Wow! So this is the last passion blog, huh? This semester was a fun passion blog because I got to build a superiority complex by reviewing things. Just kidding, sorta. So what piece of entertainment should I review for this week, the last week to make an impression on my classmates and wrap up the school year?
I think it’s going to be the TLC show 90 Day Fiance, which I have been watching a lot lately.
This show follows couples as through the K1 visa process which means that they have 90 days to marry after their future spouses come to the US. How these couples have met each other varies. Some people meet their future spouses online and are common on the show because meeting for the first time and then having 90 days to marry has a lot more potential for drama than couples who have known each other or lived together overseas and then their fiances moved to their country. The show does follow a few of these couples, the ones who meet each other in a conventional way and have a solid build of relationship and understand each other’s culture, but with those situations, TLC usually has to create a lot of fake drama to keep them on the show.
There is a huge following for this show, and almost every couple has a Reddit thread about them so that makes it fun to see what other people think about the weird situations they get into if you don’t have any friends who watch the show with you. A lot of the drama is clearly set up by the production but besides that, there really is no shortage of genuinely interesting couples. My favorites are the traditional midwestern families who are introduced to people plucked from all over the world as they move in with them and their adult offspring before the wedding. The clash of cultures is very fascinating! It’s also really interesting to see which couples stay together after the show ends, and a lot of them do even after a super rocky start.
So yes, a lot of the drama is fake and obviously so, but there also seems to be a huge surplus of people who find their spouses overseas via dating sites or Facebook and a lot of the challenges they face meeting their spouses are real. My favorite section of the series is called Before The 90 Days, and it follows Americans traveling overseas to meet their fiances before their fiances come to the US to live with them.