Love is Blind: A Thesis
Giant man babies abound
WARNING: SPOILER ALERT (although if you haven’t binge-watched all available episodes by now, I’m both in awe of and disgusted by your self-restraint)
I’ve been watching the latest series of Netflix’s Love Is Blind and unlike most of the trash TV I watch that gently numbs me, it’s really occupying my thoughts.
The dating reality show is predicated on the question: can two people fall in love without seeing one another? Or as the slightly unhinged looking hosts, Nick and Vanessa Lachey put it, “sight unseen” (which is ironic as their appearances are so infrequent that they’re the ones who are sight unseen). The contestants blind date in “the pods”, essentially speed dating through a weird glowing wall - pouring their hearts out, practicing pilates and frequently “falling in love” by episode 2.
Series 1 was a messy bitch - outrageous, often laughable and I didn’t give it too much thought. But series 3 is different. The intricacies of the power dynamics, the disconcerting shady behaviour by some of the guys, the sadness of the witnessing the endless compromises many of the women make to convince the men to love them back.
The structure is clever. The blind date stage is a totally contrived set up where the singles are entertainingly performative in their behaviour. It’s the silly bit where they’re all in floods of tears and ready to propose off the back or 4 and a half conversations. It’s where people say things like, “I’m so in love with you”, "I'm a very big believer in feelings" and “We’ve connected intellectually, we’ve connected financially.” (You what?) I do actually appreciate how earnest and lame everyone is. They’re being good sports.
Once they officially pair off and get engaged, the level of artifice drops a little as they are whisked out of the pods and off to a sexy beach holiday where they are suddenly sharing a bed and a bathroom with a perfect stranger. Awkward. One woman, Raven, visibly recoils every time her fiancé goes in for a cuddle. The couples are also constantly hammered so it’s dramarama all the time. And just in case you don’t grasp the drama unfolding in front of you, the show’s soundtrack is there to tell you. So a fight scene will finish with a song with lyrics like, “It all comes crashing down”. Oh, I see. It’s not going well. Thank you for that.
This is also where almost every guy starts shattering the premise of the show by saying, “I’m just struggling to connect the person I met in the pods with the person I’m here with now.” None of the women say this because they’re not shallow arseholes but no amount of posturing and bullshit can mask the fact that the guys might think they want a “true emotional connection” when what they truly desire is a generic hottie who doesn’t bother them with pesky conversation.
Shit gets even more real during the next stage when their relationships are tested to see if they can make it “in the real world” which means living in serviced apartments in Dallas minus the subdued lighting scheme of the pods and having to work unfamiliar kitchen appliances. This is when the guys crank it up and start saying things like, “Of course it will be challenging seeing each other every day.” Sorry, what? Three days ago you were crying on bended knee and saying you couldn’t live without her.
I know, it’s a silly reality TV show but it’s so powerfully telling and real. Like Matt who loses his shit when his fiancé, Colleen, is admired by another guy, Cole. It feels uncomfortable to watch when he confronts her. He’s aggressive and drunk and mean. Cole, by the way, is engaged to Zanab and tells her to her face that she’s a 9/10 and that Colleen is a 10 and then gaslights her when she gets upset about it.
Can we also talk about Nancy and Bartise? She’s an incredibly sexy, successful 32-year-old Selma Hayek lookalike and because Bartise is 27 and likes “athletic blondes” in “the real world”, she has to submit to him in every conversation to extract a basic amount of human decency and affection from him. Every conversation makes out she’s geriatric for being 5 years older and as she cautiously and sensitively broaches issues like shared finances, parenthood and abortion with him, he behaves like a giant man baby. When he drunkenly rants to the camera, “Looks so fucking matter, it’s not superficial of me to say”, no one is arguing otherwise but it does make you question why this group of women must debase themselves so this show can state the bleeding obvious.
As my friend Lisa, a fellow mother of daughters, said to me, “I want to watch with my girls and say, ‘Look at what they just did. Never do that’”. It’s heartbreaking watching these women put up with such crap and disrespect. It’s not even subtle. The men are spelling it out. “I’m going to get bored of you.”
I’m 7 episodes in (3 new episodes were graciously added yesterday) so I’ll reserve further judgement for now. I do know that my WhatsApp groups have been lighting up about this series so I don’t think I’m alone in my preoccupation.
Are you watching? I’d love to hear what you think in the handy comments below.
See you next time!
Hannah
This was exactly the kind of detailed analysis I was looking for!
Grateful as ever for your insights x