"90-Days" of Conflict

 Even with its current pervasiveness, I’ve never been a big watcher of reality TV. For 20 years, I only watched the Big Three: Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race, all of which I picked up in their respective first seasons. By 2024, I picked up a couple more, “Bar Rescue” and “Naked and Afraid,” which I may post about some other time. And there’s one other.

Now, my wife, Sweetpea, predominantly watches what she calls, “murder shows.” You know, the true crime series like First 48, Forensic Files, Dateline, and the like. I’m ok with them once in a while, but I prefer more escapist fare. Because we don’t have many shows that we both like, it’s hard to find things to watch together. Because she gets up insanely early and goes to work before I’m out of bed, she also goes to bed early, so we don’t have a lot of downtime together. After dinner, she’ll usually put on a murder show and promptly fall asleep. When she can’t find a murder show she hasn’t seen, she’ll opt for MTV’s Catfish or TLC’s 90-Day Fiancé.

I figured I could tolerate those so I began recording them with the DVR, so we can watch together at our leisure. Catfish is straightforward enough. It’s like a true crime show where the hosts investigate people who get into relationships with other people via dating sites but refuse to meet or ever be seen on camera.

But the 90-Day stuff? Wow. What a mess of humanity… that I can’t stop watching. It’s basically nationally televised voyeurism.

There are several 90-Days brands. The original is 90-Day Fiancé, which centers on couples who date internationally. One will bring the other to the US via a K-1 visa, and will then have 90 days to get married or the visitor has to go back. That’s always the focal question: Will they get married or will it all blow up?

Another variation is Before the 90-Days, which focuses on the lead-up to the travel to America, as they begin exploring an international relationship. There’s also 90-Days – Happily Ever After? which shows the lives of some of the couples after they’ve gotten married and are going about their lives. Then there’s the Bizarro World version, 90-Days – The Other Way, which is where an American goes abroad to marry and live in a vastly different culture.

And if all that isn’t enough, there’s a parasite series called Pillow Talk, which runs right after each of the other shows, featuring several pairs of former 90-Day participants who watch the show and provide commentary.

The whole organization is its own self-contained world, like an Earthbound Marvel Universe, whose occupants have staged adventures and bitch at each other.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started. I fully admit that this is crap TV and I’m probably dumber for having watched it. It’s just that you get sucked into these people’s lives. There are some you love but many more that you love to hate. And there are some real pieces of work on these shows.

The reason I’m bringing this whole thing up is that I find there are a lot of the same themes that flow through each of these series and most of the dating pairs. There are three main categories of conflict:

·         Money

·         Jealousy/Insecurity

·         Religion

Money? That’s obvious and applies universally. As British comic Spike Milligan once said,

Everyone wants/needs more money. Some lie about it, some cheat to get it, and some think it’s owed to them.

To me, the biggest thing keeping these couples apart is jealousy (and the insecurity that leads to jealousy). Women go ape-shit any time their man talks to, texts with, bumps into, or acknowledges the existence of another woman.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I’m not being sexist; it goes both ways. I just don’t care to bother with the verbal gymnastics of keeping all terms unisexual.

One woman doesn’t want her fitness instructor boyfriend to have women as clients, even though they make up over 90% of his business. Another guy is crucified for “cheating” by receiving sexy videos from women he’s never met. Men flip out any time they find themselves near their women’s previous boyfriends, with whom they are still friendly. One girl got upset because her guy went to church, and there were women there. She also didn’t want him to hang out with his sisters, because they might have friends around. And on it goes…

If I were on that show, my stories would be as dull as dishwater. Most of my friends are women. Anyone I was dating would have to understand that, and if they flip out about it, I’m out. It’s non-negotiable. I will be friends with women. And my mate is free to be friends with men. I’d never be a hypocrite about it. I’m fully trusting until I have a reason not to be. (And I’m quite fortunate that Sweetpea is fine with this.)

I think these “cast members” would ease a lot of their own misery if they just decided to trust their partner and assume the best rather than the worst. And if they do stray, for real, cut them the eff loose and move on. (Those who do bugger off invariably find a line-up of men (or women) who want to go out with them, after having seen them on TV.)

The last obstacle is religion and it’s almost always bout Middle-Eastern or African men wanting to control American women. They never seem to tell their prospective wives all the details of what their lives together might look like, or what she might look like after she’s covered head to toe. They know that if they let on they expect a life of obedience, servitude, and child-bearing at the outset, the American dating pool is likely to dry up

One Egyptian guy was coming to live with his American wife in California, and they had a fight that led to their breakup because she was wearing a dress that, while it went up to her neck, down past her knees, and had long sleeves, it bared a couple square inches of her back. He couldn’t live with such a tawdry display of wantonness. Because of religion.

There is a couple this season, where the 40ish American woman is going to Jordan to marry her 22–year–old guy on the very day she arrives because his religion won’t permit them to be alone together in a room. This story is just getting underway and she has no idea what he’s going to expect of her. This is basically a “boy” who told the cameras he wants her to obey his wishes at all times and not question him as the man of the house. And he needs her to cover up with loose clothing

I think she ought to spank his 22-year-old ass and send him to his room without dinner. These stories always seem to end up the same way, with the American women taking a powder either before or shortly after the wedding.

I don’t see how they didn’t research the culture the second they made contact with their foreign beaus. It would have saved them a lot of heartache and a pile of cash.

Or maybe they just reeeeeally wanted to be on TV.

But that’s the worst part. I can’t even comprehend allowing TV cameras to film every part of my life, every argument, every mistake, every emotional moment, and broadcast it nationwide. And when these fights happen, everything is in play, from bathroom habits to sexual inadequacies to masturbatory quirks. Nothing is off-limits.

And I make room for the fact that producers are egging them on or providing angles to assert to keep the fights going. You can see by their casting choices that they’re counting on the conflict, the louder and more warped the better.  That’s too bad because I’m sure there are viewers like Sweetpea and me who really enjoy seeing decent people overcome international obstacles and go on to live happily ever after. (These people tend to end up on the Pillow Talk series.)

At the end of every season, they stage a multi-episode “Tell All,” where all the cast members get together in New York to answer questions from a moderator and each other. They all get to know one another; some become real-life friends, others bitter enemies. This helps build the 90-Day ecosystem

It’s hard to watch sometimes because they poke and prod for every bit of controversy and conflict, even those that have already been resolved. They ought to call these episodes, “Pulling at Scabs.” It’s seldom pretty.

The bigger point is that we, as a people, are being conditioned to become our ugliest forms of ourselves. We’re guided to be vain, jealous, insecure, snarky, mean, over-reactive, and without empathy. Is this the public influencing the media or the media influencing the public?

Either way, we’re a mess and we don’t seem to be getting any better.

Maybe the next iteration ought to be “90 Days – Incel.” That’s where they take some anti-social, obnoxious misfit out of his parents’ basement, send him on a date with a real woman, and film the inevitable disaster. They just need to make sure the crew has tasers ready. They’ll need to be able to guarantee the woman’s safety.

So yeah, I’m up here on my soapbox, but I’ll still be watching Sunday nights. Damn it.