Forbidden love is a reality series that follows four couples trying to find happiness despite the odds. The odds are made very difficult because each member of the couple belongs to a different religion, one in which they or their families are devout or at least very committed; cultural and religious differences, as well as how each person’s family reacts to the union, add even more barriers to success.
FORBIDDEN LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening shot: Scenes from season 1 of Forbidden love.
The essence: In Episode 1 we meet three of the four couples. Elmer, 23, has left his Amish community in Ohio to marry an “Englishwoman” (the Amish term for a non-Amish person) named Lindsey, 34. She is pregnant with their first child. He has had some trouble adjusting to a life with modern conveniences – we see a scene, for example, where Lindsey teaches him how to floss his teeth. His family has completely rejected him because he married an Englishwoman, as we see when the couple goes to a horse auction. But the biggest problem is that, having access to the Internet for the first time, Lindsey is appalled by the amount of pornography Elmer watches, to the point that she tells him that this could end the marriage.
Eli, 32, is an Orthodox Jew living in Los Angeles; he calls it “Judaism on steroids” as we see him putting on tefillin and praying in his home. His fiancée is Laurie, 36, who comes from an Italian Catholic family. They both had addiction problems in their younger years and met in AA; Laurie didn’t even realize for six months that Eli was Orthodox. She wants to convert in order to marry him, and is studying with a rabbi to take the conversion test, but she’s not doing well. She also resents the restrictions that come with being an Orthodox woman, including modest dress, and the fact that she’s not allowed to be around Eli when she has her period, because she’s considered “impure” until she bathes in a mikveh at the end of her period.
Ashley, 31, a Christian, impulsively moved from Jefferson City, Missouri, to Rochester, New York, to live with and marry Mohammed, 31, a devout Muslim who moved to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. Her family members are textbook Islamophobes, telling Ashley they fear for her safety while she’s with Mohammed. One of her sisters even called him a terrorist behind his back. Mohammed’s twin brother doesn’t love Ashley either — he thinks she has a terrible temper. Oh, and there’s the fact that they’ve been married for 3 years, have a 2-year-old daughter, and Ashley hasn’t converted yet.
We see glimpses of the fourth couple, Lensa, 32, and Kris, 37, in the season one montage that opens the show. Lensa is Muslim and has already been through two failed arranged marriages. Kris is the son of a Pentecostal minister who often speaks in tongues. They both want the other to convert. Let’s just say this one doesn’t go well.
What shows will it remind you of? Forbidden love It has a similar format to many other TLC reality shows, such as Unexpected or the whole 90 day fiancé universe.
Our opinion: Despite the somewhat exploitative TLC reality format that the show falls under (the producers of the series prefer to show the fights and difficulties that each couple faces rather than showing moments where they get along and/or showing why they got together in the first place), Forbidden love offers an interesting insight into how strained relationships can become when external negative forces are too difficult to ignore.
In two of the four cases (Ashley and Mohammed, Lensa and Kris) families have as much to do with the couples’ problems as religion. It’s pretty clear that Ashley’s family doesn’t want to see anything beyond Mohammed’s religion and they characterize him in ways that wouldn’t make sense if they actually sat down and got to know him. It gets to the point where he tells her he never wants to see his family again. With Lensa and Kris, we see Kris’s father trying to baptize Lensa in a parking lot. That’s not exactly going to foster trust between Lensa and Kris’s family, is it?
In the other two cases (Lindsey and Elmer, Eli and Laurie), the family is a little less involved, but the very idea of one partner trying to change everything about themselves and what they’ve known in life with their partners is also fascinating. We feel especially for Laurie, who we can see doesn’t really want to convert, and especially doesn’t want to live up to the restrictive guidelines for women set by Eli’s orthodox sect, but she knows it’s convert or lose Eli. It’s a position we’d never want to see anyone in, and it certainly points out how difficult it is for women in the more orthodox and devout sectors of certain religions.
Of the four couples, the only one that doesn’t seem doomed is Lindsey and Elmer. Yes, their porn addiction may seem serious, and it may also seem like Lindsey is putting too many expectations on someone who never really lived in the modern world until she was about 20, but their arguments feel like those of the most producer-manipulated couples we’ve seen. Their problems are serious, but not as serious as those of families who hate a particular spouse or people who feel compelled to convert to a religion even though its customs go against everything they stand for.
Sex and skin: During one of Lindsey and Elmer’s conversations about pornography, she asks him if he knows anyone in his community who practices bestiality. It was one of the more off-the-cuff conversations of the moment. But Elmer acknowledges that when you’re young and Amish and can’t have sex until marriage, you end up doing weird things.
Parting shot: Ashley tells Mohammed that if they can’t bridge the gap between him and his family, their marriage simply won’t be “successful,” as she puts it.
Sleeping Star: We don’t know why, but we found it funny when Laurie joked with the rabbi that God “has a few cocktails” on Rosh Hashanah. Any self-respecting rabbi would find that funny, too; the one she was studying with decidedly did not.
Pilot’s most typical phrase: The animal sex conversation between Elmer and Lindsey seemed like it was recreated by the producers, especially considering how unheated it seemed. Heck, Elmer is just eating goldfish during the whole thing.
Our calling: PASS IT ON. Yes, Forbidden love It’s a typical TLC reality show in many ways, but if you look beyond the reality TV conventions and look closely at the couples that follow each other, it’s actually a pretty interesting look at how love can’t always conquer all.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting, and technology, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV addict. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.
