Will Jamie Ever Stop Trying To Badger Doug Into Fatherhood On Married At First Sight: The First Year?

So it's still Married At First Sight: The First Year even though it's the second year, assumedly because no one at fyi ever dared dream that this thing would last into a second season. But since it has, I have to find out what's up with these dodos, and if you're here so do you, so let's dig right in, because I have SO MANY questions already.

What cult did Cortney join since we saw her last?

The first thing we see when we get back into Jason and Cortney's lives is a Diary Cam of Cortney (unflatteringly shot from below, like, a makeup artist should have a better sense of her angles than that) in which she disgorges a bunch of self-help buzzphrases. To wit: "I have not liked myself inside for a very long time. And I allowed negativity to consume me. No one was my problem. I was my problem. I chose to take back control over my life, and I'm very, very lucky that I didn't lose the best thing that's happened to me: Jason." THE END. We have to sit through that bunch of nonsense and don't even get to find out what she did to "take back control over [her] life"?! My guess is either Landmark or Scientology.

Is this necklace an emblem of Cortney's new self-actualization?

Because this feathers-and-rocks situation sure looks like it's part of some kind of ceremonial garb.

Will Jamie ever stop trying to badger Doug into fatherhood?

ALL SIGNS POINT TO NO. And as we rejoin the Hehners -- Jamie officially took Doug's last name after their vow renewal, apparently a magical time that represents a high point for their relationship -- she's got a million reasons to talk about babies and the having of same. Her sister is pregnant, for one, which Doug tells us in a TH has "increased the number of conversations about a baby," which based on what we saw in the show's first season I would not have thought possible. For another, in the middle of the episode Jamie celebrates her birthday -- she's twenty-nine, of course, because this is for sure the face of a twenty-nine-year-old...

...and she makes sure we know that one of the goals she hopes to achieve before she turns thirty is getting Doug on the same page with her, babywise. Meanwhile, even though Doug keeps saying he's not ready to have kids "yet," I'm starting to wonder whether Doug wants kids at all. He seems to be ready to give Jamie literally anything else she wants, so for this to be, from what we've seen, the only source of friction in their relationship, he must be pretty serious about putting the matter off, perhaps until such time as Jamie enters menopause and it's off the table already? But the items on the "bucket list" (ugh, that stupid phrase -- not even applicable in this case unless he thinks becoming a father is tantamount to "kicking the bucket" WHICH MAYBE HE DOES), if they're legit, don't bespeak a person whose fantasies involve getting himself tied down in domesticity. I mean, "Stay with a rain forest or African tribe and learn their ways"? If that's a real dream he really wants to fulfill, this is a person with a lot of wanderlust. If he's just thinking of the craziest thing he can imagine to put off Jamie and her needy uterus, then he should tell her in no uncertain terms that he isn't on her timetable for babies and isn't going to be any time soon.

How dull is Jamie?

It's not that wanting a baby makes you boring. It's that Jamie can't, even as an exercise, think of anything she might want to do before "locking down having a baby" -- and what a sweet way to put it! I can see that phrase in calligraphy across the front of a baby shower card now. Whereas Doug wants to visit South Africa, swim with great white sharks, and take up fencing (the last of which he could do with a child, but whatever), here's Jamie's list:

1. Get back to where we were in St. Thomas, when we renewed our vows.
2. Buy a home.
3. Have fun doing your bucket list together!

Cool. Of course Doug doesn't want to have a baby with this bore -- who would?

Who cares about Neph?

When we went out with Jason and Neph and got the whole story of Neph's relationship with this broad Jasmine he met in Las Vegas last season, I was like, "Well, I guess if Cortney's working on this movie all week, he has to do something, why not talk about Neph's love life?" But then we went home with Neph to watch him Skype with Jasmine to plan their life together? Hell no. It was bad enough when we had to keep checking in on Monet even though she was not in her First Year of being Married At First Sight, but at least she did have the experience of having, at one time, BEEN Married At First Sight. Neph's just some guy! He's not a cast member! He doesn't get to have his own storyline!

Given that these are my real and true feelings about Neph's increased role this season, you can imagine how furious I got when I realized I was starting to form opinions about his relationship with Jasmine -- which, by the way, is going to be such a shitshow that it's hard not to suspect she's a plant so that this story could happen. She's moving to New York from Texas. She does not have a job lined up. She's planning to live with Neph...who lives at home with his mother and brothers, plural. As for her personality, all Neph can tell us is that "she's very into romcoms." Great! She's going to try to take the subway to Serendipity on her second day and break down sobbing.

What kind of "progressing" does Jamie think her marriage should be doing that it's not?

In a Diary Cam entry, Jamie tells us, "When it comes to anything serious, or like, what our relationship is really about, it's like talking to a brick wall. I don't know what's going on with our relationship because I feel like it's just plateaued. There's nothing else happening. We're just standing in one spot. We're not really going forward, we're not really going backwards, we're just there." Because of this, she says, she's going to meet Monet (eye-roll) to shop for lingerie (four eye-rolls), I guess to try to distract Doug into slipping one past the goalie against his will -- because that's what she means by "progressing," right? It's just a new euphemism for "having babies"? Maybe if she were to express this to Doug, he would complain that she didn't take his gift of matching bikes as a sign that he would like things to progress through shared hobbies and interests. But he never gets that chance, as far as we see, because he probably tunes out when Jamie starts talking on the assumption that it's going to be more whining and nagging about all the babies they're not having, and he's probably right. Jamie the broken record is exhausting to watch; actually living with her must be torture.

Really, Monet? Marriage advice?

Jamie darkly hints to Monet that if she and Doug can't work out their baby scheduling, they might not last. "You guys gotta do the work," says Monet -- and since she was married for five whole weeks before pulling the plug, she would know.