James Weir recaps Married At First Sight 2020 episode 19

MAFS star Mishel couldn’t hide her shock when her husband told her point-blank that he wasn’t into her. James Weir recaps.

Several Married At First Sight wives are roundhouse kicked in the face on Tuesday night, with one told her husband is not attracted to her while comeback queen Lizzie suffers a PTSD attack which includes flashbacks to the infamous thumbing incident of 2019.

Everyone is positively blime-fibe-eb. Just like we were when we saw these Snakes Alive on Michael’s cheese platter.

This is not a trend.

Just to be clear, merely splaying a few Snakes Alive on your grazing platter does not automatically make it a junk food platter. You gotta decide if you’re doing a junk food platter or a fancy cheese platter. You can’t do a bit of both, it just doesn’t make sense. Commit to one or the other.

Our personal preference is the junk food platter, but it needs to be quality junk food. Snakes Alive are the perfect 4pm snack that you get from the office vending machine – only passing the packet around to colleagues once you’ve eaten all the red ones. Outside of work or road trips, Snakes Alive shouldn’t really feature in your life because, generally, you usually have access to superior junk food.

From one mess to another, we wind up on Lizzie’s honeymoon and producers have made Sebastian take Lizzie to a strawberry farm. They blindfold her, plonk her down in the middle of the plantation and then uncover her eyes. It’s a trick! She’s surrounded by strawberries and the sight drops her into a PTSD spiral. Hazy flashbacks play from last year’s thumbing incident. If you don’t know what thumbing is, you’re clearly a nerd. Try to keep up with us cool kids who have been thumbing for years.

Last year, Lizzie made Sam one of her infamous junk food platters which included strawberries. Strawberries! That doesn’t sound like a junked platter! Well, here’s the catch: she coated them in so much Nutella that the sugar cancelled out the health benefits of the strawberries, and so they became certified junk food. Anyway, Sam played along just to mock her, and he picked up the strawberries and tried to aeroplane them into her mouth. Then days later, he went and told everyone that Lizzie used the opportunity to suck his thumb.

The flashback footage from my personal archives.

A really intelligent conversation ensued when Lizzie confronted Sam about him identifying her as a thumbing fiend. Ugh, I hate people who kink shame.

“YOU PUT YA THUMB IN MY MOUTH!’ YOU PUT YA THUMB IN MY MOUTH!” she screamed.

“No, YOU put MY THUMB in YOUR MOUTH,” he corrected.

“YOU PUT YOUR THUMB IN MY MOUTH!” she retaliated.

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Ever since then, Lizzie hasn’t been able to even walk past a punnet of strawberries at Coles.

“I haven’t looked at a strawberry the same way since what happened last experiment,” her voice waivers as Seb wonders why she’s curled up on the ground of this plantation.

“I had a traumatic experience with strawberries last experiment. I was … force-fed strawberries.”

“Like, more than one?” he replies.

“More than one,” Lizzie nods as we wrap her in an alfoil blanket.

Produces should feel ashamed of themselves for surrounding Elizabeth with strawberries.

“The strawberry picking really backfired,” he tells us.

“Did she try to suck your thumb, too?” we frantically whisper.

While Sebastian starts wondering if he needs to wear protection for thumbing, Connie is still treating her marriage like a university group assignment. It’s her belief that all problems can be solved with a brainstorm and she immediately pulls out some permanent markers.

Good luck getting ya bond back.

Connie thinks her brainstorm has solved all their problems, but it’s just made it worse. As she diligently wrote down their issues in permanent marker, Jonethen couldn’t help but see a giant mind map of reasons to leave. He escapes for air and Connie runs after him.

Wow this relationship just looks like a gas.

“I’m at the end of my tether. Are we forcing something that’s not gonna work?” he asks her.

“There has just been a bunch of negative things and red flags. At the moment, I just don’t know if I’m lying to myself about seeing a future.”

Connie’s blime-fibe-eb. She wants to write a list of pros and cons, but she didn’t bring her permanent markers or whiteboard.

“It’s a huge slap in the face. Massive slap in the face. Roundhouse kick to the face,” she tells us.

“I really thought we were in a good place. I thought we had taken on each other’s constructive criticism.”

But that’s the thing, Connie. Constructive criticism is good coming from your uni tutor on the mediocre essay you submitted. But in adult relationships, we don’t acknowledge each other’s flaws and mistakes – we ignore them until the resentment grows so big we just have to break up.

Speaking of getting roundhouse kicked in the face, Mishel is also copping a blow. She forces Steve to get in a kayak even though he almost drowned at sea as a child and now fears the ocean, and it’s just the push he needed to overcome his fear. He’s triumphant and adrenaline is pumping through his veins. The weight of the world has lifted and the fear that plagued him for years evaporates. The moment of clarity also allows him to see other things in his life that need to change.

“I’m not attracted to you, physically,” he tells his wife. “ … Yet …”

He adds the “yet” out of pity – a tiny ray of hope that maybe, just one day, he might find her attractive. It doesn’t make it better.

“It is a slap to the face,” she says. Lots of faces are getting slapped and roundhouse kicked tonight.

It’s OK, Mishel. You can always thumb yourself.

“So obviously there’s got to be attraction in a relationship moving forward,” he adds and, really Steve, just leave it. We get it: Ya ain’t attracted.

“Maybe it’ll turn around and that’s what I’m hoping. But I can’t force something if it’s not there.”

“We’ve been here six weeks! I think any decent person woulda told you by now there’re not into you,” Mishel unloads on us.

She’s hurt and doesn’t know what to do, so we tell her to attack this problem the same way she did with Steve’s fear of the beach: Force him against his will.

She should take some tiny, forceful steps towards intimacy. Like with some innocent thumbing. They should definitely just bite the bullet and thumb the night away. In my own experience, what starts with NSA thumbing often flourishes into a beautiful relationship.

So it’s settled. Mishel forced Steve into the ocean, and now she will force him to thumb her. Or she can thumb him. I hear some guys are into that.

For more observations on thumbing and group assignments, follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: @hellojamesweir