I’ve made it through episodes five and six. I was promised a shocking revelation. That was not a shocking revelation.
The Minnesota season of Love Is Blind opens like a horror movie. Everything is gray, with ominous music playing; there are aerial shots of an empty forest cutting through long, winding roads. Someone narrates, “I believe he knew exactly what I looked like the entire time.” When REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” comes blasting in, there’s still a sense of unease; all is not what it seems.
Six painfully boring episodes in, we finally find out what happened: Daniel may have looked at Taylor’s Instagram page a few months before the show.
It took us over six hours to get to this point.
Now yes, Daniel’s actions are shitty, shady, and maybe even sinister. I get that it’s against the true spirit of the show, which is to go in knowing nothing about the people you’re meeting, thus scientifically proving that love is blind. He broke the show code. It’s LiB’s version of a “they’re not here for the right reasons” witchhunt. Sure, Taylor has a right to feel upset.
But this season—13 total episodes, which I've apparently cursed myself to recap—is like watching paint dry, and that “twist,” which is something most reality shows sort out and deal with in the first episode, is as bland and anticlimactic as Taylor’s “revealing” bio, which says she likes Christmas and Taco Bell.
Look, I get it, Netflix. Viewers eat through content like a hamster chews through a toilet paper roll. You’re trying to fill a vacuum, which is an impossible task, so you have to get a little creative. I see you’ve tried hoarding old K dramas, those shitty Blumhouse horror flicks that aren’t “real” movies, and overfleshed crime series that probably should have been kept to an Unsolved Mysteries episode are now five episodes of unnecessary background. You've also added those addictive mobile games that encourage microtransactions and hit the same pleasure spot in our brain that gambling does. Are people really staying on Netflix longer thanks to Farming Simulator 23?
These reality shows are sure things. People are going to watch: The Ultimatum; The Circle; Love on the Spectrum. If you make those shows longer, you can keep people engaged longer, right? It worked for soap operas, where micro dramas would play out over the course of months. In the case of Love Is Blind, why not stretch the pod portion out?
But here’s the thing: You’re wasting our time. When the big reveal at the end of nearly seven hours of show is that a guy tried to “fix” the game by cruising someone’s Insta so he could use this knowledge—that knowledge being that she’s a nurse who loves Jesus—to his advantage, then you don’t have a twist.
Sure, the second half of the show looks like it could be fun. We’ve got what looks like a messy vacation, some time spent fighting with families who think this show is nuts (because it is), and some Minnesota locations. I just wish it didn’t take six-plus mind-numbing hours to get there.
