The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On Recap: Fortune Favors the Bold

Behind every bad tattoo, there’s usually a great story. Whether it’s a mistranslated inspirational phrase, a drunkenly commissioned cartoon, or a giant back phoenix dreamed up during emotionally fraught times, the intention behind bad ink is often more interesting than the tat itself. On The Ultimatum, we’ve just witnessed one of the most bizarre tattoo-based self-owns in history — a mistake so serendipitously sad that it’ll almost make you wonder if it was intentional.

In every season of Netflix’s most emotionally dangerous dating show, one couple’s heat threatens to set the whole experiment on fire. Here, Sandy and J.R. are playing with fire. J.R. seems pretty curious about the possibility of leaving the show with Sandy, and while I’m not convinced she’s seriously interested in him, Sandy enjoys his company enough to kiss him a couple of times and scare her original partner, Nick, into getting an embarrassing tattoo right before our trial couples swapped back to their original partners.

Getting down to it: Our trial couples say their good-byes and gather for a debrief called “the changeover” before starting their second and final trial marriage with their original partners.

Scotty and Zaina
Last week closed on the guys’ and gals’ cocktail mixers. J.R. asked Scotty whether or not he’d ever said that J.R. was here For the Wrong Reasons, a.k.a. a “hall pass,” as alleged by some mystery source. That did not go well, and Scotty apparently decided that the Deep Throat behind this earth-shattering scandal was his own trial wife, J.R.’s ex.

When Scotty gets back to the apartment this week, he tries to intimidate Zaina with the energy of a police interrogator: “I want to know if I’ve ever said anything negative or talked shit about JR to you,” he says. “… This is not an ‘elaborate on my perspective’ question or a ‘find the gray area’ question. Have I or not?” Sadly for him, Zaina sees this sad little performance for what it is and tells him to check his attitude. Scotty’s apology is about as sincere as you’d expect: “I’m sorry if you feel like my energy was super off.” Ugh!

The thing about Scotty is that he argues to win — not to find common ground or understand. Zaina clocks this in just a couple of weeks, and her refusal to feed into his little tantrums makes him look like an even bigger jerk. Scotty himself acknowledges this shortcoming during a game of … beer pong (?!) … with Zaina at their apartment. But as they’re packing for the changeover, he still can’t help but pick one more fight. They end on a transcendent note: Zaina telling Scotty that he doesn’t “deserve to experience” her presence. Honestly, good for her.

Sandy and J.R.
If I had to diagnose what’s going on here, I’d say these two don’t actually have much chemistry. Instead, I think they’re both reluctant to commit to their current partners and are using this relationship to blow up their home bases.

Before the changeover, Sandy cries over the idea of reuniting with Nick, who, during his own conversation with Mariah, seems to agree with Sandy’s assertion that he’s too emotionally volatile. J.R., meanwhile, is less than thrilled that so much of his trial marriage has been spent talking about Nick, and I get the sense that if he had his druthers, he and Sandy would have gone a lot further than the two kisses they shared onscreen.

Nick, who’s been stuck living the single life after his trial partner left the show early, decides to get a tattoo on his forearm to commemorate this emotional nightmare experience. But somehow, instead of getting the tattoo he wants (“Love conquers all”), he gives the artist one of his backup ideas, “Fortune favors the bold.” Do you know who else has that tattoo prominently displayed on his hands? You guessed it: J.R.

How the hell did this happen? Was it a mortifying Freudian slip? Did The Ultimatum producers hack Nick’s email to set up the most embarrassing reality TV moment of all time? Are Nick and J.R. way more alike than either of them would care to admit, or are all men simply enamored with the same clichés? Whatever the reason, I’ve never wanted to crawl underneath my couch cushions to hide from secondhand cringe more than I did in this moment.

Caleb and Aria
It’s easy to see why Aria likes Caleb. While her original partner, Scotty, loves passive-aggressively picking fights, Caleb craves peace above all else in a relationship. This will inevitably create baggage in a long-term relationship like his and Mariah’s, but when you’re shacking up for just three weeks with no bills to pay and little to argue about, it’s a dream.

Aria’s friends like Caleb, and as far as I can tell, they’re the only couple who exchange gifts as a good-bye. They each get each other a book, and Caleb seems touched that Aria went so far as to write him a card. Cuties!

All in all, this was a tame trial marriage, but it seems bound to impact both of their relationships in big ways. Mariah seems suspicious of their connection and asks Aria point-blank if she could see herself pursuing Caleb beyond friendship, and while Aria seems to genuinely want to avoid overstepping, I do suspect she’d be interested in Caleb if he expressed more enthusiasm toward her.

Then, the second trial marriages begin with the original couples trying out married life for three weeks before deciding if they want to leave engaged, single, or date someone else. Here’s how it goes:

Nick and Sandy
During the changeover debrief, things get messy. Nick talks about the pain of learning that Sandy and J.R. kissed — a little detail that Zaina apparently knew nothing about — and J.R. does not help things by calling Sandy “the total package” and saying that he “might” take her mother up on her Christmas dinner invitation. Sandy, meanwhile, starts crying and claiming that Nick’s been “tormenting” her throughout this process.

Emotionally, Nick and Sandy live in completely different worlds, and I’m not convinced they’ll ever get on the same page. At one point, when Nick finds Sandy sitting in bed with her phone and crying, she tells him she’s looking at pictures of puffins, which sparks the most unintentionally funny line of the season: “Are you crying about puffins, or something else?” Gee, I wonder …

But when Nick finds out from Zaina that Sandy and J.R. shared a second kiss, things get nasty. Sandy’s excuse — “You never directly asked me if anything else happened” — goes over about as well as you’d expect. She says Nick’s reaction to the first kiss made her reluctant to tell him about the second on-camera; instead, she was going to wait until after filming (until after he’d potentially proposed, to be clear). Nick’s response? “It’ll be interesting to see what I do when I’m upset with you.” Eek!

Nick storms out of the apartment that night, and the next time we see these two, Sandy’s lecturing him about the respect that she deserves. While I agree that leaving a shared space in a huff is not the best conflict-resolution strategy, I’m also not positive that Sandy should be lecturing anyone about respect — especially given that she describes Nick’s despair over her connection with J.R. as him going “cray-cray” while they get lunch with her mother.

Zaina and J.R.
Of all the couples in this season, I understand Zaina and J.R. the least. Zaina seems very invested in marrying J.R., no matter how many ridiculously awkward comments he makes about his time with Sandy. It’s not just the thing about going to her Christmas dinner, either. Here, for your perusal, is a sampling:

Does J.R. have any interest at all in preserving his current relationship? Because if it were my boyfriend spouting this nonsense on international streaming television, I wouldn’t just catch the first flight home. I’d spring for in-flight Wi-Fi so that I could get a jump on redownloading every dating app ever invented. Zaina, on the other hand, surprises J.R. with an Eagles grill set, some slides, and a candle. Make it make sense!

Scotty and Aria
Scotty doesn’t seem too bothered about Aria’s relationship with Caleb, although, just like last week, he insists that he doesn’t “buy this friendship bullshit.” As far as he’s concerned, Caleb must have the hots for Aria. Really, though, it seems like Caleb’s only a threat to him in as much as he’s shown Aria what it’s like to be in a relationship where she’s not getting picked on all the time.

Days after reuniting with Scotty, Aria describes the historical problem in their relationship in terms that (surprise, surprise) sound pretty similar to the issue that arose between Scotty and Zaina: “It felt like you cared about defending yourself more than trying to understand where I was coming from.” Both Aria and Scotty sense that they don’t know how to give one another what they need, but their responses to this knowledge feel … different. While Aria seems a bit resigned, Scotty picks at her — in one case, to the point of making her cry. His response to her tears? “Be irritated. I’m gonna be honest.” Dislike!!! In a moment that might as well go in the dictionary next to the word “delulu,” Scotty claims that Aria’s the one who’s “always upset about something” — to which I say, sir, look in a mirror.

Mariah and Caleb
I don’t think Caleb was super into Aria, but his inability to talk about his relationship with her understandably makes Mariah nervous. Whenever she brings it up, he seems cagey and eventually grows impatient. She asks what he’ll need to give her a hug and reconnect, and he says he’s better at coming together once the conflict is resolved. But how will they resolve the conflict if he keeps walking away from it instead? Mariah’s about halfway through the book she started last week — Jay Shetty’s 8 Rules of Love — so maybe they’ll find the answer in there.

I still think these two have a decent shot in the long run. At least they seem to be in a better place when we see them out fishing. Both agree that this experience has challenged them to work on their relationships with themselves, which, given how much each of them struggles in conflict, seems about right. Both Mariah and Caleb seem to at least be able to cop to their own issues in this relationship; we’ll have to wait and see if self-awareness is enough to carry them to the finish line.

Notes for the Divorce Lawyers

• I love that even when they’re dining out at a restaurant, everyone drinks out of Netflix’s beloved metal cups. That said, restaurant outings are always a waste on this show because no one ever eats!

• Who from this season do we think we’ll see on Perfect Match next summer? Based on what we’ve seen so far, I’m guessing Aria could make her way to the villa.

• Is J.R. really the kind of man who considers putting the toilet seat down an accomplishment? If so, Zaina really does need to move on.