Where do I even begin?
If you haven’t seen it yet, Love is Blind (2020) is a Netflix reality show which grants us the wonderful opportunity to watch singles fall in love and get engaged without ever seeing each other in real life.
During the first half of the show, the contestants date via ‘pods’, where they can hear each other’s voices but can’t see what the person they’re dating looks like. Once a proposal happens, the couples are allowed to meet face-to-face to determine if their love will persist despite all the challenges and temptations of the real world. Each couple have approximately four weeks to decide whether they’ll get married to the person they fell in love with sight unseen.
It’s genius, actually, because the contestants turn absolutely feral. They spend their entire time in the pods dying to know what the person they’re talking to looks like, so they end up proposing after a week. The condensed, fast-paced dating format paves the way for people’s fantasies to run wild, especially in the midst of teary emotional confessions and late-night talks.
There’s a whole cast of characters this season. In a nutshell: Johnny doesn’t know what condoms are. Jimmy hates Chelsea. Jeramey and Laura are forgettable. Matthew is an incel. Kenneth is a narcissist who’s incapable of looking up from his phone. Brittany, poor thing, is so sweet but so naive, and possesses very limited vocabulary on racial politics. AD and Clay care so deeply about what their relationship looks like to the outside world that they’re driving themselves insane.
Let’s start by talking about Matthew. That man is bad vibes, dude. I’m no psychologist, but he might actually be a sociopath.
In the women’s living quarters, AD and Amber figure out that Matthew has been reciting the same monologue to every woman he’s interested in. When AD confronts him, he spits out some of the most iconic lines spoken in the last six seasons, which include “I think guys like me win more” and “I think I’ve got the entire country of America on my side.”
I legitimately had goose bumps every time he appeared on screen.1 Firstly, how did this man manage to swindle two women? Secondly, I did an actual spit take when AD screamed “I’m feeling hella goofy.” You and me both, girl.
In every season, there’s always one fucking guy who loves fun and refuses to talk about anything emotionally substantial. This season, it was Jeramey, who said “I don’t wanna be serious all the time.” That’s the equivalent of men on Hinge saying they want someone who “doesn’t take themselves too seriously.” They might as well be holding a giant sign that says: I’m emotionally repressed and resent making any effort to give my partner the love they deserve.
Everyone on this season was insane except for Trevor The Himbo, who seems like he doesn’t have one bad bone in his body. But I famously have terrible taste in men, so honestly, what the fuck do I know.
The best part of Love is Blind is when all the couples spend mandated vacation time on a tropical location. It’s always a disaster because they all finally have to reckon with what could’ve been while running around half-naked.
During a drunken night on the beach, Jimmy is visibly enamoured by AD’s butt and proceeds to say as such to Chelsea, which makes her extremely uncomfortable. AD’s body does look incredible, but I don’t think it’s okay for Jimmy to sexualise her in front of his friends and fiancée who’s clearly dealing with her own body image issues.2
Everyone also spends the entire vacation desperately trying to prove that they’re the best and most stable couple on the show, even if it means flat out lying to their peers. It’s television gold.
Compared to previous seasons, the contestants were more upfront about asking their dates what their physical attributes and racial preferences were. Notably, Clay unflinchingly told AD in the pods that if she was ugly he wouldn’t be able to marry her.3
Similarly, in the Dominican Republic, the two discuss the inevitability of AD’s body changing when she’s pregnant and what she would realistically look like giving birth. Clay can’t seem to accept this, and tells her that he’ll let her know whenever she’s out of shape and force her to go to the gym.4
I have serious beef with Clay. For someone who claims they want to start taking their romantic life more seriously, he didn’t seem to know about the concept of wedding rings. AD fell for his act so hard she essentially admitted to an audience of a billion people that she thinks she can fix Clay. Reader, if anyone ever says to you that they’re “egotistical” and have “lots to work on” in order to treat you well, believe them.
My fascination with this show has increased throughout the years because the contestants are becoming increasingly aware that they’re being perceived and judged by the entire world. They’ll act in ways to seem more likeable, or take the plot of the show into their own hands by withholding information or DM-ing the people they dated, but never got to meet, on Instagram.
Laura, for example, refuses to tell Jessica that Jimmy has chosen Chelsea over her. Instead, she cryptically tells Jessica to “trust her” and to “leave on [her] on accord.” One episode later, Jimmy looked directly into the camera after he met Chelsea for the first time, sending a clear signal to the audience that he isn’t happy with what she looks like.
The self-awareness that they’re all going to become D-list celebrities — no matter how evil they look after post-production editing — made me distrust everyone’s interactions more than I did in previous seasons.
Fundamentally, the way women are presented on this show irks me, as their personhood is often reduced to their desire for a man’s attention — it’s all they’re portrayed to care about.
Whether the editors are accurately representing their psyche, I can’t say, but the women on Love is Blind often come across as insecure, and view the lack of romantic love in their life as confirmation of their own belief that they’re undesirable. Getting engaged will finally mean that they’re worthy of being loved. They will finally be valuable as a human being, because a woman’s life is meaningless without the love of a man, right?
In a lot of ways, Love is Blind mirrors the current state of modern dating. Everyone has a mould they’re asking their partner to fit into. They want the ring and beautiful wedding, but feel indifferent to the partner they’re standing next to at the altar. In the age of ‘soft launching’ and heavily curated proposal pictures, it seems like the joy of having a relationship lies more in the fact that we’re able to say that we’re in one.
AD for example, knows that Clay isn’t as mature as her but loves the way their relationship would be perceived by her friends and family. She knows she deserves more, she knows she’s falling into old patterns, she knows he’s making promises he can’t keep. So why couldn’t she walk away?
I’d love to know your thoughts, as this was undoubtedly one of the messiest seasons so far. We’ll find out next week which couples say yes to each other, sight unseen. I for one, cannot wait for the finale.
I mean, kudos to the producer that found Matthew because that shit was so entertaining.
Theory: I think Chelsea picked Jimmy over Trevor because she wanted the satisfaction of being ‘chosen’ over Jessica, who was also interested in Jimmy and happened one of the most conventionally beautiful women in the living quarters. Do I have any evidence to support this theory? I do not.
I don’t understand why the producers didn’t intervene? It kind of defeats the whole point of the experiment. In the same vein, wouldn’t the experiment make more sense if these contestants weren’t all able-bodied and conventionally attractive?
My campaign to incarcerate Clay starts today.