Netflix 'Love Is Blind' review

After asking whether ‘Love Is Blind’ Netflix doesn’t appear all that interested in the answer.

Stepping for the first time into the realms of reality television, Netflix dropped the first episodes of its dating-show-with-a-twist ‘Love is Blind’ on 13th February. Further episodes have trickled onto the platform since, with the finale streaming on 27th February, and viewers have been hooked. 

For unfamiliar readers, the show tests whether a group of girls dating a group of guys for 10 days behind a screen could lead to any couple feeling sufficiently comfortable to get engaged without seeing each other. We watched in shock as a number of the daters developed seemingly intense and loving relationships in the ‘pods’ within a matter of days. From the get-go, it was clear that the producers had chosen daters from a relatively narrow demographic, all of whom are objectively quite attractive. Perhaps this played a part in the higher than expected number of engagements which resulted from the initial phase. Nonetheless, emphasis was placed on the occurrence of an inter-racial relationship and another involving a larger than average age gap in order to give purpose to the removal of sight from the dating process. Indeed, watching the formation of the couples within the pods, not all of whom were necessarily an obvious match, raised viewers’ intrigue and affection quickly. 

Image: Netflix

Had Love is Blind centred on this coupling-up stage, allowing us to become emotionally invested in the individuals and their ability to create meaningful relationships without superficial bias or the interference of social media, it would have been a hit. The visual reveal of the daters’ fiancés also acted as a natural climax in their story and a good place to leave their relationships to blossom on the outside, perhaps with a First Dates style ‘what happened next clip’ at the end. Even the daters have commented that too much of the pod footage was edited out of the show, considering that this was the essence of the experiment and where the relationships took shape. 

Instead, we were only in the pods for about two and a half episodes before the dating show descended into a structured-reality nonsense. The remainder of the series followed the couples in the lead up to their weddings, due to take place only 5 weeks after they left the pods. Before getting on to the weddings (and wow, there is a lot to say there) the series already lost its message when it took the couples on a group getaway to Mexico and then put them up in a shared apartment block back home. In Cancun amongst honeymoon bliss, squabbles began to arise as couples who had only just met had to learn to work together romantically under the eye of the cameras. To add to this,

the daters had, in the pods, dated a number of the others and were now finding out what they looked like and watching their relationships develop in tandem with their own. Already, the new couples were being tested by superficial scenarios entirely unrelated to the fact that they had met without seeing each other. Tantrums, drunken confessions and overdramatic monologues (cough, Giannina) peppered the majority of these episodes, which gradually felt more akin to a ‘Housewives Of’ series than a romantic dating show.

Nick and Vanessa, the presenters, whose every line felt uncomfortably scripted, continued to ask the question in every scene ‘is love blind?’ Nonetheless, this question seemed to have been answered three episodes earlier once the daters had decided to get engaged. Instead, the new question was whether they could be made to marry one an other after only six weeks of dating. More pressure was put on the daters as their families were filmed meeting their fiancés. The relatives hardly seemed bothered that the daters had met blindly given that the real elephant in the room was a pre-arranged on-air wedding within six weeks of the couples’ meeting. 

The weddings themselves were nothing short of bizarre. Right until the daters walked down the aisle, the show built viewers’ anticipation as to whether or not the vows would result in ‘I dos’ or ‘I don’ts’. Given that the experiment was supposed to test the daters ability to fall in love without sight, forcing them to go ahead with fully organised weddings - attire, venue and family in tow -before they had decided if marriage was for them, felt very off-coloured. The registrars went on to conduct individual wedding ceremonies which each referred rather unromantically to the experiment and asked the daters for a final time and in the doomed expression associated with the telling of horror stories whether love was truly blind. Despite 6 couples successfully getting engaged after the pod phase (discarding those not shown and the shambles that was Carlton and Diamond) only 2 couples ended up wed. Whilst the show appeared to relish the drama of this result, in fact it felt a shame that couples with apparent potential were broken by the pressure they were put under to go through with weddings for which they were not ready. 

We will find out which couples survived the process as a whole in the Love Is Blind reunion which will stream on their YouTube channel on 5th March 2020. 

Words by Lucy Firestone