Was This the Worst Season of "Love Is Blind" Yet?

Let's review the evidence.

Greg Gayne/Netflix

Love is Blind is one of those rare reality shows with diminishing returns: Each season, it gets less and less believable that any of these people are here to actually find love. I was feeling this as early as season three, by the way, which is not a good sign! It’s looking like the days of multiple married couples emerging per season might just be behind us, as people realize the emotional and financial toll of a divorce might not outweigh the however many months of FabFitFun partnerships. I can’t blame them for that, but it doesn’t make for a very compelling show, given the premise.

So with every season, fans tend to take to Reddit to clamor that whichever one we’re watching is the “worst one so far.” (I would know, I’m on Reddit constantly.) But I’m gonna go out and say that this season was actually the worst. Let’s break it down:

1. It was boring! We spent a full six episodes in the pods! That’s longer than any season, and probably as long as the contestants themselves spent in there. And what was it all for? We didn’t even see who I think would’ve been some interesting couples, like Brittany and Mo. Why did I endure like, three episodes of Dave’s face when I could have seen our bi queen get engaged, or even view any of her relationship outside Devin?

2. The couples were hard to root for. Boring and unlikeable? Get you a cast that can do both — actually, don’t please. It’s not even that I think the cast members are bad people necessarily (that would at least make them fun to root against), I just didn’t feel like any of them had a lot of chemistry that made it exciting to hope they’d say “I do”. Monica and Joey were bros, Taylor and Daniel were… perfectly fine, Devin and Virginia had about the same energy level as me when I take my nightly trazodone. Usually we get that one boring, stable couple (Lauren and Cam, Brett and Tiffany, Alexa and Brennon) we can take as a given will get married and the rest is a dramatic will-they-won’t-they. This time, all the couples seemed to be positioned like the boring stable ones, and then only one of them actually got married. It was a very unexciting kind of bait-and-switch.

3. The diversity was seriously lacking. *Gets carted away in an unmarked van since this might be an illegal opinion to have now* Seriously, the whole conceit of Love is Blind is *Nick Lachey voice* can you fall in love with someone irrespective of their looks, race, and religion? Right? Where was any of that?? We didn’t even get people who weren’t brought up believing in Jesus. Yeah, we got some diversity across the political spectrum, but that was it. If I’d taken a drink from my gold-plated wine glass every time anyone said “faith” or “God,” I would’ve been sent to the hospital. (I could probably write a whole other Substack on this, so lmk if you want more of this rant.)

But since I have to give credit where credit is due, here were some redeeming parts:

1. They cast real people. I have to say, casting did a good job of picking people who were at least believable in their claims that they were turning to a reality TV show because they were unlucky in love. Season 3 was the one where I was like, “Ok these people are really all aspiring influencers.” This time, I didn’t have that problem. There were a few people I side-eyed (Dave, Molly), but it wasn’t egregious.

2. The girlies. This season was for the girls! The best part was not any of the couples (sorry, Taylor and Daniel), but how the women rallied around each other and stood up for themselves. That was the true twist that was pleasantly surprising to see. I could’ve watched four more hours of the reunion and almost none of the pods. More girlypops, please!

3. Minimal Lachey interference. Netflix has really been listening to the people when we say, “We do not give one single fuck about Vanessa and Nick,” and I’ve got to hand it to the editors — they listened. I could count on one hand Nick and Vanessa appeared on my screen, and dare I say, they did a much better job at the reunion of pushing back on obvious lies.