Married at First Sight Dallas: Episode 6

Episode 6, y’all. This means it’s time for the couples to get back to life, back to reality. And by “reality,” of course, I mean back to the continental United States and their Dallas home base. (There’s not otherwise much reality to it.) 

This season, Dr. Pepper explains, the show is giving the couples $5000/month (!?!) to help them live  and get their lives started as a couple. This is a new twist. In past seasons, the couples had to have frank conversations about their incomes and decide how much they were comfortable spending on their lodgings and other living expenses. But being given 5k/month? Seems we’re even further from reality than we suspected. 

Anyway.

Dr. Pibb says the couples have to decide if they want to choose one of their own places in which to live or start fresh in a place they choose together. I’ve watched this show for several seasons and only once did the couple opt to live in one of their homes. It didn’t work out; they ended up moving to a different place they chose together. So this feels like another fake-out consideration. Like, of course they’re going to find a fresh place as a couple.

Still, they have to tour their spouse’s home because the show says so. Thus, Dave and Amber start off visiting Dave’s place. He wants to live there because he’s comfortable there. (Wow. What a shocker that Dave wants things to stay the way he’s used to them being. It’s a wonder this dude got married at all.) Amber likes it there and admits it’s a lot nicer than her apartment – it has a hideous black soaking tub and a hallway filled with photos of Dave’s friend-family and even a giant closet filled with shirts for Dave to sweat through whilst dancing – but she also notes that while she’d be okay living there, she worries Dave might get nervous about her putting her own touch on the décor and bringing her cat there, etceteras. I think she makes a valid point. Something tells me Dave would not like her to change the space he so enjoys.

Next up is Mia and Tristan. They’re touring T’s pad. There’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge but not much else. Tristan hopes that Mia likes his $2100/month high-rise apartment space because he really likes it. He enjoys praying out on the balcony. He tells Mia that’s where he prayed for her. I find that an odd thing to say, but she seems touched. 

Mia takes Tristan to her condo. She tries to take him right to her GOD wall hanging in the kitchen but he gets distracted by the bull skull in the entry. He admits he didn’t realize she was such a “die-hard Texan” (in addition to the bull skull, Mia has a Texas-shaped wall-hanging and Texas cut-out cutting board). He’s not digging her style and tells her that if they get a house and it has a man cave and a lady cave, her bull is going in the lady cave. Mia says she owns her condo so it’s more of an investment than a place she has to live (i.e. she can just as easily rent it out) so she says she’d be game to live in Jay T’s high rise. 

Danielle is packing because she pretty much knows her place isn’t going to work for them as a couple. With two dogs and two of them and foster pets, it’s not big enough. Bobby likes Danielle’s place, but admits it’s small.

On the drive to Bobby’s house, Danielle is overthinking the significance of her dog and Bobby’s dog meeting. What if they don’t get along? What if the dog doesn’t mesh with Bobby? You can’t see me but my eyes are rolling something fierce here. Great news: the dogs are sniffing each other’s butts. All is well. 

Danielle is checking out Bobby’s duck freezer. She’s not in love with it but it also doesn’t bother her. It still bothers me. She’s jazzed with the space in Bobby’s home and her dog seems to love it, too. Danielle thinks it makes sense for them to live there because he owns his own house as opposed to her small rental.

How ironic the one season they’re being given money, the couples aren’t all rushing out to buy new places. Curious.

Now it’s time for Amber to show Dave her lodgings. (Don’t ask me why they broke apart the Amber-Dave show & tell when everyone else’s was together.) Amber hopes her cat takes to Dave. They walk in the door and the cat comes right over and lets Dave pet her and rub her belly and she tries playing with him. But guess what? Downer Dave doesn’t like Paisley the Cat because she’s “rambunctious” and he doesn’t want her jumping around and knocking things off counters and scratching his furniture. This dude is annoying. He’s such a stick in the mud. Womp WOMP.

After being horrified at the amount of shoes his bride owns, Dave fake-compliments Amber’s place which he says he “likes more than I thought I would” (that’s big of you, Dave) by saying it would be great for one person but is too small for two of them. He decides they’re not living at Amber’s, but he’s still hoping she wants to move in with him (mainly because it’ll be a lot easier for him not to have to move twice when they inevitably break up.)

Amber has some reservations, though, because she thinks they should start fresh together. Before she can agree to move in there, Amber wants to know if Dave has ever lived there with another woman. She’s very territorial and doesn’t want to think of another woman having made dinner with Dave at his counter or washed dishes in his sink, nor does she want Dave to have memories of having done those things with someone else before her. Dave, in a weird evasive response, asks if he hadlived there with another woman, would that be a problem for her. Yes,  Dave, it would. He makes a face and they cut to commercial. When they return, Dave says he gets that concern and no, he’s never lived with a girlfriend because he’s never wanted to. Shocker.

So there you have it. All three couples are moving in to the dude’s place. Interesting. Unprecedented. 

We’re back to Mia and Tristan. They’re having a convo about their finances. Tristan is wearing bright red socks and I can’t get past them. Red Socks McGhee says he’ll cover rent. Mia says that’s sweet. 

Downer Dave informs Amber that he’s all about budgeting. Amber tells Dave she doesn’t want him to see what she’s spending her money on. He’s not cool with that. She explains that she’s not used to someone watching her spending. She wants to continue buying whatever she feels like buying. Dave wants them to be responsible with their spending and set up a joint account. As he explains to her that they should set aside money for retirement and savings and a travel fund, Amber’s eyes look a bit panicked for a second, but then says she thinks maybe she needs that. 

Cut to Bobby and Danielle. There’s an Excel spreadsheet open and Bobby looks a bit ill as he discovers they’re over-budget for the month. Danielle makes matters worse when she mentions her “necessary” $450/year waxing expenses and, oh yeah, her $15,000 in credit card debt. She says it’s not his responsibility, but he points out that it’s a mutual burden as they’re married. He didn’t travel a lot in his 20s, instead focusing on saving and saving and saving and saving. He didn’t really want to spend his savings on getting someone else out of debt, but he will because they’re a team now. Danielle wants to know how they’re going to allocate their $5000/month from the experts. Bobby thinks the first order of business should be getting out of paying two separate mortgages/rents. But to get out of Danielle’s lease, she’d need to pay $8,000 and she doesn’t want to blow almost all of the experts’ money on that. But it sounds like Bobby thinks it’s for the best. Then he points out it would take her 8 years and three months to pay off her debt if she stopped getting her eyelashes done. She’d rather have her eyebrows done. Priorities.

To me, this entire thing seems like a bold move, considering these MAFS marriages don’t work. If I were Danielle, I’d keep my place for 2 months juuuuuuuust in case. 

Downer Dave doesn’t like moving. (Who does?) It’s made worse because Amber has lost her voice today. Dave makes a few negative comments about the contents of her closet and how he thinks it’s no wonder her finances aren’t in better shape. When he takes a $99 price tag off of a statue of a baby sleeping on an elephant, he says, “A sucker is born every minute.” (This guy is a prince.) 

As Danielle moves in, Bobby is chill with her rearranging his whole house. It looks 1000 times better than it did before. Bobby’s decorating style is horrible. The show barely spends any time on them because, so far, they seem the most likely to succeed and, as such, there’s nothing much to see there. They communicate like a couple who might actually make it. 

In contrast, back at Dave’s, Amber is concerned about “invading Dave’s space.” She says he seems to be “all in” about the joint living, but she’s concerned that she’s taking over half the closet and moving in the cat and all of that. The cat got into his plant and tore up toilet paper in the bathroom and Downer Dave was NOT AMUSED.

Mia and Tristan are doing their move-in. First order of business is hanging up GOD, because of course it is.

Danielle has already taken on a foster and it pees on the dog bed and—you guessed it—Bobby is cool with it. Danielle doesn’t prefer cooking, but Bobby likes it, so he does it. Danielle is pumped that he’s everything she asked for and more. She does the dishes. 

Time for the first night of sleeping in the new places. Requisite tooth-brushing footage. 

Dave wants to test out the gross black tub. Amber says they will at some point. It doesn’t yet feel like her home, but she thinks she’ll get there. She enjoys spending time with Dave and thinks they’ll fall in love. Hopefully he can accept the cat. The camera cuts to Paisley checking out a box, and Dave is all, “What is she doing?” (I don’t think he’s ever gonna accept that cat.)

Danielle clogged the sink. Bobby gets the snake; he’s cool with it. I am not cool with the blue crab boxers he’s wearing. 

T and M are in bed talking about something—honestly, I’ve tuned out because I’m so bored with them—but I hear Mia tell him she loves him. Tristan is touched. I’m not. Because this chick is a liar.

Next week, it’s the friends and family visitations episode. Tristan’s mom is going to grill Mia (has she told him everything that will affect him?) and Amber is going to tell Dave she’s got her own friends and doesn’t need to adopt his. Hahaha. Can’t wait.