Why Is Everyone on ‘The Ultimatum’ So Mean to Riah?
Every now and again, while watching a reality show, I’ll encounter a character whose aura completely baffles me. They seem nice, and they don’t seem to be trying to offend anyone in the group, and yet they’ll constantly find themselves on the receiving end of someone else’s nonsense. Take, for example, Jeriah (aka “Riah”) from Netflix’s The Ultimatum Season 2: All she tried to do was play the game. So why do a couple of her fellow cast members seem to resent her for it?
On The Ultimatum, five brave couples swap partners, in the hopes of figuring out whether or not they’re ready for marriage. Each person spends three weeks with a new “trial’ spouse before swapping back to their original partner for another few weeks. In the end, they all must decide whether to get engaged to their current partner, break up and leave the experience single, or maybe even exist the show with someone else.
As with most reality shows, this season features a couple of big personalities; some seem to enjoy stirring the pot, while others struggle to accept the terms of the game without getting jealous. Riah, a 25-year-old from South Carolina who received the ultimatum from her partner, Treyvon (aka “Trey”), is not one of these people. As far as we’ve seen in the season’s first eight episodes, at least, she’s perfectly sweet—at worst, she’s perhaps a little aloof or difficult to read. Yet for whatever reason, the rest of the cast feels comfortable speaking badly about or to Riah whenever they get the chance.