TV

’90 Day Fiancé’ Is Easily One Of The Best Reality Shows And Everyone Needs To Watch It

Drama, laughs and Americans being dumb on camera. Does it get any better?

by Michelle Rennex  12 June 2020
90 DAY FIANCE

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If you’ve been on the internet anytime over the last few months, you’ve most likely stumbled across something from 90 Day Fiancé — whether you realised or not.

The reality show has always been popular, but thanks to one couple from the most recent spin-off (Big Ed and Rosemarie), 90 Day has suddenly been on everyone’s radar — and rightfully so, it’s just a fucking great show.

What Is 90 Day Fiancé? 

90 Day is a TLC documentary-style reality show that focuses on the journey of couples, who’s main goal is to get married and migrate to the United States.

In the US, the K-1 visa is a nonimmigrant visa issued to foreign fiancés of American citizens. Once approved for the visa and residing in America, the foreign citizen is required to marry their US partner within 90 days — hence the title of the show.

As expected, only three months to live with your future husband or wife is not a long time to get to know them. Pair that with the stress of planning a wedding and adjusting to a new way of life, and that means the honeymoon phase is thrown out the window.

As a result, with the very obvious language barriers, cultural differences and general American unwillingness to learn, the interactions between the couples are always unintentionally funny, insightful, dramatic and often times just so damn entertaining.

But beyond the standard 90 Day Fiancé season, there are also a number of spin-offs that TLC has created off the back of the shows success. The most recent season, for example, was Before The 90 Days, which saw eight Americans fly across the world to visit their potential spouses to decide whether getting engaged and going through the visa process was worth it.

There is also Happily Ever After and What Now?, which document the new lives of popular 90 Day couples after their marriages. Also The Other Way, which sees the American citizen deciding to migrate to their partner’s home country and adopt a new way of life.

To capitalise on the shows success, TLC producers also created Pillow Talk, which is essentially just iconic cast members reacting to funny episodes of the show. And The Family Chantel exists too, but Chantel and Pedro are a terrible couple and their families are even worse, so we don’t talk about them in this house.

But the point is, there’s a lot available for you to sink your teeth into. There’s seven original 90 Day seasons, four Before the 90 Days season, and two The Other Way seasons, that are all worth watching. But why? Well that leads to my next point…

All The Couples Are Just Pure Drama-Filled Entertainment

I mean this when I say it, there is truly never a dull moment on 90 Days. For you to understand this, let’s just look at some of the most recent Before The 90 Days couples.

First off, there’s 54-year-old, 4’11” divorcee Big Ed and his 23-year-old “Filipino queen” Rosemarie. Most chatter about the current season has been about the mismatched couple, who struggle through language barriers as Ed just throws unintentional insult after insult at her.

Despite literally washing his hair with mayonnaise, Big Ed has requested Rose take STD tests when he wasn’t willing to, ~gifted~ her with toothpaste and mouthwash because her breath is “not pretty” and made her shave her legs because he finds it “gross”.

But as the season went on, Rose stood up for herself. With the last straw being Big Ed lying about wanting to have kids just so he could have sex with her, Rose dumped Ed in the middle of a tropical resort and went on to become a social media sensation in real life — gaining over 500,000 Instagram followers in just two months.

Another couple who made waves this season was 52-year-old ‘Baby Girl’ Lisa and 31-year-old Nigerian rapper Usman, who also goes by ‘Sojaboy’ — a couple that Chrissy Teigen is obsessed with.

After getting engaged online and Sojaboy writing Baby Girl Lisa a love song, the totally incompatible pair struggled through cultural differences in real life. Most of the couple’s issues came from Baby Girl Lisa, and her strange fake Nigerian accent, constantly being insecure and unhappy with Sojaboy’s friends and female fans.

Unlucky for Lisa, Usman’s mum wasn’t happy with her either, and refused to give her blessings for the pair to wed — even after Lisa brought over a goat and attended mosque with the family.

But Usman’s mother eventually gave the pair her blessing and they wed in Nigeria before Baby Girl Lisa flew back to the states. However, since returning, the pair have blocked each other and fought via public Instagram posts numerous times, which is surprising to no one watching the show but is still entertaining as hell.

Beyond those two explosive couples, there’s also 60-year-old Computer Lover David, who wasted seven whole years chatting to his 28-year-old Ukrainian “girlfriend” Lana through pay-to-chat dating sites — a woman who everyone was certain was a catfish.

But, in a shock to everyone, after being stood up in the Ukraine four times, Lana actually appeared on the fifth visit. Despite David having to bribe Lana for a kiss, the pair literally communicating through Google Translate and Lana refusing to give David her phone number after seven years of talking, the pair got engaged just before David returned to the US.

In an actual case of catfishing, mom of six Yolanda was certain she was in a loving relationship with her British boyfriend, Williams. Yes, William with an S.

Even though her children reversed image searched ‘Williams’ Instagram photos and got a stock image model, the pair never video chatting, him having a Nigerian accent and not knowing the name of any airports beyond ‘London’, Yolanda still had faith that her man was real.

Not even ‘Williams’ blocking her number and blackmailing her nude pictures from another account could make Yolanda see the truth.

To put this all into perspective, this is only FOUR couples. An average season features about eight couples. Imagine the drama and entertainment you’re missing out on!

Plus, when these couples get together for their ‘Tell All’ episodes, which are essentially reunions… if you thought the couples had drama together, wait until you see the drama between the couples. Hoo boy.

The Show Has Produced Some Real Icons

Beyond the bonkers storylines, the best part of 90 Day Fiancé is watching Americans get uncomfortable in third world countries and eventually get ditched for being giant assholes.

There’s something magical about watching strong women who get treated like shit, divorce their men and rise from the ashes to become absolute icons.

For example, Anfisa from Season 4 of 90 Day Fiancé was constantly called a gold digger throughout her season, but reclaimed the label. After her husband Jorge lied about his financial standing while she was in Russia, he got mad that Anfisa expected a certain type of lifestyle in America.

This led to one of the most memorable lines to ever come from 90 Day. After Jorge confronted her and said “You’re basically just saying that you’re dating me because I can buy you things?,” Anfisa replied: “Yes? If I was ugly and fat, would you be dating me?”

Since then, Jorge was arrested for having almost 130kg of weed in his car, the pair got divorced, Anfisa enrolled in college and made a career out of YouTube and her passion for fitness.

Similarly, there was Brazilian queen Larissa from Season 6 of 90 Days, who was constantly treated like shit by her cheap husband Colt and his mother, Debbie, who lived with the couple. After constant fighting and never seeing eye to eye, the pair divorced in May 2019 and Larissa has since gained a hundreds of thousands of followers, and a new boyfriend.

Then of course, there’s everyone’s hero, Rosemarie from this season of Before The 90 Days, who will go down in history for one of the most savage reads known to man with English as a second language. Ugh, we love to see it.

In conclusion, 90 Day Fiancé is one of the most real, raw and entertaining reality shows that has come out in recent times. And with so much spare time on our hands, now’s good a time as any to get stuck into any and all of the seasons — who knows, maybe you’ll even get hooked on the show like Chrissy Teigen has and become a super fan too.

The latest season of 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days starts Sunday 26 July on TLC (Foxtel) in Australia or you can catch up via TLC YouTube clips.