Love is Blind.

I have a somewhat unreliable relationship to reality TV shows. If the people in them are surprisingly wholesome and kind and want what they want but also don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, then I will watch until my eyeballs go dry. But if they are your run-of-the-mill reality TV stars—ruthless, mean, not here to make friends—as exhilarating as this can be, I get a little restless watching, a little anxious. I tend to tap out. Maybe it’s a counterintuitive approach to this genre because who wants to watch a bunch of people on TV crying and apologizing to each other, talking about how much they respect each other? Who wants to applaud for someone who decides to leave a show rather than keep hurting someone else’s feelings? 

Me, I guess. I don’t know. I think bullies are my pet peeve. I think everybody should do the work to at least try to be kind, though maybe that makes me someone without much edge. I cry when I get uncomfortable, and as much as I love a direct person (a direct woman especially), when this dips into cruelty, I tend to dip out. I’ve always been wary of the particular type of drama in reality TV shows (even though I live for fictional drama), but then, a few years ago, a friend recommended a very specific season of Love Island to me (season 5, if you’re here to be converted). She said it was more wholesome than the previous seasons, that everybody was nice to each other and that this made the whole ordeal (a summer of swapping partners until they found one that stuck, 50 odd episodes, all about an hour) much more compelling. Reader, I could not stop watching this show. I watched it all day cooped up in my apartment in Iowa, even though these people mostly just sat around the pool and pontificated on whether their crushes liked them back. 

Recently, my mom mailed me a box of notes I passed with my friends in high school (pre-texting?), and this was the subject of almost all of them: Do you think N likes me and if he does then why did he have his arm around A today? I know you’re dating Z but he doesn’t seem like a good guy, and what if you gave P a chance instead? It was all we talked about, this same negotiating that people in dating shows do: Does he like me? Should I like him? What if this is all going to lead to a terrible embarrassment? There’s something comforting about watching that emotional precariousness play out while you are far from their scenario (if only because their scenario is on camera). There’s something about a messiness that you can relate to but that’s not your mess that maybe makes you want to sit for hours and root for them and keep watching—cringing all the while—to see if it’s going to work out. 

I first watched Love is Blind in 2020. It was weeks before Covid started, and I was in a hotel room in Dublin trying to decide if I was going to go to grad school in Europe despite the seeming randomness (and cost) of this decision. My flight back to the U.S. was the next day, and feeling a little under the weather, I’d ditched my hostel for this hotel room, even though it ate up the rest of my already paltry savings. I lied under the covers and turned on this show that my sister had told me about. I found it hilarious and definitely ridiculous and also a little endearing because how much do you have to believe in love to commit your life to someone on the other side of a wall? How much do you have to crave love (or fame) to let yourself fall for someone on international TV? I watched it for hours. 

I’ve kept up with Love is Blind somewhat intermittently since then. Once a show gets really popular, the kind of people who apply for it are different than the ones who were in that first season. They’ve seen others do what they’re now doing and maybe this awareness makes them more performative, stiff. They’re putting their own spin on something that’s already been done instead of being the kind of people that pave the way. It can feel a little played to me, a little exhausting, but I picked it back up this season because A) I’ve just finished my comprehensive exams for school and my brain craves something low stakes, and B) I saw clips of a Black woman who appeared to be the star of the show (shoutout to AD) and I wanted to see how things played out for her. 

I’m in the middle of this newest season and have been very wary of stumbling across spoilers, but what I like about it so far is how down-to-earth the people seem (overlooking, of course, their unhinged decision to be on this show). One woman left because she found out that the guy she was talking to was also secretly talking to her friend. Before she left, she said (one of the many poetic lines of this season), “I am living out my worst dreams.” Another woman—one of my favorites so far—told a guy she was talking to that he clearly had not dated someone as direct as her before, and maybe he needed a woman who would coddle him. When he decided to be with said coddling woman, this more direct woman said, “When you find out what you’ve done, you’re going to choke.” This quasi-curse was exhilarating to me because it was not the I need you, why don’t you choose me energy of, say, The Bachelor. It was self-assured and confident, more I don’t need you but, oh boy, wait until you realize who you’ve lost. This was refreshing to me: someone falling in love who still had a grip on her worth. 

There are also so many tears in this season, but not the waterworks you’d expect, more the restless tears of being put in situations where you have to hurt someone else’s feelings. There are conversations about race too that were surprisingly refreshing: What does it meant to be in an interracial relationship, and how do you romantically love someone—someone Black like you—when you haven’t had a good example?

I love this season of Love is Blind (so far, who knows what will happen, please, for the love of god, don’t tell me) because it is surprisingly wholesome while at the same time totally ridiculous. I love it because—as heavily produced as it sometimes feels—it seems like these people are just trying to find their way. They are obviously wildly uncomfortable, but they also seem like they’re trying not to hurt anybody. I find this more relatable than the messier, meaner shows (even though obviously the latter is the bread and butter of reality TV). While there is merit in screaming and backstabbing, there is something juicy too in carefully choosing your words and tone when you declare—as one person on this season of Love is Blind did—that someone does not, in fact, look like Megan Fox. 

Image: Netflix