MAFS' Tahnee Cook on Confessions Week and 'that' dinner party: 'Do these men ever learn?'

Ding ding ding it’s the first Married At First Sight dinner party! We all can agree that the dinner party episodes are definitely the ones you have to tune in for.

I remember how exhausting it was filming those dinner parties. A bit of insight into how these are filmed: when you see the cast drive up to the location and walk straight into the cocktail party, that is not exactly how things play out in real-time.

In reality, we would arrive on location in the late arvo and then be sectioned off in separate tents (in your couple) and wait until it was our turn to enter. This could sometimes be hours and you were given a specific order by producers. Once the cocktail party was over, we would then be taken back into the tents to wait again to enter the actual dinner party - it would be around 9 pm when we finally sat down to eat.

I always get asked how the food was. I hate to break it to you but it was always cold and honestly didn’t have too much flavour.

Fun fact: I didn’t drink at the dinner parties, I would always have a non-alcoholic wine so I didn’t feel left out!

More red flags from Jack

The first dinner party of course was full of drama - at the centre of it being a discussion around Jack dumping his ex-girlfriend to be on MAFS. Again, this was just copy and paste from Bronte and Harrison. The timelines are very iffy here because Jack would have for sure been in a relationship with this woman during the application process. It took 3-4 months when I applied for MAFS and I’m sure it would’ve been a similar timeline for Jack.

I, personally, feel you should’ve been single for AT LEAST 6 months before applying for the show. Any less is just a red flag in my opinion. Jack gives us the most cliché spiel about his ex being “crazy” and it just makes me wonder: do these men ever learn? Painting a picture that your ex is crazy is just so overdone it’s honestly boring. Putting myself in this woman’s shoes, I’d be so hurt if someone I was dating broke it off with me to jump straight into a dating TV show.

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Confessions Week craziness

We then jump straight into Confessions Week. This is one of the more intense weeks of the experiment and I absolutely dreaded it. The confession letter task is always a tough one. I felt like the producers were scrambling to find something for Ollie and I to write because we just didn’t have anything that juicy, hence why ours was never aired.

We hear Jayden’s confession letter and it was quite confronting, to say the least. He says that he was cheated on and as revenge, he slept with her friend whilst she watched. Objectively this is quite a shocking thing to hear and I do wonder why he would’ve admitted that on TV. However, I know that producers would have pressed to get this out of him and struck gold with this confession. The perfect bit of drama to sprinkle into the mix. I applaud how Eden handled herself with this situation, I wouldn't have been able to compose myself the way she did.

It’s interesting to see what tasks are given to each couple because we were not always given the same ones. Ollie and I weren’t given the phone swap challenge when others were and it makes me think how I would have felt with that task. We see this play out with Sara and Tim where Sara didn’t feel comfortable sharing her phone which then led to Tim feeling suspicious as to why and left him wondering if she had something to hide.

I do agree with Sara that going through someone’s phone is a huge invasion. I’ve never gone through a partner’s phone for this reason and, also, because I feel like you’re bound to find something you will not like. I do, however, on the flip side don’t have anything to hide so it wouldn’t be an issue if my partner did have some sort of concern or trust issues around this - I think it’s all contextual. I feel Tim has some reservations about Sara and this challenge has enhanced his trust issues, which I would feel the same way.

On the other hand, when Tori and Jack did the challenge, Tori found photos of Jack with an ex. Although I think that’s such a bit of a crappy thing to see, I can’t imagine Jack going through all his images to delete everything. I’ll put my hand up and say I haven’t even done that myself and, honestly, it’s more the effort of going through all my photos to do this that’s off-putting enough.

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It's time to ditch the photo ranking challenge

Let’s talk about the controversial photo ranking challenge. I found this challenge pointless and was just so uncomfortable ranking people by appearance. It feels unnecessary to pit people against each other, and so awkward because you’re spending the next few months with these people. I loved that Timothy refused to do this challenge and I really respected his reasons why.

Timothy shared how Lucinda is already 10 years younger than him and the other girls are in their 20s/30s so yeah it does come across as pretty icky thinking about it. This was highlighted when we saw Richard going ahead with the task and placing Andrea 3rd on his list behind women who were much younger than her. It saddened me to see how much this knocked her down and honestly, it was just completely unnecessary for that challenge to happen.

The verdict so far

I think Confessions Week has certainly created some rockiness between a few of the couples. We already know Ellie and Ben don't last the distance but I also feel like Andrea and Richard might begin to have more of an up-and-down dynamic than what we initially saw from the wedding and honeymoon. Natalie and Collins also just seem a bit doomed in my opinion.

However, although Jayden’s confession was the most intense, I do feel like they will work through this. We saw some great communication and understanding from Eden and I think that’s promising for them.

Bring on the first commitment ceremony!

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