Steven Johnston from 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way's antics on episode 5 with Russian girlfriend Alina have made fans call out their storyline for being scripted. Utah resident Steven, 25, fell in love with Alina, 20 after they met on a language exchange app. A year into their relationship Steven and Alina hatched a plan to get married in Turkey and move to Russia, but the Mormon man has now developed cold feet. However, 90 Day Fiancé fans mocked Steven for not doing proper research before moving to a different country, and they couldn’t help but wonder if the hitchhiking incident was a setup.
Steven and Alina reunited in Antalya, where he’d booked them different apartments. Alina worried for her safety as it was her first time being away from home, but Steven was concerned about them doing some “skoodilypoop” and hampering her future baptism. Still, Alina somehow convinced Steven to stay with her in the same apartment and Sunday night’s episode saw the 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way couple heading to an immigration lawyer. There, Steven, who thought getting married was easy-peasy like having a wedding in Las Vegas, was taken aback by the extensive process. But as fans wrapped their heads around Steven’s nonchalance, they were still recovering from the fact that he and Alina hitchhiked to get there because he thought it was a “cheap mode of transportation."
Since watching the episode, fans have been discussing how Steven, who's been called a "creep" before, did not really do any “hitchhiking” since there was a camera crew filming him and Alina. Reddit user u/mime454 found it impossible to believe that Steven randomly stopped a vehicle off the street, since “the crew were following the ‘stranger's' car from the moment it took off with another car behind it.” The fan wondered if the show wants the audience to pretend like a crew isn’t even there and if Steven’s “weird behavior” is fabricated. On Twitter, user California Aurora posted, “This show is getting so fake it's not even funny anymore. Steven's hitchiking was a producers fairytale.”
Another 90 Day Fiancé fan Chinita Jenelle noted, “Steven thinks he’s living on the edge by hitchhiking in Turkey with a camera crew.” What Steven did was dangerous and has given TLC viewers more reasons to believe that he’s too immature to get married. But it would have been impossible to achieve without the crew following them. Fans on this Reddit thread by u/Johnnycat think that the production may have paid a rideshare driver to drive them or that the person in the car was a staff member itself. The person was alone in the car but was also wearing a mask when he pulled up, which also hinted at the scene being fake.
So far, 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way season 3 has had many storylines which are hard to believe. This includes Corey Rathgeber and Evelin Villegas' secret wedding that was revealed to fans just now, although they had known about it for ages. The same goes for Jenny Slatten and Sumit Singh’s plot about the delays in their marriage which is being recycled for the last two seasons while the couple is staying happily together in India. Regardless, Alina, who’s doubting Steven’s faithfulness, will now be using Masha to find out if he replies to her flirty messages. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to fans if this storyline also seems contrived and staged.
Sources: u/mime454/Reddit, California Aurora/Twitter, Chinita Jenelle/Twitter, u/Johnnycat/Reddit