When Nick Lachey quipped that marriage "is always better the second time" during the Love Is Blind third season reunion last November, that could've just been a bit of throwaway banter. But it caught viewers' attention.
Because they remember Lachey's first time. And don't we all, for that matter?
It's been almost 21 years since he wed Jessica Simpson and, even though they've long since moved on and each have three children with their current spouses—marriage being better the second time for both—the energy they once sparked in the celebrity universe remains. And thanks to TikTok, everything retro is new again.
"It's amazing what publicity can do," Simpson cracked to Bustle about the Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica clips being shared this summer, ripe for a closer look.
But to be fair to all still-obsessed parties, Lachey and Simpson intentionally invited a lot of people to go on their journey with them, and millions merrily RSVP'd.
IFast-forward just a few years and they would become the poster exes for why it's almost never a good idea for couples to do a show that's going to focus mainly on the inner workings of their relationship (the stories of emerging unscathed from such a venture are now the exception).
Move ahead several years more and Lachey and Simpson would both be happily settled in new relationships, with children and doting partners and all the evidence that being married to the other was only a pit stop on the road to their real destination.
But though Simpson has said she doesn't regret doing Newlyweds "at all," their oft-televised union (remember the Nick and Jessica Variety Hour?) has suffered in the retelling, becoming a marriage of moments: Chicken of the Sea; "Sweetest Sin," Jess' musical ode to losing her virginity; her Friday night divorce filing in December 2005; etc.
