by Meera Eragoda, Staff Writer
“Will you form an emotional connection or will you walk away from each other forever?” These are the often repeated words of Netflix’s newest reality TV show Love is Blind. The premise of this show is that people are divided and placed into pods where they have to try and find someone to marry without ever having seen them. This is all done as an “experiment” to judge whether love is blind and unaffected by race, class, age, etc.
Reality shows are not usually my thing. I have nothing against them and actually think it’s ridiculous that they are usually trashed because they’re consumed mainly by women. But the show seemed to want to explore some real issues, so I ended up jumping in — it was a wild ride.
The show really drags out the first half of the season and I found it incredibly unnecessary. The amount of repetition of the phrases “emotional connection” and “is love blind” is . . well, let’s just say . . . if you were to play a drinking game where you took a sip for every time they were uttered, you would be sloshed in the first 15 minutes. But these phrases end up being empty words as the show never shows us anything of real substance to base the couples “emotional connections” on.
The second half of the show takes place after the couples have met each other face to face and this is where things get much more entertaining. They are all sent off to a resort in Mexico where they have some time to get to know each other, and then back to the real world to meet friends and families. The second half is where the show gives us a little more depth. Of course, this is done in the form of the dysfunctional interactions couples have with each other, with drama-free couples getting much less screen time.
This show had the potential to explore some really interesting ideas. They present it as an experiment to see how much race, age, class, etc impacts someone’s dating choice. Overlooking the fact that sometimes you can tell all of these things by the way someone sounds, I really wished they had actually explored these issues. The reunion episode would have been the perfect episode to do that in but they missed that opportunity.
SPOILER ALERT:
Carlton, a Black bisexual man, is on the show specifically to find a wife. I cannot think of an example of a show where a Black bisexual man was positively represented but it definitely was not on Love is Blind. Diamond (the woman he proposes to) does not handle Carlton’s coming out in the best way, something she addresses in the reunion episode. However, Carlton’s internalized homophobia and his misogyny are apparent, but the show does more to reinforce these views than to challenge or address them.
As well, Lauren (a Black woman) after getting engaged to Cameron (a white man), reveals to us that the Black struggle is important to her and she hopes he’s OK with that. With both of these couples, could they not have talked about it in the pods? They didn’t need to reveal their identities to ask questions about how they each feel about issues of equality. Or did they and the show just never revealed it to us?
All in all, this show could have done new things with the reality TV format. It could have actually explored how much of our desires are politically constructed, but instead it remained very flat. Compared to other reality shows I’ve seen in passing, I don’t even think I can say it’s that entertaining. All this show does is repeat key phrases over and over and over. I guess it’s good for a drinking game?
