One MAFS wife visits her husband’s waterfront home expecting a mansion — but what she finds leaves her disgusted. Who’s in the wrong? James Weir recaps.
A high-maintenance Married At First Sight wife is left disgusted on Monday night when she arrives at her husband’s waterfront home expecting a palatial mansion only to discover he lives in a semi-detached villa with a 1980s jacuzzi next to the bed.
It’s Homestays Week, where the MAFS freaks drag their spouses back to their real-life crap shacks to see if they can survive outside Trash Tower.
For two months, we’ve heard one groom talk about being a wealthy businessman who owns several corporations. So when his wife rocks up expecting to find a chateau that belongs in the pages of Architectural Digest, you can understand her confusion when she’s greeted with what can only be described as a retirement village complex. The subsequent house inspection becomes more brutal than a room reveal on The Block, where Shaynna Blaze rips you a new one because your décor’s ugly and your rose gold tapware’s cheap.
When we first met Scott, he bragged to us about his business empire, multiple income streams and luxury lifestyle complete with a Lamborghini Huracán sports car that can retail for upwards of $440,000. His wife Gia has been gleefully imagining their life together.
But as their maxi taxi pulls up in the Gold Coast driveway, she discovers that one’s expectations don’t always match reality. She looks around the estate that seems to be dotted with identical semi-detached villas. It’s resort living at its finest! But to Gia, it’s a retirement village.
From MAFS to The Golden Girls …
She rolls her suitcase through the front door to begin the formal inspection. Her shoulders slump and her face screws up in disgust.
“Ugh, it’s a bit messy,” she remarks.
The camera pans around the living area and kitchen, trying to find some mess that … doesn’t quite exist?
Um … is the mess in the room with us?
Scott leads Gia into the master bedroom where a jacuzzi sits proudly next to the bed — a relic from an era when indoor spas were considered the height of luxury and not a mould breeding ground.
“So random,” Gia says, her face contorting.
Let’s bring back bedside jacuzzis.
Her criticism continues as they move through the house.
“What’s THAT?”
“Why’s THAT over THERE?”
“Ew.”
Scott’s visibly hurt and upset. He has worked hard building a life for himself. This semi-detached villa is his pride and joy!
“If the roles were reversed and we were at Gia’s house, I wouldn’t say anything but nice things. I wouldn’t say, ‘Ugh yuck, this is shit’ …” he confides in us.
It’s almost as if Gia is looking for things to criticise. She doesn’t even attempt to imagine what life could really be like here — sexy moments with Scott in the bedroom jacuzzi followed by complimentary Water Aerobics For Oldies classes in the communal swimming pool. Fabulous!
“It’s definitely not as clean as I thought. My house is way cleaner,” Gia scoffs.
Look, while Scott’s villa will never be featured in a glossy magazine photospread, it’s actually better than the bachelor pads of most single straight men. Lest we forget last year’s season of MAFS where Ryan brought Jacqui home to his brick storage unit.
As punishment for being mean about Scott’s house, we sentence Gia to a week of living in Ryan’s ground-level brick storage unit.
At Scott’s, there’s no pile of pizza boxes doubling as a coffee table. No suspicious stains on the couch. The man even has a walk-in closet — which is where the house tour continues.
Gia spots something immediately.
“What’s THAT?” she points to a pink memory foam travel pillow sitting on a shelf. “Why’s it pink?”
She begins speculating it belongs to an ex-girlfriend. Or maybe a current girlfriend. Or perhaps it’s evidence Scott has some sort of kink involving women’s neck support accessories purchased from the Qantas duty-free catalogue.
We don’t exactly know what Gia’s theory is. But what we do know is she’s being mean as per usual, and if my partner ever behaved this way, they’d be kicked out of my semi-detached villa faster than you can say “assisted living facility”.
Gia, maybe this is actually just Scott’s orthopaedic butt pillow and he’s too embarrassed to admit it on TV. Please show some respect.
“My stuff wouldn’t even fit in that closet,” Gia continues. “I have, like, two closets for myself and a whole beauty room with shelves.”
Producers score this heartbreaking moment with an orchestra of violins. Truly devastating stuff.
“It’s my house. I’m proud of it,” Scott mutters defensively.
The next morning, Scott makes the bed while Gia helpfully provides a compare and contrast analysis.
“My bed at home has, like, two sets of pillows, another big euro and then, like, three other pillows across here. And I have, like, a big thick furry mink. I have a heated blanket underneath because I’m always cold. And I have three mattress toppers.”
Scott should be mortified! He’s sleeping on a Sealy Posturepedic with only four pillows, like some kind of peasant.
Despite the relentless criticism, Scott tries to salvage a romantic moment. He hugs Gia and stares out at the ocean view from his bedroom.
Gia whispers in his ear: “Yeah, I couldn’t live here.”
Yeah, that water view looks like hell.
Determined to win her over, Scott decides to hire a yacht so they can mingle with his mates.
Stranded at sea, Gia outlines her life plan to Scott’s friends: “I want one or two more kids, have a big house, have a certain car.”
While Gia’s busy making Pinterest boards in her head, Scott’s friends drag him below deck for an emergency intervention.
He tells them everything. How Gia has been the queen mean girl of Trash Tower — stirring up drama, distributing screenshots, forming cliques. He worries this is just who she is in real life. If they stay together in the outside world, will she be picking drunken fights with strangers over dinner at Hurricanes Bar & Grill? And scheming like she’s Blair Waldorf running Surfer’s Paradise?
“Is she like this outside the experiment? Like, f**k, is this normal?” Scott wonders.
Adding another layer of confusion, Gia wants to move in together immediately after the experiment ends.
“I don’t wanna do that. But I’m trying to make her feel secure,” Scott admits.
He hasn’t told Gia the truth about how he feels because he’s terrified of her flying off the handle. But it’s time.
Back on dry land, in the comfort of his semi-detached villa, he sits Gia down for The Talk.
“We’ve had a rough week. I don’t even know if you want to be here,” he begins cautiously, noting his wife’s dismay at having to live inside this waterfront dump.
Gia immediately gets defensive and talks over him. “WE ALL HAVE OUR MOMENTS! WE’RE HUMAN BEINGS!”
Scott tries again. “Do you fully 100 per cent trust me?”
“With what? In what way? I don’t understand,” Gia fires back.
Gia! You saw a pink neck pillow and assumed there was another woman secretly living in the house.
Scott takes a breath. “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells because if I want to bring up something, I feel like you might misinterpret and get defensive.”
Cut to Gia misinterpreting and getting defensive in five, four, three, two …
“OK, Scott — I didn’t know you wanted to argue today,” she snaps, before mocking his claims. “You’re walking on eggshells? I don’t know why you feel unsafe with what you want to say!”
Scott literally starts backing away on his tiptoes like he’s … like he’s … like he’s walking on eggshells?
You two need some time out in the bedside jacuzzi.
At this rate, Gia won’t have a marital villa to move into. She’ll be alone. And there’ll be no sympathy.
She made her bed [complete with three mattress toppers and a big thick furry mink]. Now lie in it.