By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-12-19 01:36:36 | Updated at 2024-12-19 05:19:01
3 hours ago
For weeks, a married friend has been watching a divorce reality show and telling me how much he wanted these couples to break up. One man was too manipulative, another didn’t appreciate his wife’s contributions and one woman was just needy.
I still wondered how a married man could wish for others to get divorced. So I watched the show myself. In the first 10 minutes of the first episode of the fourth season, when an interviewer asked Yang Zi, an entrepreneur and husband to actress Huang Shengyi, what his wife’s hobby was, he stuttered and asked her, “Do you really have any hobbies?”
Another couple wasn’t any better. The wife, a pet vlogger named Ge Xi, suggested that one of the most extraordinary things she had done in almost 10 years of marriage was to stay with her husband, internet celebrity Liu Shuang. This couple started bickering as soon as they got out of the car.
The reality show, See You Again, is produced by Mango TV and invites three celebrity couples on the brink of divorce on a trip for a few weeks, where they live together, discuss marital issues and at the end of this period, decide whether they want to get divorced or give marriage another try. During the show, a panel observes and comments on the couple’s interactions.
From this season’s very first episode, the show has dominated the charts. According to a media tally published last month, it has been viewed more than 800 million times on Mango TV, with a view rate of 40 to 50 million on the day new episodes are released.
On social media, it’s also one of the most discussed topics. People take the show quite seriously, debate it passionately and use powerful, emotional words to criticise these flawed relationships.
