The opening moments of 90 Day Fiancé’s eighth season, which premiered Sunday evening, are a brain-melting series of smash cuts, shock reveals, and, some might argue, assaults to more refined viewing senses. Audiences are introduced to Brandon, a 27-year-old farmer who lives with his parents and never really had a girlfriend growing up. After a few atmospheric cutaway shots showing Brandon tending to sheep in rural Virginia, Brandon’s unlikely love interest appears: Julia, a brunette go-go dancer from metropolitan Russia. After a slick montage of Julia sliding down a stripper pole, gyrating in a bra, and posing in a thong, Brandon solemnly explains, “I fell in love immediately.”
In a flashback, we learn that Brandon decided to propose to Julia after five months of dating and only one in-person meeting—which, in the 90 Day-verse, feels like a reasonable courtship. And now that Julia has been granted her K-1 visa, the couple has 90 days, once Julia lands, to marry, or else Julia will have to return to Russia.
As if that time constraint is not intimidating enough, Julia will also have to acclimate to life on a farm in a foreign country with her fiancé’s controlling mother who, at the start of the episode, questions Julia’s motives, and by the end of the episode, will call a doctor to inquire about getting Julia on birth control. Brandon and Julia are just one of seven couples that the roller-coaster eighth season follows.
At a time when most television audiences have seemingly jumped the linear-programming ship in favor of the deep, bingeable-content seas of streaming services, 90 Day Fiancé’s numbers continue to grow. Since the series was introduced in 2014, TLC has spun the show off into over 10 franchise legs—and in the process, has become the year’s leading cable channel for women, as well as the top television destination on Sunday and Monday nights for adults this summer. This year alone, according to TLC, viewers have consumed a staggering 73 billion minutes of 90 Day and its children. This week, the network announced its new streaming service, Discovery+, will contain four additional spin-offs and more than 200 total hours of bingeable 90 Day content when it debuts January 4—the closest TLC can get to injecting its tried-and-true variety of “vérité” into viewers’ veins.
The genius of the series, created by Matt Sharp, is that beneath its slick editing are real-life couples who were already struggling to obtain K-1 visas when his production team found them. While reality series like The Bachelor or The Real Housewives ply their stars with wine and manipulate social setups to breed petty drama, 90 Day’s couples were living out their highest-stakes romantic lives before being cast on the show. By the time TLC turns on its cameras, the couples are usually emotionally drained by the parameters of their long-distance relationships, financially drained by expensive K-1 paperwork, and, in some cases, worn down by critical friends and family members. No priming for drama is necessary.
“These people aren’t just doing this for a television show,” Sharp told Vanity Fair. “This is their life. They put it on the line for this other person, and this is very real to them.”
This season’s returning cast member Tarik Meyers explained that, when he was first cast on the series with his partner Hazel Cagalitan, he had been through such a grueling “gauntlet” that he didn’t have the energy to put on a show for the cameras.
“When you have two different embassies breathing down your neck, basically going over your life with a fine-tooth comb, and then the camera crew gets there, it’s like, ‘Oh, you again?’” said Meyers.
The 90 Day team said that primarily, they’re looking for cast members who can be totally transparent about their journey.
“We’re really looking for people to open up and be comfortable letting us in,” said Sharp, explaining that his producers aim for each confessional-style interview to feel like “you’re sitting on the end of the bed with your best friend, and that best friend is really opening up and telling you what the deal is with their relationship.”
Added TLC president Howard Lee, “A really good cast member can articulate their thoughts powerfully, quickly, directly—and they wear their hearts on their sleeves. They do not hold back. They want to process everything that’s on their mind.”
Meyers—a rapper and single father who describes himself as “a cross between Carlton Banks from the Fresh Prince and Ice Cube”—said that he definitely fits that archetype.
“With me, what you see is what you get,” said Meyers. “I just let people see it, good or bad.”
Meyers said that he found the process of appearing on the show “therapeutic.” Until seeing the series, he didn’t know of anyone else who flew overseas to date: “I thought I was like a unicorn.” When he heard about the series, he said, “I was like, ‘Really, they’ve got a show about crazy people like me?’” Meyers laughed. “I started watching it and I was like, ‘Wow…I didn’t know we had a home.’”
Brutal, unguarded honesty is critical to the messiness quotient of the series as well. “We’re not looking to tell a puppies and rainbows story,” confirmed Sharp, “and we’re not looking to tell something that’s entirely negative. We’re just looking to tell an honest story.”
Interestingly enough, criminal backgrounds are not enough to disqualify a candidate, as long as that criminal background is neither violent nor boring. “Many times we embrace that as part of our storytelling,” said Sharp of the franchise, which has cast people charged with second-degree arson, theft and forgery, and felony possession of marijuana. “We know everyone has a past, and not everyone is proud of everything they’ve done in the past. Sometimes that enriches their story.”