“90 Day Fiancé” is a reality television franchise that has been airing since 2014, currently toting seven seasons under its belt. Its popularity has led to multiple spinoffs: “90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?” which just completed its fourth season, “Before the 90 Days,” which is about to begin its third season and “90 Days: The Other Way,” which is currently in its first season.
TLC recently started “90 Day Fiancé: Pillow Talk,” where favorite cast members give funny commentary on whichever “90 Day Fiancé” episode is airing at the time.
The franchise coined its name from the K-1 visa process, as the K-1 visa is given to the fiancé of a U.S. citizen, and the couple must get married within 90 days or the fiancé must go back to his or her home country. If the couple gets married, they can apply for adjustment of status for the fiancé to become a permanent resident of the U.S.
Each season of the original show is about multiple couples who have applied for, or have already received, the K-1 visa, and they must decide whether or not they will get married within their allotted 90 days. The show follows them as they navigate relationship struggles, cultural differences and other roadblocks along the way.
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Every spinoff of the “90 Day Fiancé” has a mix of eyebrow-raising drama and heartwarming moments that will have you hooked and wondering where you can catch up on previous seasons and couples. You can watch the show on TLC, or you can stream the drama on Hulu or the TLC website.
Here are some of the most charming and dramatic highlights from the show that make “90 Day Fiancé” worth watching.
The Appreciation Ring
“90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days” just began its third season on August 4. This version of the franchise follows couples before they have applied for the K-1 visa. Usually they aren’t quite to the engagement part of their relationship, and viewers watch the couples travel to visit each other, hoping to become engaged.
This is perhaps the cringiest of the “90 Day Fiancé” shows, and after watching people engage in serious miscommunication and ignore criminally red flags, you’ll feel a lot better about your relationships and your life in general.
Take, for example, Darcey. In Season 1 of “90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days,” Darcey goes to Amsterdam, hoping for an engagement ring from her passive-aggressive boyfriend, Jesse. Viewers follow these two through many painful moments where Darcey not so subtly hints that she wants to marry Jesse, and for the 24-year-old to be a father figure to her teenage daughters. The cringe culminates when Jesse gets down on bended knee and offers Darcey an “appreciation ring” and makes sure that she knows they are not engaged.
Somehow, these two lasted through another season of “90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days,” where viewers get to see a huge argument break out because Jesse was not cutting their steak on the bias.
There are seven couples hoping to further their relationships in this new season of “90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days.” It is shaping up to be every bit as engaging as past seasons. Along with 19-year-old Avery, who is going to meet her fiancé for the first time and then move to Syria to be with him, Darcey will be back this season, but this time she is hoping to get more than an appreciation ring from her new English boyfriend.
Michael Jones
TLC recently kicked off another show in the “90 Day Fiancé” series called “90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way.” It’s in the same vein as the other shows in the franchise, where viewers follow six couples who want to close the gap in their long-distance relationships; this show, however, follows Americans that leave the United States, hoping to get married to their fiancés and gain permanent residence in their new countries.
Even though this show is only in its first season, it has already had its share of comical and endearing moments — like Jenny and Sumit’s story, which starts off with Jenny getting catfished by Sumit, who liked talking to women online while he worked at a call center in India while posing as a male model named Michael Jones.
This instantly seemed like it was going to be a comical storyline where viewers would be wondering what Jenny was thinking falling for such an obvious ploy. But the two developed feelings for each other, and Sumit told Jenny the truth about his identity, as she liked the real man she was speaking to much more.
There are many amusing and confusing relationships on the show. When Jenny moved away from her daughters and grandchildren to be with Sumit in India, it seemed like their story would be one of the relationships that made viewers laugh, like Laura and Aladin’s relationship. But somehow, the relationship that started off as a catfish became the one that viewers could root for.
The Binder Full of Evidence
It’s impossible to discuss the “90 Day Fiancé” franchise without bringing up the original series and the most iconic couple in the show’s history: Danielle and Mohamed. Season 2 of “90 Day Fiancé” is when the show started to become great, and that is because of this couple.
Mohamed moved from Tunisia to Ohio to marry Danielle after meeting online. Unsurprisingly to viewers, their marriage didn’t last. Both parties lied to each other: Mohamed said he had a job when he didn’t, and Danielle hid a criminal history.
However, where the insanity picks up is when Mohamed leaves for Florida with another woman, which begins Danielle’s quest to get an annulment instead of a divorce from Mohamed; this way, she can get him deported from the country.
She prints page after page of texts and social media messages that supposedly prove that Mohamed committed marriage fraud, and she compiles these into a giant evidence binder. The binder never proves the point that Danielle hoped for in court, but viewers see her lead an obsession-fueled rampage through Mohamed’s Florida neighborhood with the binder as her weapon. It ultimately led to a showdown where she threw her binder full of evidence at Mohamed, and the police had to get involved.
Neither of these two are particularly likable. In fact, they both seem to play villainous parts in their story, but they exemplify the type of drama that makes “90 Day Fiancé” so much fun to watch. A few recent couples have come close to surpassing Danielle and Mohamed’s absurdity — like last season’s Colt and Larissa with their over-the-top fights and what seemed to be a love triangle that included Colt’s mom — but so far no other couple has gotten on Mohamed and Danielle’s outrageous level.
