‘Love is Blind’ Is Bingeworthy Bizarre Reality

Reality TV takes its premise from an old adage in ‘Love is Blind’ (2020) – the bingeworthy Netflix show currently taking social media by storm as we all quietly wonder if we’ve been depriving our dogs of wine.

The deal is that science as well as hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey say the key to lasting love is emotional connection. This before a shotgun proposal, a quick little Mexican getaway and some hasty nuptials in front of bewildered family and friends.

To build this bond, contestants date each other from pods – small windowless rooms where they all get to talk without ever seeing each other. In these snazzy little love nests – cut off from society and visually from each other – contestants get really excited about children’s books, being from Chicago and anything else they can cling to for dear life in this bizarre dating dystopia.

Offered as an antidote to a hyper visual world where social media and dating applications such as Facebook, Instagram, Tinder and Grindr offer optical first impressions which may have very little to do with who a person is at their core, ‘Love is Blind’ dusts the distraction and champions meaningful communication as essential to dating success.

It’s a sweet little notion, the endgame contestants are cute and as the show progresses, you’re bound to get really invested in the love trials and tribulations of couples Lauren and Cameron, Amber and Barnett, Jessica and Mike, Kelly and Kenny and Giannina and Damian.

Though the premise hinges on the idea that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, once the couples finally meet, it becomes blindingly apparent that nobody is particularly unattractive. When they finally see their betrothed, contestants visibly sigh with relief and what alleviates their stress is the sight of largely conventional, slim, able-bodied beauty.

With the spectre of traditional hideousness vanquished, the couples’ challenge is something else and perhaps more attuned with dating in the age of social media. They have to transition their relationship from the pods to the real world. Watching the contestants put faces, hand gestures and quirks to what was until very recently a disembodied voice in a room makes for interesting viewing and a fascinatingly familiar conversion given what many modern daters may have experienced shifting from online chemistry to IRL (in real life).

What’s a little different is how quickly the couples fall in love. Totally engrossed in the pods and the fantasy and primed to give it all a chance for national television, the couples declare their love and get engaged in record time and, honestly, in and amidst the ridiculousness, it’s kind of sweet.

Out in the real world, however, where the ghosts of great sex past, interracial apprehension, biphobia, significant age differences, parents cautioning you not to marry “some whore from a reality show” and returns to old lives and independence loom, things aren’t as peachy.

Watching ‘Love is Blind you’ll root for some and scream at the screen watching others but, for the most part, you will be entertained.

Love may not be blind. The show may actually disprove its own title but it’ll also show you what we all know to be true. That love can be complicated, beautiful, manipulative or magical whether you find it in high school or on a hot new Netflix show.

‘Love is Blind’ (2020) is now streaming on Netflix.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook; marthamukaiwa.com

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