- A&E
- Jaclyn pretends she’s not grossed out by her new husband, Ryan.
There’s a groovy old Billy Joel song called “The Stranger,” and it’s all about how we reveal to other people, even our lovers, only what we want to be seen. We’re all hideous, selfish monsters hiding behind masks of decorum, empathy, intelligence, and charisma, not to mention superficial things like makeup, hairdos, and chemically whitened teeth. Is Billy Joel a cynic? Well, duh. He’s also a notoriously heavy drinker, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t right. If he is and we really are all strangers to even our most intimate companions, then the premise of A&E’s Married at First Sight is almost not creepy at all.
But, whatever. Let’s imagine the six people participating in this season’s “radical social experiment” (I bet no one ever referred to arranged marriage as a “radical social experiment”) just really, really want to get married and are willing to do so in an imprudently hasty fashion despite the fact that they’re all fairly attractive and none is overtly mentally ill. Isn’t that kind of worse? It’s not like it’s exclusive to reality TV for someone to let the identity of his or her partner become an incidental part of his or her desire to get married, but it’s also probably part of the reason most marriages end in divorce.
