I’m not a reality show guy. Truly, I’m not. Beyond the rogue reality cooking show—Top Chef, Chopped or something similar—I avoid reality television as strongly as a vampire avoids light. Or garlic. Or both. Something about the Kardashians, Real Housewives, The Bachelor and the rest of its ilk just angers and frustrates me.
Maybe I am allergic. Yet, every now and then, something reels me in like some kind of alcohol soaked lure, smelling of the fumes of failed, wannabe actors, and I get addicted to its drama. Almost a decade ago, my wife and I were bored one night and somehow started hate-watching Bachelor in Paradise. I don’t if what was the sheer debauchery, the ridiculous drama or the ineptitude of the participants (probably all of the above), but we were glued for the rest of the season. To this day, I couldn’t tell you any of the names of the people or what exactly occurred across the show, but I do remember how much my wife laughed at the show. Now comes Love is Blind. We’d seen advertisements for weeks. Neither of us really talked about it beyond our chats in the morning when we discuss news of the day. I’m sure we just kind of chuckled and shook our heads at the new dating show like, “Who would be silly enough to watch that show.” Us. Me and my wife. We’re that silly. One evening, after several minutes of random Netflix searching (it’s an unspoken rule if you’ve finished a series you actually enjoy that you flip through Netflix offerings for at least ten minutes before giving up and just saying, “this’ll do”) and we stopped on Love is Blind. There was a mischievous glint in my wife’s eye as she hit play. Now, I could blame this all on my wife, but I’d be lying. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least morbidly curious about the concept. It’s at once relatively simple, but unnecessarily complicated, and in that way, Love is Blind seems to encapsulate everything wrong with reality television. It’s a combination of Big Brother, Bachelor, Marriage at First Sight, and I’m sure a host of other TV shows as well. The essential question, which they ask inside almost every episode, boils down to, “Is love blind?” The question makes sense within the first two episodes as the “experiment” (as they continually call it) revolves around two households, one of men and the other of women, which are connected by windowless pods. Everyday, the men and women go on dates in these pods, but they can’t see each other, almost like a perverse twist on confessional booths. There, they talk, get drunk, and (hopefully) fall in love. The show is most entertaining and perversely interesting in this stage. Yet, following the second episode, the stages of physical relationship begin, and even inside the sterile, staged environment of the reality television world, the reality of the “real world” seeps in. Relationship issues that typically take years to unfold or stagnate seem to arise within days and weeks. Everything happens so quickly—declaring love AND proposing marriage inside of two weeks WITHOUT ever seeing the other person and getting hitched within a month. It’s mind boggling that someone would actually want to participate. At one point, a delirious contender says something along the lines of, “If I can’t find a partner doing this show, how can I ever?” I wanted to shout back that you have bigger problems in your life if a reality stunt show is your best shot at love! Another perplexing situation has the perpetually hair-flipping Jessica feeding a glass of wine to her dog in the middle of a serious conversation with her fiancé. At the same time, Mark’s attachment to Jessica is totally infuriating as she drunkenly flits between him and her other would-be fiancé, Barnett and doesn’t even try to mask the infatuation. It’s all so unreal at times, you wonder if its all scripted or if the contestants are in on the machinations of melodrama. In the middle of the proposal and the marriage, they do have a couple of weeks living together, but even that is so staged and unreal as they experience a honeymoon style trip in a posh resort in Mexico, followed by a stint in a hotel-esque apartment set up that feels more like a movie set than real life. It’s also at this stage that the supposed experimental question of, “Is love blind?” essentially undermines itself. The answer to the (not so tantalizing) question also reveals itself as a resounding NO. Love is not blind. Not that certain aspects of your love don’t or can’t turn a blind eye, but that love is never so simple. Yet, the show is so expertly crafted and edited to compel you to continue watching, episode after episode. There are couples you believe in (c’mon Kenny and Kelly!), couple you knew were doomed from the start (Diamond and Carlton), and couples you love to eat popcorn as you watch (Mark and Jessica). The entire series is a slow moving car crash you can’t peel your eyes away from. It’s sad. It’s dangerously entertaining. Yet I do wonder what the next iteration of reality tv could possibly be. Could we continue this descent? Can producers come up with even more insane concepts? As long as the shows continue to film, there will be desperate enough folks to contend for a part and those of us interested enough to lean in and watch. Keep searching Netflix to find out, I guess.
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