James Weir recaps Married At First Sight 2020 episode 36: reunion finale

In one final bout of hell, MAFS’ most toxic couples are forced face-to-face where the gloves come off. James Weir recaps.

Australia has managed to eradicate the virus it has been plagued by for months with Married At First Sight finally getting stomped out on Sunday, mainly because there’s literally no more possible cheating scandal combinations to explore.

In the finale reunion, all this season’s original contestants are forced to return while the experts replay archived footage we’ve already seen for the zillionth time. Everyone looks beaten down and deflated by the experience.

Most of them didn’t get what they came here for: unconditional love with their soulmate. What once seemed like a foolproof shortcut to bliss has left them all disenchanted with the razzle dazzle world of reality dating shows. It’s almost like TV networks prioritise drama and downfall over contestants’ personal happiness.

Producers refuse to bin this lemon without squeezing the final bit of juice out of it. Tonight there’s barely even a drop. They give it one last squeeze and we just end up getting splat in the eye by some citric acid that spurts out of the rind.

They’re grasping at straws more desperately than Ivan grasping at his own hair in an attempt to swoop it up into the world’s most disappointing man bun.

This disappointing man bun is a symbol of tonight’s lacklustre finale.

Producers are stringing us along like they’re Steve and we’re Mishel. How offensive. We’re just seconds away from scream-crying and accusing them of having one testicle.

Everyone rolls up hungover because last night was the reunion dinner party where they all got drunk and accused Stacey of sleeping with Mikey.

Michael and Stacey, who once declared themselves the show’s power couple, are now bickering and resentful.

“You had your chance this morning. That’s when you should’ve apologised … And now you left it too late,” Michael snips at his wife following the allegations she slept with Mikey.

“Do what you want, bro,” she hisses back, again using her unmatchable skills as a law graduate to come up with that retort.

Connie and Jonnie are called up to the couch. It’s the TV version of eating your vegetables first.

“I was a very awkward girl when I first started this,” she beams.

“You still are,” we sigh.

Next up, Aleks and Ivan get pummelled with questions about how they’re a couple again when they smoke bombed out of the experiment after breaking up.

So far, their story has more holes in it than Aleks’s blazer.

Did you make it yourself?

“When we got home I had this light bulb moment … (where I thought) Crap I miss him! And that’s when I realised, I fell in love with this man, so much,” she gushes to the experts.

“I’m so f**kin’ confused,” Josh grunts and we don’t know if he’s talking about Aleks and Ivan’s relationship or just Aleks’ blazer.

Then that troublemaker Trish goes and asks them the very question that pushed them over the edge in the first place: “Hiv yew bun un-teh-met?”

It’s around now Mishel takes the couch and threatens to “open-mouth kiss” everyone in the room before offering a confusing insight into her brain.

“I came into this experiment as a confident, sexual, attractive woman! By week eight, I was this fat little girl in a corner thinking I am so unattractive,” she rasps.

Channel 9 should really use that quote on promotional material for next year’s series.

Next up, Hayley and David. We have a lot of affection for Hales. Anyone who puts a toilet toothbrush in their mouth has our support.

“I did something deplorable,” David bows his head to the experts about the toothbrush stunt.

Is Hayley still angry with David for what he did? Look, she’s upset but she has moved on. Over the past three months, she has transformed herself from a humble good egg into Dr Hayley QC – and that kind of evolution doesn’t come without hard lessons.

Mostly, she’s just disappointed she didn’t even get an Oral-B or Harpic White ambassadorship out of the ordeal.

“This is going to have so much shame on myself as a person for many years to come. The repercussions are going to follow me around from my professional environment to my family to my friends,” she says.

Oh Hales, you’re not alone. Every contestant on this show has been tarred by the same (toilet tooth) brush and will carry the humiliation for many years to come.

The experts seamlessly segue from the toilet toothbrush into Hayley’s affair with Michael – which he still denies when John Aiken goes full Leigh Sales and asks him point-blank whether he did it.

Now that Stacey is dealing with her own cheating allegations, she has sympathy for Hayley. She’s had a taste of the toilet toothbrush, so to speak.

“I owe Hayley an apology for the way I treated her,” she sighs. “Whether she wants to accept it or not. She didn’t deserve it. I guess I was trying to be a loyal partner. So I’m in a position now where I don’t know and I am sorry.”

Suddenly, Dr Hayley enters the ward.

“You love love. You’ve been looking at this with rose coloured glasses. But you know in your heart of hearts what happened,” Dr Hayley advises her patient.

All this then conveniently segues into the claims Stacey had sex with Mikey – with the rumoured affair leading to the show’s self-declared power couple to split.

“At the present moment, we’re not together,” Michael informs the experts.

The exes sit on the couch far apart, and look as bored as we do with this unnecessary reunion.

Same.

For the next three minutes, the same arguments we’ve heard before are yelled again.

“We never had a one-night stand, Mikey!” Stacey splatters as the receipts are pulled out and text messages re-read.

After pulling the scab off and exposing the festering wound, John Aiken sends off Michael and Stacey with all their problems completely unresolved and with even more resentments than they arrived with.

It has been months of toxicity. We’re in the grips of a global pandemic, but we’re still drowning in toilet toothbrushes and alleged cheating scandals. What we need now is something uplifting – a positive development that can give us hope. Producers don’t let us down — they were saving the biggest news for last.

Guys. KC found where we hid her hair crimper.

We threw it in a bin down the street, how’d you find it??

Oh, Lizzie and Seb are also still together. Well done, Elizabeth. We raise our handbag biscuits and salute you.

This is what it’s all about: life, love and junk food platters.

For more observations on open mouth kissing and being un-teh-met, follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: @hellojamesweir

You can have your junk food platter and eat it too.