Look, I've never watched Love Is Blind. I know it’s a mega-popular dating show, but I kinda avoid reality TV these days unless I'm summoned to do it for work. But I have been summoned—several readers have (politely) clamored for Racket to review the newest season, which takes place in Minneapolis.
For the uninitiated, Love Is Blind forces singles to get to know each other while inside separate pods, forbidden from physically seeing their potential mates. Matrimony is fast-tracked; you can't get out of pod dating without proposing marriage, and then we get into the lower-concept dating-show routine—beachy vacations, meeting the family, backstabbing drama. Considering this is a Netflix production, people tend to watch entire seasons or large chunks of episodes in binge sessions.
Only the first six hour-plus-long episodes of season 8 have dropped so far, with more following on Fridays through March 7, so we’re gonna have to spread this out, at least a little, over this week—I can only type so fast! While I'm starting slow with just the first episode, I might start grouping a few eps together if this season is going to be as slow as I've heard it is.
All right, let’s get started: I'm going in blind on Season 8 of Love Is Blind.
Episode 1: "I Have a Husband." (Spoiler? No, They Do Not.)
Opening shot of the first episode: ominous music, grey skies, snow, and an aerial view on the kind of forest Slenderman frequents. Minnesota? Is that you?
Coming up on this season, according to the teaser: bad '70s music covers, a lot of blonde people, and a bunch of guys who all look exactly—and I mean exactly—the same. We'll get a hot tub makeout, people jumping off a dock into the water while still holding their towels, surplus crying, and some sort of conspiracy reveal.
Let the trauma begin!
Intros: The guys and gals meet in their separate warehouse party rooms to talk with the hosts about what they are looking for in love. A good 85% of the white guys here look exactly like Ned Fulmer, the Try Guys cheater dude, so that’s already a red flag for me. One guy named Daniel is worried about being a “short king.” He’s 5’8”; that is not short, my dude. A woman named Vanessa says that people think she’s edgy because of her tattoos, but she’s actually has a “big heart.” Hm.
As he does in every season, host Nick Lachey (of 98 Degrees and Newlyweds fame) says that he hopes that this group “proves that love is truly blind.” But how blind can it be when we’ve got three or four petite oncology nurses with long wavy blondish-brown hair and a dozen or so Ned Fulmers?
Overwhelmingly, this cast, the largest in LIB history, is made up of folks with skim milk complexions. Not a lot of variety.
Pod time! And it’s uh, less than riveting.
“They have a beautiful Costco out there,” Tom responds when Yemi tells him she’s from Woodbury. “I happen to be a member.”
Madison tells a guy she lives in downtown St. Paul. Amazing. (No shade: I lived in Lowertown for nearly five years.) Two people find out they went to the same high school (Brooklyn Park's Park Center, right near the fabulous Rocky Rococo), but not at the same time.
A guy named Joey, who kinda looks like Mitch Hedberg, describes himself as a golden retriever. I can see it. A 28-year-old talks about how exhausting dating is because it never works out.
Someone named Dave says he’s been an “ass to women in my previous dating life” and wants to work on that… in front of the world, I guess? He claims to be hyper-looks focused because he works in “medical aesthetics." Red flag! Red flag! He keeps asking people what’s wrong with them and jokes that a woman is “no longer attractive” to him because she is in her 30s.
Welp, I guess this guy is getting the villain edit (we get the villain edits we deserve IMO), but there's still hope for him: “There’s no one way to be a beautiful woman,” he concludes. Feminism!
Molly, 29, has never had a boyfriend. But she's ready to get married on TV. OK! She bonds with Dave over their Catholic-school upbringing. On a later date, they bond over cheating. They are both cheaters. Cool! On another later date she tells him she has an ass tattoo and he asks her: “Where?”
Back in the gendered warehouse the guys and gals compare notes and toast to love using their unmarked gold cups. Some guy eats a banana. The women freak out about free bagels.
Weirdest date? Mason and Madison connect over aliens, ant homes, and Joe Rogan. “There’s different powers out in the universe…once you reach a certain power or certain energy you can control the weather,” Madison says, “And like, I was wondering just like, what if natural disasters to us are like, superior beings just like, experimenting with us like we experiment with ants?” Or like, maybe humans are doing things that have environmental consequences? I dunno, which one sounds more likely?
“We don't know shit,” she concludes. “Like the pyramids. How did they build that?” I mean, humans don’t need aliens to build big buildings. Historically, we've done it through slave labor.
Random note: A lot of the guys and gals on this show are afraid of exorcisms and demon possessions. It comes up a few times during early pod dates. The episode ends with the promise of a really boring love triangle: Two women are into Dave, and Dave is into two women.
Early takeaways? So far, it's real hard to keep track of these people. The Netflix cast page promises me at least a little diversity coming up, but this episode didn't have much. Everyone is very attractive in a pilates way, and they seem nice so far, but we don't have a lot of personality or unique aesthetics. We're talking Hallmark Christmas movie levels of homogeneity here. Love is face blind, y'all.
And that's the end of the first episode. So far, Brittany, Devin, and Virginia seem like ones to root for (more on them next episode), while Dave and Molly have villain vibes (let's hope they get up to more!). Oh, and Dave thinks the drive from St. Paul to Lakeville is boring. Well, we agree on at least one thing.
But that's not all that's boring here, gang. I'm used to the rapid-fire chaos of the The Bachelor/Bachorette season premieres, which then calms down a bit as the season carries on. I get the feeling that Love Is Blind needs some time to get started.
