Channel Nine’s ‘MAFS’ slammed for airing hideously sexist speech by the bridal party’s best man

On Monday night, I was watching Married At First Sight – my first full episode ever, mind you. Just when it got to the post-nuptials dinner ceremony, and the best man Ben got up to recite his goddamn awful speech, I said to my partner, “Seriously, these guys, in fact this entire show, has got to go.” Little did I realise that even the most die-hard MAFS fans would be agreeing, when suddenly hundreds of armchair critics bombarded social media to state what a twat Tim’s Best Man, Ben was. In fact, many even called for the show to be cancelled.

In the MAFS season premiere on Monday night, the best man in question delivered a disastrously awkward speech, leaving the majority of viewers disgusted.

In his terrible diatribe, Ben referred to Sara (the bride) as just another one of Tim’s “many experiments”, and referred to several incidents involving truth-or-dare type activities – such as eating a four-day-old rancid chicken sandwich at a music festival.

The idiot Ben went on to quip: “And Sara? You can find solace in the fact, rancid or not, Tim will still eat you”. It’s not even something you’d laugh it if you were on a night out with the boys. It was gross, distasteful, infantile and just plain fugly – just like his hideous bogan haircut.

Ben also listed a number of Tim’s other “experiments” including “Experiment 552. Is it okay to get head in the ER since you crashed your car and you’re here now anyway?” which followed a tale about Tim enjoying receiving ‘head’ when driving at the wheel.

Whether the incidents relayed were true or not is beside the point. This was supposed to be some dude’s special night, at least his 15 minutes of fame, but his bestie went and turned it into a filthy opportunity to try and gain laughs. All he got were frowns, boos and criticism.

Sara certainly appeared incensed by the comments, sipping her champagne awkwardly through the speech while Tim played the idiot, too, laughing at his doofus mate’s jokes. He later did concede that there were some “not so PG” moments.

Social media users called Nine out for airing the episode, many even demanding that the show be cancelled. “Can’t wait for the day this show is canned!” one user wrote on Facebook. “Thank god for Netflix” wrote another.

While MAFS enjoyed a huge opening night in Monday’s ratings – reaching some 2.46 million viewers, and while they say any publicity is good publicity, I don’t this particular episode’s extracurricular media exposure has done Nine any good.

Antonino Tati

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