involves poorly-made sandwiches.

On Tuesday night, after shacking up at his wife Tamara’s house, Dan is questioning his affair with Jessika. Only, Jessika doesn’t know this. In Jessika’s mind, they’ll be bashing more than just their veneers very soon.

“I feel like Dan ticks all of my boxes,” she splutters, but that’s a lie because we know Dan has not yet ticked all her boxes.

“But I need to get Mick back on my side in order to continue the experiment with Dan.”

Jessika is a conflicted lady. On one hand, she sees no harm in starting an affair with a married man behind her husband’s back. But on the other, she thinks Mick should be burned at the stake for slagging off her family and plans on telling them all exactly what he said.

Does Mick care?

“I’ll do my hardest to sabotage the home visit and make an absolute tit of myself so she has to write ‘Leave’,” he tells us. Excellent plan. I’ve done the same thing at jobs in the hope I get fired.

They fly separately to Perth which just seems petty and impractical and is absolutely something I’d also do. As soon as she lands, Jessika can’t wait to talk to Dan again. He’s all she can think about. But on the phone call, she humiliates herself. Jessika can’t talk properly at the best of times, but the giddiness of this crush has hindered her speech even more and she starts babbling embarrassing nonsense.

“We share a lot of values and memories for the future,” she splurts to him and immediately hates herself because she has only spent, like, seven whole minutes with him and she sounds obsessed and mildly stalker-ish.

The words trip on her tongue before tumbling off and she immediately regrets it.

My face after I talk to my crush.

At Tamara’s house, we learn a lot about who she really is. Dan walks into the bathroom and spots something peculiar: A hose and tap next to the toilet.

“A little hose!” he growls, peering into the nozzle.

“It’s to wash your bum,” Tamara informs him as it drips down his arm.

We jet up to the Sunshine Coast to check on Mike and Heidi and, honestly, we don’t know what’s worse. Accidentally being squirted in the face with Tamara’s butt hose. Or having Mike mansplain to us how to cook rice.

An artist’s impression of Heidi being squirted in the face with Tamara’s butt hose.

There’s many confusing parts to tonight's episode. Like, why does Susie live by herself in a hovel on an isolated six acre property?

And why is Mike pretending to shave his head when he’s clinically bald and his hairline is tattooed on his scalp?

Hi, what exactly are you shaving?

It has been six weeks and we’re excited to go visit Cyrell’s family again. Mostly we just can’t wait for her brother Ivan to pick another fight so we can scream at him, “Don’t swear in front of the food!” and then maybe call him King Ding-a-ling.

Cyrell seems to want her family to hate Nic. She goes and tells Ivan about the fake leg-rubbing rumour to make Nic look like a dog but then she accidentally forgets to mention the other part of the story that involves her clutching Martha by the neck. Ivan makes it his mission to kick Nic out of the family.

And he does it in a way that’s not at all embarrassing: by challenging Nic to a game of basketball at the park down the road.

“You’re just not the right person for her,” Ivan — dressed in a Lakers uniform — yells. “Stay the f**k away from her. I don’t want you to have nothing to do with my sister. Grab your sh*t and pretty much just f**k off.”

He then runs off and tries to do a slam dunk but the basketball misses the hoop and he faceplants it on the court.

Up in Townsville, Ning doesn’t want to introduce Mark to her kids but she lets him meet her best friends: Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha.

Later that night, I got to thinking about the reality of reality TV relationships.

They’re super boring so we go back to Perth to try witness some drama because this episode is really lacking.

Jessika doesn’t make a lot of sense — and not just verbally. Her actions are also confusing.

She tells us she needs to get Mick back on side in order to stay in the experiment to continue her affair with Dan. But then she invites her family around to tell them word-for-word what Mick said about them when he slagged them off the other day.

“He needs to take responsibility for his actions,” she spits, and, for some reason, the same rule doesn’t apply to her or Dan and their cheating.

At the patio table, Jessika makes Mick tell her stepsister Eliza what he called her. He shrugs.

“I just said, you were a sour c**t,” he drawls.

We cut to Eliza and she looks, coincidentally, sour.

You’re not really helping your case.

Jessika can’t wait for this homestay to be over. She just wants to see Dan again. She has never felt more sure of anything in her life. Once she gets back to Sydney, she can finally begin her secret life with Dan behind both their partners’ backs. It’s the kind of relationship every little girl dreams of. But Dan is having second thoughts.

Tamara has taken him on a really crappy date to a beach on an overcast day. They sit on the damp sand and eat sad sandwiches she made herself. A storm begins to roll over. Cyclonic winds blow the cling wrap out of Dan’s hands and he watches it skim along the sand until it’s out of sight. He wishes he could also disappear.

There’s something about terrible dates that toy with your emotions. Even though you know you don’t want to be with someone, you end up feeling guilty that they went to the effort of organising such a crappy date. It’s hard to tell the difference between love and guilt.

Dan looks at Tamara and she forces a smile. The sad soggy sandwich slops between his fingers. He turns his head and gazes out at the grey nightmare before him — the murky ocean merges with the angry sky.

“Maybe I was a bit impatient reaching out to Jess because she was easy to speak to,” he confides in us. “After today though, it’s sort of made me realise Tam can be easy to speak to when she’s relaxed. Maybe I’ve not given Tam the respect she deserves.”

He’s questioning everything. How can he tell Jessika? She’ll be humiliated and heartbroken. She’d rather be squirted in the face with Tamara’s butt hose.

For more observations about butt hoses and sad sandwiches, follow me on Twitter and Facebook: @hellojamesweir

An artist’s impression of Jessika getting squirted in the face with Tamara’s butt hose.