Here for the Right Reasons? Lessons From '90 Day Fiancé'

05/06/21 • 31 min

2 Listeners

Dating shows often push contestants to extreme measures in pursuit of love. Reality-show producers will impose fake deadlines, physical obstacles, and manufactured drama to create the juiciest spectacle. But on TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé, a high-stakes and wildly popular reality show, the producers didn’t need to dream up a deadline: It’s a requirement of the rigorous U.S. visa-application process.

The show follows real-life couples pursuing a K-1 visa—the “fiancé visa”—which allows a U.S. citizen’s foreign partner to enter the U.S. legally, but only for 90 days, the deadline by which they must get married. The show documents the complications of those emotionally charged 90 days, when two people from different countries, cultures, and sometimes races have to decide whether their relationship is real.

“From the very moment that the federal government became involved in immigration, you see the influence of biases of race as it’s intersecting with class and sexuality,” says Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, a professor of feminist studies and critical race studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by Tracie Hunte and Gabrielle Berbey, with editing by Katherine Wells, Julia Longoria, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman.

Music by Column (“Quiet Song,” “「The Art of Fun」 (Raj),” and “Sensuela”), water feature (“a horse”), Laundry (“Films”), r mccarthy (“Contemplation at Lon Lon”), Parish Council (“Walled Garden 1”), and infinite bisous (“(Terminally) Lovesick”), provided by Tasty Morsels and Nelson Nance. Additional music from APM (“Ordinary Fantasy,” “Yaas Queen,” “Your Fault,” “Ballroom Big Band,” “Brasillia,” “Sinking Feeling,” “Boogie Woogie,” “Duplicity (a),” “Oh My,” “You Got It Baby,” “Getaway,” “Into the Mist,” and “Freewheeling”). Additional audio from TLC, TLC U.K., and C-SPAN.

A transcript of this episode is presented below:

(Playfully plucky marimba-and-horn music plays.)

Tracie Hunte: So, to begin, I am going to send you a link. It’s a little bit long—it’s like seven minutes or so—’cause this is your first time watching 90 Day Fiancé, anything having to do with 90 Day Fiancé, right?

Julia Longoria: That’s correct.

Hunte: Okay, okay.

Longoria: I’m just curious, like, why are you interested in this? Like, why should someone care?

Hunte: (Insistently.) Watch the clip, Julia! (Laughs, and Longoria joins in.)

(Music shifts into long, sustained notes to build drama.)

Longoria: We start today with correspondent Tracie Hunte guiding me into the unknown: the world of reality TV.

(A dramatic but upbeat musical flourish plays, like the intro to a theme song, before moving back to the plucky, quirky music.)

Hunte: Okay. So, Julia, 90 Day Fiancé is a wildly popular show on TLC. It’s about couples who are international—like, it’s usually one person lives in America, and the other person lives somewhere overseas—and I want to begin your 90 Day Fiancé journey with one couple in particular: Colt and Larissa.

Longoria: Okay. I’m gonna—do I hit play?

Hunte: Yes. Hit play!

Colt: My name is Colt. I’m 33 years old. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Hunte: We are in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we’re at the airport, and we’re meeting Colt and Larissa. Colt is a white guy in his 30s. He lives in Las Vegas.

Larissa: I am Larissa, 31 years old, from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Hunte: And Larissa is from Brazil. She is also in her 30s. And they met online. T...

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by Tracie Hunte and Gabrielle Berbey, with editing by Katherine Wells, Julia Longoria, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman.

A transcript of this episode is presented below:

(Playfully plucky marimba-and-horn music plays.)

Julia Longoria: That’s correct.

Hunte: Okay, okay.

Longoria: I’m just curious, like, why are you interested in this? Like, why should someone care?

Hunte: (Insistently.) Watch the clip, Julia! (Laughs, and Longoria joins in.)

(Music shifts into long, sustained notes to build drama.)

Longoria: We start today with correspondent Tracie Hunte guiding me into the unknown: the world of reality TV.

(A dramatic but upbeat musical flourish plays, like the intro to a theme song, before moving back to the plucky, quirky music.)

Longoria: Okay. I’m gonna—do I hit play?

Hunte: Yes. Hit play!

Colt: My name is Colt. I’m 33 years old. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Hunte: We are in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we’re at the airport, and we’re meeting Colt and Larissa. Colt is a white guy in his 30s. He lives in Las Vegas.

Larissa: I am Larissa, 31 years old, from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Hunte: And Larissa is from Brazil. She is also in her 30s. And they met online. T...

Previous Episode

What Makes a Murderer?

One night in the spring of 2005, Anissa Jordan was sitting in a car in San Francisco while her boyfriend attempted to rob a young man nearby. Shortly after, police arrested both Anissa and her boyfriend. Anissa was detained and dressed in an orange jumpsuit before she learned that the young man had been shot and killed that night and that she and her boyfriend would both be held responsible. The charge: felony murder.

The felony-murder rule, which exists in more than 40 states, allows prosecutors to charge accomplices to certain crimes, such as conspiracy to commit robbery, with murder, even if they didn’t intend to kill—and even if they weren’t present for the murder. It does so by removing intent to kill from the calculus of what makes a murderer. Critics say the rule has disproportionately led to the incarceration of youth of color and women, such as Anissa, but some prosecutors say the felony-murder rule is the key to holding police officers responsible in the killings of civilians.

“By propping up this terrible rule, however we do it, we have to understand this rule is primarily used against Black people and people of color,” says Kate Chatfield, a director at the Justice Collaborative.

This week on The Experiment, a look at the doctrine that prosecutors used to convict Anissa for a crime she didn’t even witness, and a debate over whether that same rule is crucial to prosecuting the highest-profile case in the country, The State of Minnesota v. Derek Chauvin.

Further reading: “What Makes a Murderer?”

This episode is part of The Atlantic’s project “The Cycle,” which is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by Alvin Melathe and Julia Longoria, with editing by Katherine Wells. Fact-check by Will Gordon. Sound design by David Herman. Special thanks to Adam Harris and John Swansburg.

Music by Water Feature (“With Flowers,” “Richard III(Duke of Gloucester),” and “A Paradise”), Keyboard (“Being There” and “My Atelier”), H Hunt (“C U Soon” and “Having a Bath”), and R McCarthy (“Home/Home”), provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Bruce Wiley McKinnon Jr. (“Are You a Freak”) and Tyler O. Sterrett and Jason Trotta (“The Hamlet”). Additional audio from KQED and MPR News.

Next Episode

How The Evangelical Machine Got Made

These days, everyone assumes that this is just a fact of life: Evangelicals are Republicans, and Republicans are evangelicals. The powerful alliance culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, tying the reputation of Christianity in America to the Trump brand—maybe permanently.

It wasn’t always like this. One man—a political operative from Georgia named Ralph Reed—devised a plan to harness the energy of young Christians and turn them into America’s most powerful voting bloc, one church mailing list at a time. Decades later, when Donald Trump came on the political scene, Reed knew he would be big—and convinced his fellow evangelicals that they should give him a shot.

Trump’s election was everything Reed spent his entire career fighting for: a president who was anti–abortion rights, listened to evangelical leaders, and advocated for Christians who felt pushed out of the public square. But Reed’s victory had a cost. Many, many Christians have come to feel that their church cares more about politics than Jesus. They have spoken out. They have grieved. And some of them have left.

This week on The Experiment, we have the first episode in a two-part series: Meet the man who turned a disparate group of evangelicals into America’s most powerful voting bloc and invented the evangelical political brand. Then join us next week for Part 2, when we’ll look at the human cost of political victory—a cost that might ultimately be very high.

Further reading: “A Christian Insurrection”

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by Katherine Wells and Alvin Melathe, with reporting by Emma Green. Editing by Julia Longoria, Tracie Hunte, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman.

Music by Parish Council (“Looking for Tom Putt,” “Leaving the TV on at Night,” “Mopping”), Ob (“Ere”), Keyboard (“Staying In”), R McCarthy (“Big Game”), H Hunt (“Journeys”), and Infinite Bisous (“Brain”); provided by Tasty Morsels. Additional music by Lorne David Roderick Balfe (“Petrify (b)”). Additional audio from Warner Bros. Pictures, Access Hollywood, C-SPAN, UCLA’s communications-studies department, and The 700 Club.