90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? Can't Keep Up With Real Life (or Social Media)

Reality is a problem for virtually every reality TV series. The real world intrudes on even the most heightened franchises, whether via an arrest or internet sleuthing about an affair. Some shows, which were already breaking the fourth wall anyway, have incorporated the real-life fuss into storylines or otherwise seen fit to acknowledge it.

But those are the cannier examples. The 90 Day Fiancé franchise, as sprawling as it is, has long struggled to keep up with social media disclosures ahead of premieres or even just in between new episodes. Perhaps it’s because 90 Day cast members, like Angela Deem and Ed Brown, are more likely to be loose cannons; they’re not trying to keep it together for the sake of a business, as in Vanderpump Rules, or even their own ventures. But it likely boils down to the fact that this franchise is all about relationships. When a relationship is the main goal of the show and not a subplot, how do you keep things going after a breakup?

The couples that make up 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? Season 8 include some of the most long-standing ones: Alex and Loren, Liz and Ed, Jasmine and Gino, Angela and Michael (though the latter didn’t appear until the 10th episode, which aired May 19), which would seem to offer some stability to the show’s “plotting.” But this season was immediately thrown out of whack after Liz and Ed’s breakup was effectively spoiled by social media posts (their own) ahead of their onscreen split.

It’s not the first time that some big revelation was made off camera or in the midst of a season. It’s not even the only time that’s happened this season — although Angela and Michael are going through the spousal visa interview process on screen, they’ve made it clear via Instagram posts that they’re no longer together. That’s a bit of an understatement; the couple has been through a lot of offscreen drama, including a missing persons report and Michael telling police he didn’t feel safe with Angela. They’ve always had a tumultuous relationship, but the tenor of these latest developments is different. Despite recommitting during The Last Resort, they seem to really be done this time.

There’s not much production can do when something like this happens, beyond adding some title cards. But the Happily Ever After? producers’ response still feels rather inadequate. They delayed Michael and Angela’s arrival this season, waiting until the 10th episode to fill viewers in on their spousal visa interview process. Things quickly go south; Angela rages at Michael for including screenshots of some of her threats to divorce him and his laughing responses. He claims to think that providing documentation of an argument will prove to the government officials in Sierra Leone that they’re married (what a romantic). Angela rightly observes that it makes them “look bad,” as if the relationship is unstable (which is not entirely offbase).

Again, Angela and Michael, like Ed and Liz, have been through many breakups, so that alone wouldn’t necessarily throw off the trajectory of the season. But the combination of the former couple’s absence and the latter’s limited presence have ground things down to a halt. Season 8 smacks of repetition — newer couples Manuel and Ashley and fellow newlyweds Rob and Sophie may regularly provide lovers’ quarrels and chances for the camera crew to chance after a fleeing cast member, but these exchanges have become as routine as Mahmoud telling Nicole he wants a divorce.

Gino and Jasmine have also been around to show just how difficult establishing a lasting happily ever after can be, which has provided the only real forward momentum this season. But the only other couple is Alex and Loren, who came off the bench from years on Pillow Talk, and their main storyline is her “mommy makeover.” It’s not that we need to see constant tension between couples, but Loren and Alex’s happily ever after is a done deal. In lieu of any real progression in their story, Happily Ever After? just showed a bunch of Loren’s elective surgery footage.

Happily Ever After? exists to fill in the gaps of what happens after a proposal or a marriage, and it can be a nice change of pace from the more contentious series in this franchise. But it’s not meant to be dull, nor is it insulated from the real-life actions of its cast members, who are increasingly taking their stories straight to the public via social media. Season 8 banked on some of the biggest personalities in 90 Day history, only to have limited interactions with them. This could just mark a turning point in the relationships of these long-standing couples, but right now, it looks more like a tipping point for this spin-off.

New episodes of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? air Sundays at 8:00 P.M. ET on TLC. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Danette Chavez is the Editor-in-Chief of Primetimer and its biggest fan of puns.