Married At First Sight recap, Episode 10: Villainous Anthony & a stripper sideshow

We come into this episode forever changed. Simon has been shorn. Cheryl and Andrew are dating. And everyone suddenly has a "moral compass".

But the main focus of tonight's Married At First Sight dinner party is Anthony's transformation from #groomgoals to diabolical mastermind. Seriously, what has happened to this man between his altar debut and now??

From the NADIA'S MINE comment to his salon "lack of direction" speech, our former hero has fallen fast. And he's not done yet.

RELATED: Read 9Honey's full recap of Married At First Sight, Episode 9

Tonight we learn that Anthony and Nadia have morphed into a "power couple".

This means they now colour-coordinate their outfits and spend their days gleefully preparing for everyone else to crumble around them. They are Ryan Phillippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions (minus the sibling element).

"Those three couples that I thought would fail, failed miserably," Anthony muses, stroking his chin. "My plan for tonight's dinner party, same as last week, is to really observe the other couples… I can identify when not all is well in some relationships, and I think there might be some drama coming back tonight."

They start predicting that drama will arrive in the form of Firefighter Andrew and a new partner.

"Maybe he and Cheryl have got married!" exclaims Nadia.

This piques Anthony's interest: "He couldn't be that unlucky, could he?" Could he?!

Lucky for Anthony, he could!

As everyone files into the dinner party, the experts, like Anthony, literally rub their hands together in anticipation of what’s about to unfold while watching from monitors in the other room.

At first, Anthony is incredibly disappointed when it seems like no surprise guests have turned up to entertain him. (The women get a lot of flak on this show for being gossipy and drama-focused, but ANTHONY TAKES THE CAKE.)

But as everyone takes their places around the table, Anthony finally gets his wish: In stroll Andrew and Cheryl.

Anthony literally leaps out of his chair with delight, and everyone rushes to embrace "Jonesy" (aka Andrew Jones). Anthony's glee is only overshadowed by that of twins Sharon and Michelle, who genuinely know and adore Andrew as they played on the same Perth netball team and go back decades.

The twins are very protective and worried Cheryl might not be in this for the right reasons. They also rather annoyingly say the word "Jonesy" about a thousand times.

Anthony’s spidey senses are tingling as the girls' doubts begin to set off his "moral compass" alarm. As he processes what it means for Cheryl and Andrew to be able to re-enter the experiment while the rest of them are stuck with their original partners, it becomes clear that he sees this whole show as a competition.

"The game changes now!" he declares, with a wild look in his eyes. He's actually a little terrifying.

"Good luck to you both," he says, throwing back some wine. "You’ll need it."

Um, Anthony? This is not Survivor. You are not competing against these other couples in a fight to the death. Your only job here is to focus on your own relationship and see if you can make it work.

The experts think this behaviour means he's worried that he and Nadia will be dethroned as the power couple by Cheryl and Andrew. But did anyone actually see Anthony and Nadia as a power couple other than Anthony and Nadia??

It seems Nadia also has a moral compass, and she has taken it upon herself to monitor Naughty Nick's wine intake. (Remember he of vomit-three-times, buy-remorseful-apology-bracelet fame?)

Still, NO ONE except Saint Susan is letting Cheryl off the hook for her perceived hypocrisy. Led by Anthony, the table claims she has some nerve showing up with a man she flirted with at the last dinner party! And this, right after she turned on the crocodile tears and stormed out of the commitment ceremony over her ex's own dinner party flirtfest.

Honestly, Cheryl handles this all very well. She takes questions from the angry mob and answers them coolly.

Eventually, Cheryl can take no more and takes a break on a couch outside. Nadia follows her to check-in and impart some wisdom. We learn Nadia has picked up Anthony's horse lingo as she gravely tells Cheryl, "We're running our own race, it's your race, it's your relationship. No one should have the right to interfere." And yet…

Anthony is still grilling Andrew on Cheryl. He sees Cheryl as the villain, say the experts, because "he has a very strict moral code, and he perceives that Cheryl has somehow broken that code."

This seems like a very delicate way of saying that Anthony is acting like a sexist slut-shamer.

Luckily, in a much-welcomed intermission, Anthony takes a break from attacking Cheryl to demonstrate his race-calling skills. Cowboy Sean and Andrew pretend to be jockeys riding on invisible horses and race around the dinner table as Anthony calls out their positions.

This is hilarious and strange. It is the eye of the storm.

And here's another fun side storyline that gets revealed at the table: Nick has a membership to a strip club!!

Sadly, Nick's membership does not include the chance to see Michael's routine.

In a wildly varying estimate, our bogan mate says he goes to the strippers "once or twice a month, sometimes three times in one night". It has nothing to do with naked chicks, he claims, but is more just about having a place to chill out with his mates.

LISTEN: 9Honey's The Sweet Spot podcast dissects the dinner party drama

Sharon is, unsurprisingly, not cool with this. They don't really resolve anything, so expect to hear more on this next episode!

Cheryl and Nadia finally return to the group and Anthony is NOT DONE YET. He says Andrew deserved a second chance because his runaway bride left him, but Cheryl deserves no such thing because she wrote LEAVE by her own free will.

Cheryl starts crying. Anthony is being consistently TERRIBLE.

"Putting yourself in this position where you're getting a second time around," Anthony warns, "you gotta get it right. You're gonna look like a f---in' idiot if you get it wrong."

Then he tells us, "By me putting Cheryl on the spot and questioning her motives, I think I just said what everyone else wanted to say but didn't."

Still, he goes ON!

"They're worlds apart!" he gasps. "She's 25, he's 38 years old."

Nadia FINALLY steps in and tells him to cool it.

"It's not an attack...Just be a little bit sensitive," she says. "Everyone's got their own journey. I wouldn't like it if you were doing that to me, so just back off a little bit."

FIIIIINE, says Anthony's defeated face.

"I'll just crawl back into the box I came out of," he concludes.

OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED THIS EPISODE:

Alene reveals Simon’s smokin' makeover to the others! 

She and Simon spend a lot of time jumping each other's bones off camera. And she wears this FABULOUS dress:

The twins play doubles tennis with their men. Nick is terrible at sports, so Jesse and Michelle are finally able to win one in the competition of which twin can best the other in life.

Jesse doesn't "get" why "girls these days" like scented candles.

Cowboy Sean has great taste in flowers and gets Susan an orchid.

Andy and Vanessa have given up on talking and decide to go rock climbing instead.

Cheryl and Andrew go on a horseback ride + picnic date. He tells her he assumes she’s in her late 20s, and she looks blank, then says, "No, I'm 25."

For some reason this COMPLETELY throws 38-year-old Andrew, even though he was seemingly fine with it if she were 26-29.

NEXT TIME: Another commitment ceremony! And Saints Susan and Sean stand up for Cheryl in front of everyone.

Catch a new episode of Married At First Sight Monday night on Nine (and tweet me your predictions @AshleyySpencer). For more on MAFS, including exclusive clips and fun bites, head to 9Now.