Will Hiring Two New Relationship 'Experts' Result In Fewer Divorces For The Latest Goons To Get Married At First Sight?

I'm not sure which is harder to believe: that Married At First Sight is still trying to match singles given its dismal record, or that singles are still applying given its dismal record. But here we are for a fourth season, whether the world needed one or not, and I have questions!

Will these two new relationship "experts" fix the show?

Of the nine couples matched in the first three seasons, two are still married. That's a 22% rate of success, and the fact that the show is still going certainly suggests that the point of it is less to pair up couples who'll be married forever than to spin entertainment from their misery WHICH I REALIZE IS A SHOCKING THING TO SAY ABOUT A REALITY SHOW. I mean, the Bachelor/ette franchise was basically a wasteland of dashed hopes up to and for a long time after Trista and Ryan and that didn't stop ABC from feeding way more people through the meat grinder -- more in a single season of the show than have, to date, starred (or "starred") on Married At First Sight. But since MAFS pretentiously styles itself as a "social experiment" as opposed to just another grimy reality show, the Season 4 premiere had to acknowledge how shitty the supposed "experts" had been at making matches in Seasons 2 and 3, and deckchairs are being rearranged on the Titanic! First, they moved the production from New York to Miami, so prepare for a lot of generalizations about what dating is like there. (Someone says residents can be materialistic. Insightful! Everywhere else in the country, people live on love!) And second, they ditched Joseph Cilona, Logan Levkoff, and that other "spiritual" guy who was for sure the Jai Rodriguez of Married At First Sight, replacing them with Marriage Counselor/Pastor Calvin Roberson, and "Relationship Expert" Rachel DeAlto.

A couple of things right up top. I know that "spiritual" matters (and I apologize for all the sarcastic quotation marks, but like...if you watch this show, you feel me) were occasionally mentioned during the first few seasons when that guy whose name I forget and refuse to look up made it onscreen, which was rarely. But it feels presumptuous to me to introduce an actual pastor, who may be a licensed (whatever that means) marriage counselor, but who is surely coming at the task from a Christian perspective. Unless the show is sponsored content from Match.com or Christian Mingle, the Christian God may be of no interest to the participants, meaning Roberson's counsel is going to be less useful to them. Maybe once they found out he was among the experts, the applicants self-selected, but that was not made clear during last night's Matchmaking Special that I saw.

But of far more concern is DeAlto, whose official bio on the MAFS website is an alarming collection of non-credentials: it claims she is "a communication and relationship expert, coach, hypnotherapist, motivational and keynote speaker, media personality, and the author of the bestseller, 'Flirt Fearlessly'....Rachel developed her communications expertise through her undergraduate degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and later as a practicing trial attorney after receiving her Juris Doctorate at Seton Hall University School of Law." What this tells us is that DeAlto is good at pivoting in her own career, not that she has any kind of track record helping couples stay together, never mind pairing them up in the first place.

That leaves us with Dr. Pepper Schwartz, the only returning expert (who, in the Matchmaking Special, hilariously understates that the experts haven't been right "100% of the time" in their matches to date. TRUE, 22% IS DEFINITELY NOT 100!). I haven't been that impressed with her either here or on The First Year, so I'll be curious to see what she brings to Season 4 that proves she deserved to be the only expert to keep her job.

Whose idea was it not to put through the 6'8" guy who told DeAlto his peen was sometimes too big for sex?!

Because that person should be fired for sure.

Aren't some of these people too young to be resorting to a relationship solution this extreme/absurd?

For the record: there's nothing wrong with being single your whole life, no matter what your mother might tell you. But even a phony sitcom marriage pact in which friends pledge that if neither of them is married by a certain point they'll just settle for each other, that age is usually, like, forty. In my opinion, all of these idiots are too young to be this desperate. Derek (he's top row center in the photo above) is the oldest...and he's thirty-five. Lillian (top row right) is only twenty-four. After (let's say) six years of dating with the purpose of meeting someone to stay with her whole life, she's decided to give up her own judgment and let three strangers find her a fourth stranger to marry? When she's painfully estranged from her father, which maybe INFORMED HER DECISION TO DO THIS SHOW?! Good luck, I guess!

How big a reach are the criteria for these matches?

This is kind of a simplification of the experts' rationales for making the matches they have, but only kind of: Derek and Heather (center column above) are paired because she's a flight attendant and he's a Navy veteran, so they've both travelled a lot. Lillian and Tom (right column) are matched because they both work in luxury-type fields: she's a realtor and he's a "Yacht Interior Specialist." Sonia and Nick (left column) seem to have been matched because they're both nice? Honestly, idk. And by the way, her self-assessment is, in part, "I put others' needs before my own; I think that's a good characteristic for a wife to have." Someone who says that about herself is probably a total nightmare narcissist, right? I guess time will tell! Speaking of which....

Which breadcrumbs sprinkled through the premiere seem to have the most potential for turning into relationship issues as the season goes on?

Here's what I noticed, in no particular order:

• Tom lives in a fucking tour bus -- and one he's still in the process of fixing up, btw. This seems like it might be a problem for Lillian, who sells real estate for a living.
• Lillian is superstitious, specifically about the Nicaraguan belief that having pearls anywhere on a bride on her wedding day is bad luck. But then Tom sends her a pre-wedding gift of a necklace...with pearls! (Which, if that's not screamingly obvious producer intervention, I don't know what is.) And even though she decides not to wear it, she still has bad luck immediately as a thunderstorm kicks up just as she's about to walk down the aisle! Seems like something one would expect in MIAMI, but whatever. Will Tom be pissed when he sees her and notices she's not wearing the necklace, and remain so throughout the experiment? STAY TUNED.
• Nick's mom, Marie, is overbearing. The first thing she says when Nick tells her he's about to marry a stranger is "What if I don't like her? Then what?" On the wedding day, when Sonia sends Nick the pre-wedding gift of a pre-filled flask, Marie nitpicks Sonia's note: "Why'd she say 'whiskey'? Why didn't she just say 'scotch'?" As everyone in the room gives her a "Really?" look, Marie sputters, "I'm gonna be a good mother-in-law." She definitely isn't.

Next season, if there is one, can we not with all this business before the weddings?

Look, I find it as hilarious as the next guy when the singles tell their loved ones they're getting "married at first sight," and their loved ones stare back in complete incomprehension because, like most of the world, they have never heard of the show. But all this business where they're shopping for their formalwear and doing shots at their bachelor and bachelorette parties is very boring. We watch this show to see strangers make mean snap judgments about each other and instantly regret signing on to do this. Hurry up and get us there!