I’ve got to be honest, I’m usually not a fan of Netflix’s reality television programming. My elementary and middle school summers were filled with binge-watches of Flavor of Love, Jersey Shore, and The Real World, early millennium series about dating, relationships, and (very drunk) friends and enemies that were flaming firework shows of trash but also fascinating cultural time capsules. So series like Dating Around and Twentysomethings: Austin leave something to be desired. To be frank, they’re boring.
Even gimmicky, date-to-get married shows like Love is Blind don’t do it for me. I just couldn’t manage to get through 10 episodes of two people cooing at each through an opaque glass wall.
Then I watched The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On. As opposed to the slate of reality shows whose premises are rooted in crazy schemes designed to find someone to date or marry, The Ultimatum is designed to test the relationship you’re already in. It’s like a relationship rumspringa.
The Ultimatum, which just finished its buzzy first season on Netflix, brought together six couples, all in their mid to late twenties. On average, each couple has been together for about two years. And in each couple, there is one person who has issued the other an “ultimatum”: marry me (or we break up), move in with me (or we break up), or have kids with me (or we break up).
The evil twist here is that the show required that the couples take a temporary break. It forced each of them to match up with another person on the show and then live with them for three weeks, before coming back together with their original partner for another three weeks. After that reunion, the couples had to decide: Get married or move on (get it?).
When the concept of this show was first announced, people couldn’t get over how maniacal it all seemed. If you have to beg your partner to get married, then you probably shouldn’t marry them, right? And if your partner is entertaining the idea of being with another person, then your relationship is surely already over.
I see your points, Twitter reactors, TikTok commentators, and the general public. But hear me out. The Ultimatum is actually a good idea.
This show is the equivalent of going through your man’s phone to see if he's cheating. (Which one of the participants in fact does on camera.) You know that what you’re doing isn’t right and you know you're gonna get your feelings hurt, but it's information you need to know. Yes, we can point fingers from the comfort of our homes, shouting at our TVs that these people do not belong together (I’m glad that Jake and April heard my screams), but the longer you are in a relationship, the more it begins to feel like a habit. And it takes some effort to break a habit.
Even if you take issue with the specifics of The Ultimatum project, most of the participants claimed that they came away from the experience learning things about themselves.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Take, for example, Zay and Shanique. In episode 4, Zay blows up at Shanique because he believes that she’s making faces while he’s trying to explain his feelings about his girlfriend, Rae. Shanique sets hard boundaries with him about the way that he’s speaking to her, and after taking a breather, he returns to their shared apartment and apologizes to her.
Later, we see Shanique arguing with her boyfriend, Randall, and completely stonewalling him. She doesn’t listen, she speaks over him, and she shuts down. If you isolate the footage of Shanique and Randall, you could come to the conclusion that Shanique is a shitty girlfriend, that her immaturity with Randall is indicative of who she is as a person. But instead, because we saw her with Zay, we know that Shanique is capable of speaking with a partner maturely. Knowing this is crucial in being able to break the cycle of miscommunication with her original partner. This is something she may not have been able to discover without her temporary, three-week boyfriend.
The Ultimatum isn’t just entertainment for the rest of us to watch and discuss with our friends. For the participants, it acted as the catalyst to making fundamental changes in a relationship that was stuck in a cycle of unhealthy conflict.
And even though many of us viewers consider two years to be a crazy short amount of time to force a decision around marriage (and it is), it can also be the point in a relationship where people start to consider sunk costs. They may fear starting over, and so they continue to be in a relationship that isn’t serving them. It may take something wild (say, a reality show hosted by Nick and Vanessa Lachey) to make a decision.
Even couples like April and Jake, and Rae and Zay, benefited from the pressure cooker that was The Ultimatum. These people were definitely not meant to be together, and like Vanessa Lachey says in the series reunion, it’s better they find out now than in a few years when they’re married and have children. The nature of the show was that they were being forced to confront issues that they had swept under the rug.
However, while I think the cast of the first season of The Ultimatum was phenomenal from an entertainment perspective, there is a lot to be said about the messed-up relationship and social dynamics that the show created. I for one, cringed every time Madilyn slurred to the camera how “sexy” Randall was. And there were some uncomfortable racial dynamics in that love triangle, partly due to Madilyn’s weird emphasis on Randall’s sexiness and partly due to Randall’s comments about Shanique being too opinionated compared to Madilyn. Lauren’s decision not to have children was constantly being challenged and seen as moveable, both by her partner Nate, and Colby, who said that he could get her to want kids. And Zay’s hair-trigger temper and lack of accountability was difficult to watch.
And like its less chaotic sibling Love is Blind (and to a degree its horny cousin, Too Hot to Handle), the emphasis on relationships and marriage being the ultimate goal is incredibly problematic. For The Ultimatum and Love is Blind particularly, forcing their contestants to get married at the end of the exercise can create unnecessary pressure on a relationship that could benefit from a few more months (or years) of dating.
One of the most egregious failures of The Ultimatum is the glaring exclusion of a relationship therapist. Instead, contestants had sit-downs with their partner’s friends and family. I promise you, if I was walking into a firing squad where I’m defending myself to two or more people that were automatically not on my side, I would lose all the communication skills I picked up in those three weeks. You know a set-up doesn’t work when it makes me feel bad for Zay and Colby.
Speaking of Colby, his relationship with Madilyn, along with Nate and Lauren’s relationship during their short tenure on the show, were definitely failures. It didn’t seem that the couples really learned anything before moving forward with their relationship. Frankly, seeing Lauren “compromise” on having kids and seeing Madilyn heavily pregnant with Colby’s child (which I predicted as soon as Colby ambushed her with an impromptu marriage), was honestly really sad. But at the end of the day, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it break up with its cowboy hat-wearing beau.
All this being said, while the concept of The Ultimatum is messy, I happen to love mess, both in my reality TV and in my relationships. Diamonds are created under pressure, and all that. And if it breaks, then it probably wasn’t a diamond to begin with.
