Warning! The following contains spoilers from the 90 Day Fiancé episode "It's Better To Bend Than Break." Stream the episode with an HBO Max subscription and read at your own risk!
Joshua Atkins and Catie Norboe have been the stars of 90 Day Fiancé Season 12 thus far, as the story has revolved around her struggles with OCD and a compulsion to make out with friends when drinking. After TLC addressed the elephant in the room with a friend pointing out that her drinking potentially being the root of the problem, I can't help but wonder if it's time to ask why Joshua's relationship with alcohol isn't being handled the same way.
It was a subject I'd already wondered about when he confessed to drinking heavily after becoming depressed by immigration news in the previous episode, and it happened to pop up again when his friend Megan came to town for the wedding. 90 Day Fiancé managed to get a confessional segment with Megan, who confessed that their nights out together often got wild:
We're going out for drinks with Josh as sort of a mini-Stag do. But the kind of history of mine and Josh's friendship has always been that we go out and say we're only going to have one or two drinks, and then we end up at 3:00 AM, closing out the bar completely wasted. So it's definitely going to be a challenge, but I'm optimistic.
After 90 Day Fiancé spent the first chunk of the season getting into Catie's potential struggles with alcohol, the show has seemingly skated around the limited points where Joshua's own alcohol intake has come up. Which isn't to indicate it's a problem whatsoever, but after a conversation in which Catie said they agreed she would "control her drinking," will the same expectation come around for Josh as he heads out to celebrate his marriage?
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I mainly bring this up because 90 Day Fiancé hasn't given Catie the most sympathetic edit, which led fans to wonder why Joshua continually takes her back despite past issues. If Joshua doesn't keep his promise to Catie to take it easy before the wedding with the drinking, I think she'd be justified in being angry about him not following through.
Of course, it's not as though Joshua would be the first husband ever to land in the dog house for over-indulging before a wedding. It's a popular pop culture trope for the groomsmen to go a little crazy, and given the preview for next week showed him out on the town in a woman's wig and a dress, it looks like that will happen.
Few people ever enjoy the concept "Rules are for thee and not for me," and it's certainly possible the latest mentions of Joshua drinking are just coincidentally timed, or if he and Catie share a tendency to over-consume. No judgement either way if that's the case, but it's a bit of extra context that may make Catie look like less of a villain (she's not the only American who looks bad this season) and Joshua less of a victim as Season 12 rolls on.
90 Day Fiancé airs on TLC on Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET. With the weddings about to start, it won't be long until the tell-all specials start, and I'm sure there will be a lot of drama when everyone sits down to update viewers on what they've been up to since filming.
