Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Marriage Pact’ On The Roku Channel, Where Friends Who Make A Marriage Pact See If They Actually Want To Marry Each Other

Have you ever entered into a marriage pact with a friend? You know what we mean; you’re often hanging out with this person you’re close to but not in a romantic fashion, and you both say, “If we’re not married/engaged by XX age, let’s just marry each other.” Well, now there’s a reality series that puts those pacts to the test for six pairs of friends.

THE MARRIAGE PACT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In Cartagena, Colombia, six pairs of friends walk onto a scenic overlook.

The Gist: We don’t call the six pairs participating in The Marriage Pact “couples” because they aren’t couples just yet; they’re friends who entered into a classic marriage pact at some point.

Host Shan Boodram tells the six pairs what they’re in for: They’ll have 21 days to foster a real romantic relationship with each other, which includes sharing living quarters (and a bed!) with each other. At the end of the 21 days, they’ll decide whether they want to give marriage a go or go their separate ways. Boodram comes just short of saying that they’re going to end their friendships if they decide not to stay together romantically, but you know what happens when friends turn into romantic partners; the friendships don’t always survive the breakup.

The couples vary in age, from their early 20s to their late-30s and early-40s. Most have known each other for a few years, but one pair, Dennis and Mary Ann, have known each other for a couple of decades; Dennis was friends with Mary Ann’s little brother and he’s always had a crush on her. One pair, Julie and Cody, dated in college for a year, but he cheated on her; this broke her heart so thoroughly she moved from Louisville, where they went to school, and dated some of his friends. But somehow, they stayed in touch and made the pact.

The youngest pair, Logan and Trevor, have religion at the core of their pact. Trevor won’t even let Logan sleep in the same bed as her because “The Devil appears after 9:30,” she says about temptation. During a mixer for the pairs, Grace tries to give Logan some advice about Trevor, then gets pissed when she doesn’t follow it, figuring that Logan should be listening to her because Grace is older than she is. Then she gets pissed when her pact partner Marcus, whom she wants to flip from casual hookup to romantic partner, doesn’t back her up.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Marriage Pact has the feeling of The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On, except for the fact that these pairs aren’t even in romantic relationships with each other yet.

Our Take: There are two inherent weaknesses to The Marriage Pact, and they’re related. One, the pairs that are making the pact are, for the most part, too new and too young. They’ve been friends for a few years, or they make a pact to get married at 30 or some ridiculously young age (one shows their napkin-scrawled pact that has the numbers “40” and “35” crossed out in favor of “30”, which is insane).

When you think of friends making a marriage pact, we bet you usually think of the same kinds of friends we think of: They’ve been buddies for a long time, talk to each other about everything, and maybe even tried to hook up once or twice. They’re so worn down by the dating scene that they make the pact one day over shots or copious pours of merlot. One or perhaps both may be attracted to more than one gender.

There’s a sense of weariness about the pact that we don’t see amongst most of these pairs. They’re friends who have an intrigue about each other and want to explore a relationship. In fact, we don’t even get chapter and verse on their dating histories, we just get the histories between the two friends.

That being said, though, there doesn’t seem to be any juice to any of these pairings. Because they’re “just friends” at the start, they walk into what is a romantic situation and are completely uncomfortable, because they have to interact in a context that’s unfamiliar to them. When the pairs walk into their rooms and see the one bed, just about all of them wonder what the heck they’re going to do.

It just feels like we’re going to be spending eight episodes watching these people ruin their friendships. Maybe we’ll get that tense, Love Is Blind-style moment at the end as each pair decide whether to get married or not. But for every couple that will develop a romantic relationship, there will likely be others that will force the issue, which is never pleasant to watch.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode, and we don’t expect to see anything. If there’s any sex, it’ll be off camera.

Parting Shot: Marcus and Grace talk about how he needs to have her back when she gets in an argument. But we think she gets into a lot of arguments, so that’s a heck of a lot to ask of Marcus.

Sleeper Star: We credit Mary Ann for wanting to explore things with Dennis, even though her perception of him is going to be “little brother’s friend who has a crush on me.” Also, given that she’s the oldest person in the group by a lot, it’s got to be tough for her to hang out with all of these young’uns.

Most Pilot-y Line: Brie just casually throws out the reason why her pact partner Armani hasn’t dated her to this point: “I dated his best friend.” Uh, yeah, that’s usually a big c-blocker there, Brie.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There’s something about The Marriage Pact that feels unseemly, like we’re watching a whole bunch of friendships being ruined for no reason. Besides that, we don’t even know what kind of romantic chemistry any of these friend pairs have, and that’s the key to making a show like this work.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.