Last week I said this was the 90 Day Fiancé finale, but next week’s episode is actually the real finale. I’d like to thank my dear friends at 90 Day Fiancé, who performed a Christmas Eve miracle by successfully squeezing out nine hours of spectacle despite each respective storyline only having enough drama for one more episode.
We start this week with Eric, who is out to dinner with the three daughters who despise him and his soon-to-be wife, Leida. Tasha has decided to not attend Eric and Leida’s wedding because of the way they evicted her. (I think Eric’s exact words were, “Get your shit Tasha and leave!â€) Unlike their father, Tasha’s sisters are choosing to stick by their family. Unfortunately, Eric has decided to stand by Leida because this is his last opportunity at love. I wonder how Eric defines love, because making a father choose between his children and his fiancée is not the traditional expression of deep emotional attachment predicated on sacrifice and tenderness.
On the other side of Baraboo, Wisconsin, Leida has two things: fantastic skin and doubts about whether she should marry Eric. I wish she put as much thought into whether she’s going to ruin a family as she did into picking her smokey eye during her makeup trial-run for the wedding. Since she has no friends and has completely alienated Eric’s family, her only companion is Alessandro. During this makeup session, she unloads all her emotional baggage onto the poor lovely makeup artist, Cassie, who has no idea how to react when Leida says she hates child support. From this interaction the makeup artist, who now has her own confessional insert, draws the same conclusion as all of us, which is that none of this makes any sense.
Eventually, Eric and Leida meet to discuss the wedding. Eric wants to know if it’s okay with Leida if Tasha attends and “stands somewhere in the back.†Not only is this a rude way to refer to his daughter at his wedding, but it’s not even a plan that Tasha is okay with, so I don’t know why he’s asking. Ultimately, Leida agrees that Tasha can come to the wedding and then Leida thanks Eric for choosing her over his daughters, since she chose him over her family. I’m left wondering why anyone has to choose their significant other over their family because these are artificial ultimatums that could be easily avoided with logic and reason.
Back in Russia, Olga meets up with Anna to discuss her lowdown dirty no-good baby-father. Every woman needs an Anna in their life to raise the red flags and say, “Hey maybe the guy you’re dating lied about submitting visa papers so he could discreetly steal your baby.†Which … turned out to be exactly the case … sort of. During a park date, Steven admits to not having submitted the K1 visa until long after he told Olga he would. This is bad. But, Steven has decided to let Olga keep the baby in Russia. This is good. Steven then takes this romantic opportunity to propose to Olga, who is so overwhelmed by the whiplash of conflicting emotions that she can’t stop laughing. If I knew nothing about Steven and the contempt he held for a newborn baby, I would say this moment is cute. Alas, I can not erase the last ten episodes of this show. I am happy that Olga is happy and I hope that watching himself on TV will make Steven a better husband and father.
Fernanda has written a letter to Jonathan and editing wants us to believe that she is going to break up with him. But I am not easily deceived, not anymore … Turns out, Fernanda wanted to apologize to Jonathan for overreacting. But technically, as Fernanda describes, she didn’t lose their argument because when Jonathan wins she also wins … Yeah yeah yeah, sure, whatever! From Fernanda and Jonathan, I’m getting a lot of emotional heart and very little trauma. This is great for them and bad for my attention span.
It’s two days until Kalani and Asuelu get married and they are ill-prepared. Asuelu doesn’t have a suit, baby Oliver doesn’t have a suit, and the ceremony is on a boat for some reason. The couple is staying at an Airbnb before the wedding, which makes me think that none of their friends and family support their wedding enough to let them crash in a guest bedroom. Kalani worries that if her family finds out that she’s pregnant they will think Asuelu was trying to trap her. I don’t think that Asuelu was trying to trap her per se, but impregnating an American woman was the best thing that ever happened to him and he has no plans of letting her go.
Kalani, Kolini, and mom go get their nails done in preparation for the wedding. Kalani still hasn’t told Kolini that she’s pregnant and her fear is that her sister will find out because she won’t be drinking during the bachelorette party. Now, it’s worth saying that in Kalani’s situation there would be no right time to tell someone you’re pregnant, but a bachelorette party on national television is probably not ideal. Kolini reacts to this news by sobbing and then telling her other friends about it in the bathroom. She doesn’t think this is the right time for Kalani to have a second baby considering she has no income, her husband can’t work, and her relationship is on the rocks like a whiskey ginger. I agree with Kolini on this one. I’m not quite sure what Kalani’s life plan is but her bad decision-making is giving me hives.
In Las Vegas, Coltee wants his mother Deb to accept his fiancée, but she refuses. Deb is not interested in Larissa joining her family, and the only way for them to settle the score is if Larissa finally kisses the ring and apologizes. Eventually, Larissa and Deb get their nails done to try to work on their fractured relationship. One of the nail technicians shares that one time she argued with her mother-in-law and then her mother-in-law took her to dinner. This hollow story with no discernible lesson somehow is enough to coax Larissa into apologizing to Deb. Deb accepts it and offers to move out of the house. Finally, Deb is willing to let her son-husband be a parasite to a new woman.
Also in Las Vegas, Ashley and Jay finally get married in a destitute wedding chapel surrounded by no friends or family, but some field producers and an Elvis impersonator. Somehow Elvis manages to make their special day about him, making the couple recite his favorite Heartbreak Hotel puns during their wedding vows. I appreciate Elvis’s insistence on plugging his business, as he must see that their relationship is about as doomed as Elvis’s heart after three decades of boozing. I want to commend the editors on their great work in that limo scene with Jay and Ashley that exactly paralleled The Graduate. I have never seen two people sadder on the happiest day of their lives. I guess this darkness should come as no surprise as we learn that immediately after Jay and Ashley got married he downloaded Tinder to cheat on his wife. I can’t believe the man we all expected to cheat actually went through with all that cheating! I had much higher standards for the son of man named Skins, who was nicknamed that because of all his mistresses. Now, Ashley regrets ever getting in a relationship with Jay, despite every red flag indicating that she never should have gotten married to a promiscuous teenager in the first place. We’ll see what happens to the couple next week on the finale, but my guess is that Jay continues cheating.