4 hours ago
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In this rotted year that is 2026, there are not shortage of things to depress us: domestic terrorism by federal agents, war, the predominance of AI and sports-betting ads at the Super Bowl. The Epstein files. The Fifa peace prize. Six more weeks of winter. The need for escapism, or catharsis, or both, is as pressing as ever. And yet the thing that has depressed me most, in the low-stakes, “I can actually wrap my brain around this” way, is the pinnacle of smooth-brained, escapist entertainment: the new season of Netflix’s Love Is Blind, set in Ohio.
To be clear, Love Is Blind has never been a good show, even by reality TV standards. The first season of the series, in which young, generally attractive singles form emotional connections in “pods” and then get engaged sight unseen, had the good(ish) fortune of premiering just before a pandemic that gave “pod” a terribly relatable new valence; even still, it was described as “toxic”, “revolting” and, of course, “totally addictive”. At its best, the show can voyeuristically poke at our judgments and vocalize uncomfortable feelings, bringing up issues of race, politics, weight, attractiveness and age on top of the usual alcohol-aided drama, idealized romance and classic reality TV victim and villainy. At worst, it’s boring. Generally, it’s pleasantly baffling – modern dating sucks, for sure, but getting married after six weeks? That’s unrelatable content, perfect second-screen fare. But the Ohio version, and I say this with much love and ardent loyalty for my home state, has reached new lows, both on the level of production and in the spectacle itself.
For starters, there’s the fact that producers chose to make the season, which usually centers around a specific city – the better for couples to actually see each other – span the whole of Ohio, the seventh most populous state in the country that takes a minimum of three hours to drive across in any direction; this leads to fascinating conversations such as “would you move to Cincinnati or Columbus?” that seem, to this Cincinnatian, genuinely unprecedented in the field of reality television, though can’t be much fun for anyone else. The show’s most promising couple, a professor named Vic and a speech pathologist named Christine, do not accompany the lucky couples from the pods to their initial honeymoons in Mexico; for reasons left unexplained, they go to Malibu and film themselves post-sauna. (Show producers have officially attributed this to budget – they only had money to send six couples to Cabo, not seven – though they do manage to afford plenty of Top 40 tracks, so …) A good portion of the footage in Cabo and Ohio, in fact, was filmed by the couples themselves on their phones, with predictably awkward results. Some pivotal conversations are so clearly informed by unexplained off-screen happenings, and so choppily edited, that I had to rewind to follow the trains of (bad) logic.
That’s just the tangible stuff. But there’s something rotten at the core of this season – or, at least, more obviously rotten than usual: a pronounced gender roles regression that somehow exceeds the entertainment value of gawking at people participating in a bizarre dating experiment. I glimpsed it on Ashley’s face when her fiance Alex (the worst) suddenly put pressure on her to quit her job, leave her life in Cleveland and move to wherever he wanted to go (Arizona or Florida), for the purpose of “being nomadic”. When Brittany realized that her partner, Devonta, would not compliment her because he felt pressure to, and in fact would not communicate at all. When Bri saw that her fiance, Connor, lived in a glorified frat house (that he did at least own). And especially when Jess, a literal doctor, watches her fiance, Chris, who has for a couple weeks seemed like an amiable and communicative partner, do a 180 and tell her actually he’s not attracted to her because she doesn’t work out every day or do pilates. (Jess, thankfully, walks out.)
Chris then goes on to loudly tell many of Jess’s fellow cast members that sex with her was the “worst” he’s ever had while she’s in the room; attempt to seduce a different woman by essentially calling her man a beta male who wouldn’t take her to the Four Seasons; reference Andrew Tate in a way that suggests he’s very familiar with the manosphere; and otherwise make a case for being, as Vulture correctly put it, the biggest Love Is Blind douche of all time. He is the most egregious and obvious example in a season coursing with curdled traditional values and lopsided expectations that makes the best case for hetero-pessimism in the US that I have seen. Almost no one says the macro factors out loud, of course. It was almost a relief when Ashley’s father, who does all the talking for his wife and infantilizes his daughter (I cannot hear the words “provider and protector” again) asks Alex if he voted for Trump (he didn’t vote, but don’t worry, he assures, he’s conservative!). At least someone is saying the quiet part out loud.
It’s not like politics aren’t there; many Love is Blind watchers have since combed through the participants’ social media histories to find rightwing follows or Charlie Kirk tribute posts, on behalf of both men and women. (To quote the comedian and Ohio native Patti Harrison: “It is said ‘you can take the girl out of Ohio, but u can’t take the Ohio out of the girl’ … well bitch I am in LABOR pushing the Ohio out of me after watching this Christian nationalist ass show!!!!!!!!!!!”) I can imagine the conversations happening off-camera. But the show’s perceptible avoidance of it, its business-logic desire to keep out of the frame what prior seasons openly discussed, feels increasingly bizarre and off as the season goes on. Each episode felt like peering through the looking-glass at some imagined “real” America, where politics are neither discussed nor germane to a marriage but are very much at play, an airless place that is not even that recognizable to me as Ohio. It could be anywhere in this country, I guess; that off-feeling is ambient. Of course, all reality TV is mostly fiction, but this projection feels especially bleak.
