Season 2, Episode 19 of 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way showed a lot of clashing with in-laws, both on and off of the screen.
Biniyam is so, so nervous to meet Ariela’s dad, but first his sister is giving Ariela a hard time.
Deavan and Jihoon reveal their recent and tragic heartbreak.
Jenny and Sumit prepare for a major step when disaster strikes.
Tim and Melyza pick up Tim’s mom, who’s had friction with Melyza for some time.
And Brittany’s friend gets a front-row seat to her ongoing conflicts with Yazan … and Yazan’s overbearing family.
Ariela Weinberg and Biniyam Shibre
Ariela and Biniyam have settled into a rhythm, but it’s not one that’s making Ariela happy. She’s home alone with the baby al lot while he’s working, and she would rather have him around more to help.
Biniyam has a solution … sort of
His sister, Wish, and family friend Artemis show up to visit Ariela for an on-camera chat. Ariela doesn’t have the best relationship with Biniyam’s family, but it’s mostly nice.
Ariela gets a lot of random visits
We’ve had our frustrations with Ariela (especially with her inexplicable 180 on last week’s episode), but she’s very relatable — as a fellow Millennial — here. People just show up at her house and she does not love it. We’re reminded of that “so people used to just open the door whenever somebody knocked? Now I understand why there were so many serial killers in the ’70s” social media post from years ago. Text before you visit someone.
The visit isn’t all nice
Wish and Artemis both seem to feed Ariela’s insecurities about Biniyam’s job. We’d love to believe that this is production meddling, because it’s not very nice to remind a new mom about how hot the people her boyfriend works with are.
They’re preparing for Ariela’s parents to arrive
They had hoped to be there for the birth of Avi, but he was born early via emergency C-section. Apparently Ariela has been going without a toilet seat, like Hannibal Lecter being punished by Dr. Chilton, and Biniyam is only now fixing it so that he doesn’t disappoint her father.
Ariela’s insecurities jump out
She wants to see Biniyam’s phone, which causes some tension (and is a weird request — I will never understand those couples who, with or especially without permission, look through each other’s phones).
There’s a reason for her worries
Ariela feels more like she and Biniyam are roommates than partners. Like they’re living together but not living their lives together.
Then, the day arrives
Ariela and Avi wait at the hotel while Biniyam goes to pick up her parents. They’ll stay at the hotel during the visit for convenience, and so that Ariela will have some help with the baby.
But there’s a twist
En route to the hotel, Biniyam tells Ariela that he has to work that night … the same night that her parents are coming in, where her dad will meet Biniyam for the first time.
That’s not okay
What may be worse than working at such an inopportune time is that he didn’t tell her until just then. That’s a weird thing to “forget.”
Biniyam is anxious
Setting aside Ariela’s concerns about his plans to work, he admits that he’s nervous about this encounter. Specifically, he worries that Ariela’s father may be concerned that the living conditions aren’t good enough for his daughter and grandson and convince her to return to the US.
Of course, he already knows Janice
Janice was with Ariela for the first several episodes of her season as she got situated in Ethiopia.
Her dad is very friendly
Dr. Fred Weinberg seemed to have a very good impression of Biniyam upon their first meeting, and they were both charmed that he called him “Dr. Weinberg.”
It was a touching reunion
Ariela was so happy to see her parents again after so much time apart and so much difficulty.
The adoration of the child
Janice and Fred are so enchanted by their grandbaby. Awwww!
But …
Biniyam has to work that night, he explains. Meanwhile, Ariela notes that he has to work on scheduling things to avoid conflicts like this in the future. Next week looks like it’s going to have much more conflict and some hopefully thought-provoking content that many interfaith couples may find relatable.
Deavan Clegg and Jihoon Lee
Deavan reveals that she recently discovered that she was pregnant. It was unplanned and a relatively short time after she and Jihoon had Taeyang, who is still just a baby. Deavan repeats what almost sounds like a mantra: “Stuff happens for a reason. A baby is always a blessing. I was accepting it and ready to do it.”
Then, heartbreak
A short time later — in fact, right around the time that news of her pregnancy leaked to the public — she suffered a miscarriage.
This footage is older than you might think
If these scenes were filmed in the aftermath of Deavan’s miscarriage, they’re over a year old — from early October 2019. We know because we here at THG reported on the tragic news at the time. We had already noted that earlier events this season happened a relatively short time after Season 1 was filmed. You will see that some of Deavan’s castmates had stories that aired at very different times.
On the plus side
Deavan notes that this loss has brought her and Jihoon closer together as a couple.
Random bonding trip!
For reasons unknown, Deavan and her mother-in-law take a trip to a museum together.
Deavan thanks Jihoon’s mom
Jihoon’s mother uses the translation tool to tell Deavan that as a fellow woman, she thinks that Deavan is courageous.
Deavan gets emotional
She thanks her mother-in-law for her emotional support and for how helpful she and her husband have been as Deavan and Jihoon have grappled with this. She says that she is feeling like they have a real MIL-DIL relationship.
Jenny Slatten and Sumit Singh
The two are planning their ring ceremony now that Sumit is officially and finally divorced. Sumit offers and explains the prayer that he is making, noting that they will need all of the help that they can get.
Sumit warns Jenny
His parents still plan to object to their marriage — something that his dad told him even as they celebrated his divorce.
But …
He promises her that he’s not going to let anyone or anything prevent them from getting married.
The pandemic strikes
We see footage of Sumit on March 25, 2020 as he heads out to buy food on deserted streets. Most of the US had not yet implemented official lockdown measures by this date, but many of us were already taking care (Sumit’s shopping trip was two weeks after the last time that I ate at a restaurant this year). At least Sumit and Jenny have each other.
They aren’t taking any chances
Sumit is diabetic and Jenny is, as Sumit says, “old.” They are both particularly at-risk for COVID-19 so even without the lockdown, they wouldn’t have been putting themselves in any unnecessary danger.
Jenny kept in touch with family
They had been gearing up to move forward with their relationship and their ring ceremony and that got put on hold, but at least Jenny could reach out to her family — including her worried adult kids.
Lockdown was then extended
We cannot express our deep envy of a country whose leadership actually cared enough to halt the pandemic instead of politicizing all efforts to fight it. That’s why the US has 4% of the world’s population but 25% of the COVID-19 cases. Prime Minister Modi is neither a good person nor a good leader, but it was to Sumit and Jenny and a billion other people’s benefit that the Indian government didn’t abandon their citizens (and guests) to die. In the mean time, Jenny’s visa kept getting extended with the lockdown … but she has real fears about time running out.
Tim Clarkson and Melyza Zeta
Tim’s mother, Robin, and her friend, Karmyn, have come to visit in Columbia, so he and Melyza go to pick them up.
Robin and Karmyn visit
They immediately want to know how they are doing and how the relationship is going and if they’ve decided to marry and make this thing — including Tim’s residency, potentially — permanent.
Melyza skirts the issues
She just says that she needs more time with Tim. That said … she also leaves them be and stays with her family during Tim’s mom’s visit.
Tim confronts his mom about her past actions
“I’m hoping my mother coming here is an opportunity for her…to talk things out with Melyza because I know they both love each other,” Tim expresses to the camera, referring in part to how his mom had once threatened to call the police on Melyza. “But ultimately I don’t know how this is going to turn out until we start talking about the issues at hand.”
Time to see the sights
They take Robin to the market, where she spends her time marveling. On camera, she handily quashes a lot of awful stereotypes that Columbia has had to face over the years.
But they have more to discuss
When Tim brings up how Robin once told Melyza that she wasn’t good enough for him, Robin says: “I think what I was trying to convey was just that if you’re really, truly unhappy and you don’t think you can rectify that, then maybe it’s time to move on.”
Robin doesn’t quite apologize
But Melyza seems to accept what she says anyway: “I definitely appreciate that she reassured me that she actually loved and respected me, even though she kind of dances around saying sorry.”
Brittany Banks and Yazan Abo Horira
Following last week’s angry exchange over Facetime that happened en route to the airport, Brittany is furious and no longer even wants to go to Jordan at all.
Meanwhile, Yazan tries to explain
Speaking to the camera, he shows the damage to his new car and explains that, because he made the choice to be in the middle of texting Brittany when he got into the accident, he decided that this was somehow her fault.
Then, he sent her the photos and blamed her
Despite the accusatory nature of the texts that he sent, Yazan apparently expected words of comfort and gratitude that he was alright. He might have gotten that if he hadn’t been weirdly hostile, and instead, he got hostility in return, which he says hurt his feelings. Okay.
Back in Florida
Either through production intervention or her own process, Brittany has changed her mind — she WILL fly to Jordan as planned, where her friend Angela will meet her the next day, but she will treat it as a girls’ trip and does not want to see Yazan.
She arrives
Brittany and Yazan have some … we’d be overly generous if we called it communication issues. Yazan knows when her flight gets in and expects her to go to him even though she has not been answering his calls. But no, she gets into a taxi.
Yazan is pissed
Realizing that she avoided him on purpose, he calls himself an “idiot” for even showing up.
Angela arrives
She very quickly brings a new and welcome perspective to this troubled relationship after Brittany explains the state of things.
What if there’s an underlying issue Brittany isn’t seeing?
Brittany replies to Angela’s suggestion by saying that if Yazan is having issues but not communicating them to her, that’s not her problem. That’s not nice … but she is right.
Brittany and Yazan fight AGAIN
A Facetime call does not go smoothly for either of them, and Angela gets to see their fiery exchange firsthand.
Angela feels like she’s walked into a “tornado”
She still wants to meet Yazan, but this trip to Jordan feels nothing at all like what she had imagined.
They go out in public, which is awkward
Brittany is dressed like a normal human being, but because her blouse ends in a V-neck, she gets looks and stares in public. One man yells at her that she is “haram” (sin), and Brittany fires back in Arabic that he is, in fact, the one who is haram. Even so, she acknowledges to the camera that she feels uncomfortable and now better understands why Yazan was concerned and wanted her to cover up in public places. Just because Jordan has influencers and women in bikinis doesn’t mean that they’re commonplace.
Speaking of things that Jordan has
As we have been reminding readers all season long, alcohol is legal in Jordan. Only now, so late in the season, do the cameras show Brittany explain this. Public intoxication is frowned upon, but there are bars in Jordan — and Brittany also explains that it’s conservative families like Yazan’s that disapprove, not the whole country. She and Angela go to one such bar.
And Brittany gets tipsy
She calls Yazan, and it’s possible that he doesn’t notice that she’s drunk. Though they get off on the wrong foot, she cannot help smiling at him because she loves him. The two make plans to meet up. Brittany then expresses regret to Angela, because she had wanted to stay mad at him for a little longer after the way that he spoke to her.
Angela doesn’t love this idea
She worries that she’s going to be caught in a “crossfire” when Yazan realizes that Brittany has been drinking. Oh, what a mess, and she’ll have a front row seat to the whole thing!
Next week
Jenny shares her tears and fears with Sumit’s brother. Brittany and Angela get into the car with Yazan. Tim explains the situation to his mom. Kenneth and Armando face another homophobic setback on their quest to get married. Deavan’s family arrives in Korea. And Ariela faces off with Biniyam’s sisters, who are not mincing words when it comes to pushing for baby Avi to get baptised … or else.