If you know me, you know that I'm a devout viewer of TLC's 90 Day Fiance. But this season doesn't have the ooomph that the first one did. It follows too many couples (six, instead of four) and every one of them is ignoring some kind of glaring red flag as they prepare to skip down the aisle. The couples in the first season at least seemed to know each other on a basic level and had worked out most of the logistics of being a couple before getting hitched. This season's couples are all hot messes, most of them throwing up blinders when it comes to the fact that their foreign fiance is either playing them or is a complete and total bitch. I could go on for hours about the issues with these peeps, but this post is about one couple in particular.
Danny is the whitest of white boys from middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. He is the youngest of seven children, all of whom are annoying as hell. Danny pings the Gaydar of a lot of my fellow viewers. He likes tight clothing and he has a questionable haircut and he doesn't seem comfortable in much of any situation. While on a trip to Australia, Danny met Amy, who is originally from South Africa. They struck up a friendship that eventually turned into a romantic relationship and led them to obtain a fiance visa. Amy is beautiful, sweet and overall just too good for Danny and his annoying family. When he picks her up at the airport, in the dead of night, they barely speak or interact at all as she's driven to his brother's farm, 40 minutes from civilization. Danny and Amy have decided to abstain from anything more than quick pecks, so she's going to live in his brother's attic until they get married. Not being able to live under the same roof with your fiance that you're not having sex with seems to be a recurring theme on this show and it's the oddest ish. I don't know what kind of reasoning is behind thinking someone is better off in a house of strangers than in a room down the hall, but I digress. Danny leaves Amy that night without any clear indication of when they're going to see each other again, and because of the late hour, she doesn't even meet his brother and sister-in-law until the next morning when the brother bangs on her door and enters without permission. He then proceeds to say to her face, "Wow, you really are tan! Say something in African". Amy handles his idiocy with more grace than most, but you can see the shock and annoyance on her face. Danny's brother also seems to think it's funny to invade the one date night they have, squeezing in between them on the couch solely to remind them they can't have sex. Just days after her arrival, and having spent next to no time with her fiance, Amy is whisked off to a dinner with all of Danny's siblings and their significant others. Yet again, his family leads with ignorance, assuming she must be from some mud hut village in South Africa and asking her to, "Speak African". Not surprisingly, Danny does not say anything to put a stop to any of this and Amy is left out on her own to deal with it all. Oh, and there's one more thing - Danny's dad is a racist. He doesn't call him that though, of course. Instead, he tells Amy his dad "lives in Texas so he doesn't have a lot of experience with interracial marriage", and he isn't a fan of the practice. Danny reassures Amy that no matter what his dad thinks of them, he is still going to marry her and just days before the wedding, they set off to Texas to meet the parents.
Danny's dad just looks like one of those Republican mofos who would be bitching about keeping his guns and calling Obama's birthplace into question. He's an older man in a plaid shirt with glasses and an instantly sour disposition upon seeing his son and future daughter-in-law walk in. Danny's mom gives Amy a hug and welcomes her to the family and is as gracious as one should be. But then they sit down to meet dad (who never gets up from his chair, not even to greet Amy) and he asks where Amy is from and she tells them a bit about South Africa, emphasizing how beautiful it is (especially compared to bumfuck Pennsylvania), to which his dad says, "That's not somewhere that, uh...we'd ever want to visit" (his loss, South Africa is gorgeous). Dad quickly turns his attention to asking if they were fully prepared for an interracial marriage and proceeds to tell Amy that it's "not something that's accepted" in the U.S. Amy has previously said she's not sure of U.S. customs and what's acceptable, having come from a country where apartheid was the norm and Danny's dad exploits that uncertainty for all its worth. Displeased that Amy's relatives (most of them Black) are flying in for the wedding, he emphasizes to them both that it isn't too late to call the whole thing off. after some awkward silence, Danny and Amy hit the road and head back to Pennsylvania, still with the intent to marry in a few days.
Oh, where to begin. The obvious statement is that Danny's dad is an ignorant prick who couldn't have been ruder to Amy. This girl is in love with your son and has given up the only life she's ever known to be with him. She's in a new country and with no friends or support system other than her new family (unfortunately). Second, it was awful to mislead her by telling her we don't accept interracial marriage, the same way it was wrong for Danny to try and explain away his father's racism by saying he lives in Texas. A real man would've gone in there and said, "Look, I fell in love with this amazing girl from South Africa, yes she's Black and color doesn't matter to either of us and we're gonna get married, end of discussion.". But Danny made a million excuses for his dumbass family, as if they live in the fucking Ozarks or some shit and don't know it's not the 1960's anymore. "Are you ready for the challenges of an interracial marriage?" was a question the couple were asked. Having dated every color and nationality under the sun, having a daughter who is bi-racial and being a product of an interracial marriage that persevered long before it was even kind of acceptable, I can tell you that there are indeed challenges to marrying someone of a different color. But not the kind that his father tried to pass off, like they would be pointed and laughed at and possibly worse just for being in a damn Target together. Sadly, there are still a lot of people who view things as Danny's father, but most of us don't see color. I can't imagine what it was like for my grandparents back in the 50's when race was a huge thing and the civil rights movement was years away. And I hope things are much different when Miss N finds her lobster. Good luck to Amy and her new in-laws...
