The Ultimatum TV Show Review: Thoughts on…cheating?
The Ultimatum is a Netflix reality TV show about dating and marriage with a messed up twist. Having to explain the premise of this show to your friends will usually elicit reactions like “wtf” and “that sounds like a disaster.” But you gotta give it to them…Netflix is great at creating ridiculous and addicting reality TV. As much as we can scoff at them, the viewership numbers speak for themselves.
Couples who have been dating for 2 years or more come onto this show because one person in the relationship feels ready to get married and the other isn’t 100% sure. The one who wants to get married issues the ultimatum to the other, saying you either marry me OR we separate forever. Around 6 couples are brought together, forced to date each other, spend three weeks with their chosen new stranger as a new couple, and then get reunited with their original partner to see if anything has changed in their relationship.
In a way, The Ultimatum has all of the ingredients of reality TV success - attractive people trying to find love. There’s romance, jealousy, fights, crying, all packaged together with suggestive editing. You will certainly love to hate the people on the show and will want to talk to your friends all about what they think about certain pairings. One of the best things about this show is the mystery about it. You start rooting for certain people to be together, or for certain people to NOT be together, and there’s no way to know exactly what’s going to happen until the very end. Watching this show with your full attention is certainly uncomfortable, which I will get into in the next paragraph, but the mystery of the situation will keep you wanting to go to the very end.
This show can get really uncomfortable to watch, because who wants to watch people cheating on other people? The Ultimatum is essentially giving people the agency to cheat in order to resolve issues in a relationship. The idea is that someone may learn something about relationships from a partner that is not their original partner, but the whole concept of that is really messed up. Ultimately, you are just watching people going through mental breakdowns as they have to deal with their partner cheating on them or feeling shitty because they are essentially going through major breakups. The people on this show are pretty sad and frustrated for the majority of it.
I think The Ultimatum seeks to explore the complexity of relationships in a way that kind of sounds ok at the beginning, but the results tell us that it’s a pretty terrible social experiment to put people through. I’m not saying it’s bad reality TV because it was pretty gripping for me to watch. But I did feel really conflicted watching how unhappy people were. Instead of The Ultimatum, couples counseling would have probably been more effective. Cheating is not the solution.