The year is 2020: The world is abuzz with fear and anxiety over the COVID-19 crisis. Schools are closing. Everyone is going stir-crazy — celebrities included. In such difficult times when the most exciting part of our days were the weekly Centers for Disease Control broadcasts featuring the beloved Dr. Anthony Fauci, what could possibly bring all of humanity together and restore the peace and stability that once was? Enter: the first season of Netflix’s hit reality television series, “Love is Blind.” With a unique premise and the promise of a cast of relatively normal and relatable people — just like us! — the show was, unsurprisingly, a smashing success. After all, there was nothing else to do. But, after only four seasons, something about the “Love is Blind” spiel has grown stale.
For those of you who remained miraculously unseduced by “Love is Blind,” here’s the lowdown. The show is marketed as a social experiment based on one question: Can you fall in love with someone without having ever seen their face? Contestants on “Love is Blind” are thrust into a never-ending round of speed dating (my own personal hell) with the hope of finding their one true love, the only caveat being, of course, that they are never allowed to see their dates’ faces. Separated into small “pods,” the participants can spill their guts to their suitor with zero clue as to their height, hair or eye color. Once they’ve found their special someone, and have proposed, contestants can finally lay eyes on their fiancés for the very first time, embarking on a whirlwind adventure of an engagement in order to answer the question once and for all: Is love truly blind?
Of course, the show doesn’t revolve solely around the idea of the so-called social experiment. The vast majority of the episodes of “Love is Blind” are dedicated to the gripping drama following the contestants’ release from the pods and their scramble to announce an engagement and plan a wedding in mere weeks. Much like other popular reality shows that revolve around romance, such as “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” or “Love Island,” there is plenty of interpersonal drama and salacious gossip to satiate the masses — with this season being no exception to the rule. With quite a few unexpected prenuptial breakups and one shocking second-chance proposal, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to call this season the most thrilling and drama-filled of the four — so why has sitting through each hour-long episode of “Love as Blind” begun to feel like such a drag?
The answer can be found in the very premise of the show itself. When “Love is Blind” first aired in 2020, it sported a novel, never-before-seen concept. What other reality TV execs could possibly dream up the idea of tossing their contestants into small, gaudily decorated boxes for the duration of their first few episodes? It was genius, truly. But the novelty has begun to wear off, with only the superficial drama of the show’s contestants to keep it afloat. Aspects of the show that, at its start, were tolerable have become simply unbearable. It would be easy to rattle off the seemingly never-ending list of the show’s more irritating traits — its consistently conventionally attractive contestants, its insistence on featuring solely heterosexual relationships, its loosey-goosey and lackadaisical use of the word “experiment” — but the core fault with the show is much simpler. In short, it has become painfully predictable, so much so that it has become almost unwatchable.
The show fails its audiences on two fronts: in the pods and at the altar. Part of the initial intrigue of “Love is Blind” came from the show’s consistent ability to keep stakes high for contestants — and viewers — at all times. Who will participants choose in the pods? How will the pairs react upon first seeing each others’ faces? And, later, how will their engagement work out? Will they say yes at the altar? These questions drove viewership and overall interest in the show, keeping us all firmly and permanently on our toes. But as “Love is Blind” has churned out one season after another, the stakes have lowered considerably, with the answers to these once elusive questions now seeming much more obvious. While some participants may have difficulty choosing between prospective partners in the pods, the romantic trajectory of most pairs is made clear by both their individual interviews and the show’s own clipping and editing. Although the most interesting aspect of the show may be its very literal take on the term “blind date,” the auspicious moments in which each pair’s physical characteristics are revealed are surprisingly low stakes; with such attractive contestants, most couples have very few complaints, and even those that do are known to put a pin in their concerns, opting to carry on with the “experiment” and keep marching towards the wedding. So, that’s the excitement of the pods unceremoniously quashed. The lead-up to the weddings is a little more exciting than the unorthodox courtship of the pods, yet the ridiculously low success rate of the show’s couples renders the “I do’s” and “I don’ts” of the wedding ceremonies virtually meaningless. No matter which words the couples choose to say at the altar, we all know they’ll end up alone eventually. Thus, the weddings — one of the show’s most dramatized and supposedly-thrilling plot points — are, too, rendered obsolete.
But, perhaps that’s the fun of a show like “Love is Blind” — watching each and every one of the contestants’ relationships ultimately crumble in dramatic fashion. I myself have spent many an hour in front of my television watching the “Love is Blind” couples skip merrily along on their paths to individual disaster and devastation, hideous wine glasses in hand. When the first episodes dropped, I stayed parked on my couch for each and every one, managing to drag my roommate, and later her boyfriend, into joining me in my amused, and mildly disturbed, reverie. Repetitive and ultimately meaningless as it may be, at the very least we can say that “Love is Blind” provides us with plenty of spectacles and mindless entertainment. And, really, isn’t that what reality TV is all about?
Senior Arts Editor Annabel Curran can be reached at currana@umich.edu.