Warning! The following contains spoilers from 90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 Days' Season 6 Tell-All Part 1. Read at your own risk!
90 Day Fiancé tell-alls are always hotly anticipated events, but I was looking forward to Before The 90 Days' Season 6 tell-all more than others within the franchise. That excitement was partially thanks to the announcement saying the special(s) would bring a live audience in for the first time, but after watching Part 1 with my Max subscription, I was quite underwhelmed. The audience fell completely flat as a non-factor, meaning this really felt just like any other tell-all special. I still see the potential in having a studio crowd on hand, but there need to be changes.
For the record, there are still more episodes of the tell-all on the way, so some of my ideas may indeed play out in the upcoming episodes. I do hope that's the case because, frankly, there was little to love about this crowd-supported first episode. That could change with a few small measures producers could take to get fans onsite more involved.
The Live Audience Should Be Allowed To React More
Live audiences are invited for their reactions, so it's strange to me that the 90DF audience was so deadly silent outside of applausing at designated times. There was a level of seeming respect and reverence from this audience that did not match the chaos of the 90 Day Fiancé franchise. I was expecting a hyperactive crowd similar to ones that showed up for Maury or The Jerry Springer Show, but I instead witnessed something closer to a funeral. I think maybe the audience just needed more freedom to cheer when someone made a good point, and then boo when someone said something terrible. There's no sense in having people in the studio merely for the sake of a crowd shot or two.
The Live Audience Should Be Able To Participate In Polls
The 90 Day Fiancé tell-alls are often filmed well before viewers at home actually see what transpires. As such, cast members have plenty of time to reflect on their actions, craft rsponses to backlashes, and/or deactivate social media to avoid comments altogether. Live polling from the audience during key moments in the tell-all would allow the cast to get feedback on their viewpoints at the moment and perhaps get a genuine reaction from the cast on how they're being perceived. I could see it spicing tell-alls up quite a bit, even though they're never exactly lacking for entertainment. Still, even for a tell-all that had Jasmine Pineda talking about her past relationships, her bad sex life, and her arguments with Gino Palazzolo, this felt weirdly tame.
There Should Be Questions From The Audience
I'll give credit to Shaun Robinson for asking the 90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 Days Season 6 cast if they were still together from the jump, but she's not exactly the most aggressive when it comes to pursuing hard-hitting questions. For that reason, I'd love to see the audience get a shot at asking some questions just to give someone else a chance to challenge Donnell Riley over why he believed Violet would fake a pregnancy. In fairness, I don't expect the audience to be more educated on the events of a season compared to the hostess, but maybe we'll be surprised.
90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 Days continues with new episodes on Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a rowdier audience in the next part of the tell-all, but if nothing else, perhaps TLC can make some changes before the next spinoff tell-all does its filming.
