The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On Recap: The Scorpio Curse

Friends, we are gathered here today to discuss a strange linguistic invention: uncomfortability. I’ve watched a lot of dating shows over the years, and recently, this word and its antonym, “comfortability,” have become inescapable. They haunt every franchise from The Bachelor to, most recently, Netflix’s The Ultimatum, where six couples swap partners to decide whether they want to get engaged or break up.

But what do these Franken-words mean? Are they clumsy would-be synonyms for “discomfort” and “comfort,” or do they connote their own experiences? Perhaps “comfortability” indicates an ability to be comfortable within a situation. If that’s the case, I can confirm that the new Ultimatum season does, indeed, bring us to what one contestant calls “the brink of uncomfortability.” In fact, four participants were apparently so unable to find a sense of comfort that they left the show early without explanation — just some on-screen text that informs us that they “secretly met” off-camera and decided to ghost their trial partners.

This midseason twist continues a growing trend from other Netflix dating shows like Love Is Blind, which last season gave us one couple who parted ways without explanation before showing up at the reunion. Flexibility is a good thing, but still, it’s hard to understand why things went down this way — especially given how well one of the trial couples involved seemed to be going. But, hey. That’s TV dating for ya. Not everyone’s ready to lean into, as our host Nick Lachey calls it, “the uncomfortableness.” (Sigh.) Let’s get into it.

Mariah and Caleb
After two years and counting, Mariah (24) simply cannot wait any longer for a proposal. Caleb (29) is intimidated by the depth of her love and worries that she can’t verbalize why they’re right for each other. They agree that Mariah has some intense insecurities, which seem to stem from a traumatic relationship with her mother, but on the whole, their relationship seems stable.

Maybe it’s just that these two look alike in that way that couples do, or maybe it’s just that their cool energy matches so well. But I have trouble believing that they’d ever break up. Despite her alleged insecurities, Mariah handles the switch like a champ, and Caleb seems committed to using this eXpErieNcE for self-betterment — not a “hall pass.” But speaking of people who might not be here for the right reasons…

Zaina and J.R.
There’s a decent chance that Zaina (32) and J.R. (33) leave the show engaged, but I’m not optimistic about their long-term prospects. He’s a pastor’s son who got married at 22 because he and his teenage sweetheart were doing things “right” and wanted to finally have sex. Their divorce involved infidelity on his ex’s part, and now, he’s afraid of marriage.

One question, though: If J.R. is sooooo afraid of infidelity, why did he agree to join a show where the explicit goal is partner swapping with a high probability of philandering? Why does he seem the most enthusiastic about sanctioned stepping out? And why, pray tell, did this man of god choose a trial partner whose eyes make him think he’d be “guaranteed passionate sex”? I wonder…

Nick and Sandy
These two have doom written all over them — and not just because Nick is 38 years old (a self-described “Golden Ultimatum”) and Sandy is 27.

Nick, an artist, has spent more than a decade in Los Angeles and is ready to settle down somewhere quiet near a lake. Sandy is not. As Nick puts it, “She’s still Coachella-ing, and I’m Stagecoaching.” He’s crazy about her, and apparently, he was always the guy she’d drunk-call after a night out when they first met. (I still, for the life of me, cannot imagine that first meeting and am not sure even psychedelic drugs could get my imagination to put such an image together.)

As smitten as Nick might be, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s just some guy Sandy met when she was still in her twenties and whose appeal continues to wane the older she gets.

Scotty and Aria
I’m starting to realize that I might be biased toward believing everyone on this show will (or should) break up, but I’m going to bravely continue to follow my gut. Scotty (30) and Aria (25) just don’t seem like they’re on the same wavelength. They live in different cities, and while Aria is very guarded, Scotty is intense. Aria says she’s at the “peak” of her career (doing what, we have no clue), and she doesn’t want to do something just because a man says so. Scotty, meanwhile, seems convinced that he’s under a microscope because of some bad men from earlier in her life. That said, these two do have some important things in common, like [checks notes] … a shared love of moisturizing under eye patches?

I could see these two getting engaged but would be shocked if they were still together by the reunion.

Vanessa and Dave
I’ll cut right to the chase with these two: I have no idea how they wound up on this show. Dave (34) thinks Vanessa (30) is in a “rush” to get engaged, while he has a “slow decision-making process.” At the same time, he’s desperate to leave the show, and at least one fellow cast member notes that very soon upon arrival, he seems ready to pop the question as requested. These two are part of a very dramatic twist, which I will describe when we get to the trial marriages, but the bottom line is, I’m pretty sure their time on the show convinced Dave to lock it down.

Chanel and Micah
I wish I could tell you more about these people, but it’s astonishing how little we actually see of them together. Chanel (27) wants to settle down with Micah (28), but he’s not convinced the timing is right. He worries that settling down and having kids right away could hamper her fledgling “marketing” career. (I say that in quotes because he seemed to need her to tell him how to describe it at one point, which makes me wonder if she’s, like, an Instagram influencer who makes her money through affiliate links or something.) But that explanation doesn’t make much sense, given that people can easily get engaged and not have kids right away. Chanel explained this to Micah in her stunningly serene voice, and based on their trajectory in these five episodes, I think she got through to him.

The Trial Marriage

Mariah and Micah
On this show, trial couples join up for one of two reasons: Either they think they can help each other grow, or they want to jump each other’s bones. Mariah and Micah fall into Category One. There’s no fire between these two — only a shared desire to figure out what they want and how to be better for their future partners. If you’re actually invested in your longtime boo, this is the respectful way to go, but it makes for pretty boring television.

Until. UNTIL! The season’s Big Twist™. Just one week into the trial marriage phase, two couples leave out of nowhere: Micah and Chanel and Dave and Vanessa. This leaves Mariah and Nick on their own, and while Mariah handles it like a champ, Nick … doesn’t.

Chanel and Dave
The early departure might explain why we see so little of Chanel, Micah, and Dave, but I wish we’d at least seen more of Dave because the producers give him the ultimate fool’s edit. When Dave tries to threaten Vanessa, his ultimatum giver, by saying he’s feeling a vibe with Mariah, she shoots back unfazed: “She’s 24.” When he tells us that during his single era, he was “definitely very smooth,” we cut straight to a clip of him on a date where drops the irresistible line, “You’re from L.A., right? … Yeah, it’s hot there in the summer.” I could watch this all day.

Chanel actually does laugh at Dave’s jokes, but nevertheless, he’s increasingly hellbent on leaving early anyway. Based on his attitude and his castmates’ comments, I think that watching Vanessa date thoroughly spooked him into committing.

Vanessa and Nick
I think having a trial couple named “Vanessa” and “Nick” might’ve broken this show’s Lachey-hosted Matrix. These two hit it off in a scary kind of way but end on a big question mark. They’re both art school dropouts who grew up homeschooled. In fine millennial form, they both like comparing themselves to onions. When asked during a game who most intimidates him, Nick quietly tells Vanessa that it’s her — which clearly turns her on. When she laughs at Nick’s jokes, she really laughs.

But then things get strange: The trial marriage seems to be going fantastically when all of a sudden, on-screen text tells us that Vanessa, Dave, Chanel, and Micah “secretly met off camera” and decided to leave. Just like that! No goodbyes for anyone. While Mariah channels her energy into reading Jay Shetty’s 8 Rules of Love and boxing out her anger, Nick funnels his emotions into a very large painting that stains the walls around it and starts obsessing over Sandy and J.R. This goes about as well as you’d expect.

Sandy and J.R.
Every season, one trial marriage flies too close to the sun. While none of our couples make it to the levels of chaotic intimacy of seasons past (think: Rae and Jake from season one or Yoly and Xander from Queer Love) Sandy and J.R. certainly incite a lot of mess. They’re both Scorpios and upon finding this out, J.R. tells Sandy that being with a Scorpio has long been on his “list.” They don’t ask for each other’s real names (Sandra and Jon Richard) until after they’re already engaged. Sandy’s mom shades Nick during her lunch with J.R. by implying that Nick doesn’t pull his own weight in the relationship, and upon finding out that J.R. met Sandy’s mother, Nick shows up at the trial couple’s door in a fit of panic. They shut the door in his face, leaving him to wail in his room for the cameras. It’s real bad, guys!!!

I don’t know what to make of these two. They pray before dinner, and J.R. says things like, “I think the female could post [her partner on social media], but the male shouldn’t be obligated to.” Sandy teases J.R. about not yet knowing how she “tastes” but tells Zaina that they’re not really dating — she’s just giving J.R. lessons to bring back home. Like, girl, are you sure?

Nick apologizes to J.R. at the guys’ mixer, where J.R. tells him that the late-night visit made him lose “all respect” for him. (LOL, okay, sir.) But the real zesty moment comes when J.R. says he’s heard Scotty is spreading the rumor that he’s only on the show for a “hall pass” to cheat on Zaina. Scotty is very curious to know where J.R. heard this, and when Nick asks J.R. point blank if he’s sleeping with Sandy, he evades the question by pretending to think Nick meant to ask if they’re sleeping in the same bed. God help everyone involved in this emotional swamp.

Zaina and Scotty
Things start off promising here but quickly deteriorate. At first, Scotty is convinced that Zaina “epitomizes” wifey material, and at one point, Zaina tells her friends that after her time with Scotty, she wouldn’t say “yes” to J.R. if he proposed. But we all know that Scotty has a temper; when Aria expresses sadness that he’s flirting with Zaina in front of her during the dating phase, he yells at her for “coming at [him] foul.” And when Zaina shoots down two day-date ideas — a hot air balloon ride because she’s afraid of heights and a cryotherapy session (?!) because she doesn’t like being cold — Scotty turns frosty. Then, he finds out she ate without him and goes off: “This is not what I was looking for in a trial wife,” he announces sanctimoniously. “Someone that just eats without me.”

Regardless of how things turn out with Zaina, Scotty will likely have some ’splaining to do when he reunites with Aria. She said she’d be upset if he spent Night One in bed with his trial wife instead of taking the couch, and, well, he definitely did not sleep on the couch.

Aria and Caleb
Of all the new connections we see this season, Aria and Caleb’s might be the purest. They talk openly and empathetically about their partners. He buys her a spa set and does face masks (and under eye patches) with her. They play “Chubby Bunny,” a game I have not thought about since I was a Girl Scout, and make s’mores. When Aria admits that physical affection is hard for her, Caleb takes her hand and looks into her eyes, smiling. Cute!!!!

But these two don’t seem to agree about what this connection actually means. Aria takes it seriously as a platonic foundation that grew into something more, and Caleb insists they’re just friends. When Caleb tries to say as much to Scotty, he doesn’t buy it. No straight man has ever laid eyes on Aria and just wanted to be friends, he says. Maybe it’s just because I don’t ascribe to the When Harry Met Sally school of thought on heterosexual male-female friendship, but I think Caleb is telling the truth. I just hope Aria realizes that the safety and validation she feels with Caleb should exist within any relationship she has, romantic or not.

Notes for the Divorce Lawyers

• J.R. works hard to maintain his eight-pack (as in, he weighs his food while dining out), and as one might expect, he’s damn proud of his physique. In a pseudo #grwm video, he flexes while telling us, “This was earned, not given.” He then proceeds to show us how he spritzes cologne all over his body, including on his balls. Thanks, J.R.!

• Each season, our trial couples get better and better alternatives to sharing a bed. In season one, there didn’t appear to be any other sleeping place. In season two, Antonio got an air mattress. And this season apparently included pull-out couches. As funny as those sky-high pillow walls from past seasons might have been, this arrangement feels healthier for everyone. Now, if we could just remember to peel all of the furniture assembly stickers off before the cameras start rolling…

• It’s interesting, and perhaps telling, that Mariah doesn’t think Nick would be a good husband — an opinion she readily shares with Sandy after her and Nick’s shared singles time.