Adam Rose/Netflix
It’s been many seasons since we could say that Netflix’s Love Is Blind has lived up to its promise of helping people find love. The sort of gimmick that kinda worked in the first few seasons of the show — putting people in pods and having them “fall in love” without ever seeing each other — has long lost its luster. Instead, reecnt seasons of Love Is Blind have become a cautionary tale about how often women are willing to overlook glaring red flags for the sake of being in a relationship.
But is it really just that? Love Is Blind has always had a casting problem that seems to allow some questionable men to make it through. There was Shake in Season 2 and his obsession with whether the women he was dating were “skinny,” Trevor in Season 6 who had a whole girlfriend waiting for him at home while he pretended to build a connection in the show, and Alex in Season 10 and his blatant gaslighting of Ashley.
Kinetic Content, the company behind the show, has even faced lawsuits alleging sexual assault, false imprisonment, and negligence from a Season 5 female contestant. So, there’s no question there have been some horrible men in the show. Season 11 is no exception. About 20 seconds into the season, we are subjected to Morrey joking about who had the best comeback, “Jesus or the New England Patriots.” He only gets worse from there, and he’s not even the worst one.
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At this point, though, what seemed like a bug seasons ago is starting to feel like the way the show is built — and the women keep playing the game. Season 11 showcases this in extreme ways.
Health-care program manager Sarah is forced to explain how vaccines work to John and why his anti-abortion rhetoric is not just wrong, but uninformed. They clearly don’t align in values, and yet despite saying in a confessional that she didn’t want to be with a man she had to “fix,” she still gets engaged to John. She’s not the only one.
Blake is a yacht captain and basically a nomad. Erika is a marketing director whose intro said that she really “cherished her home.” Despite Blake giving no indication that he’s willing to settle down and be a present partner, Erika still goes ahead and accepts his proposal because… she wants to go to Mexico?
Then there’s Jax, who puts up with some of the worst behavior a man on Love Is Blind has displayed while still in the pods from Stew, and still says yes to his proposal. This despite the fact that he admits to commitment issues, says he might not get to a point where he can tell her he loves her before the wedding — not to mention his generally obnoxious attitude about money and his own perceived attractiveness. Jax does seem to come to her senses after meeting Stew, so the two don’t go to Mexico, but she does agree to meet him later in Boston, so who knows? We might not be safe from this couple yet.
So far, outside of those couples, the show has focused on three others: Aneha and Cam, Michaella and Rob, and Wilnie and Wilson. At the end of the fifth episode, we see five of those — minus Jax and Stew — in Tulum, Mexico. But even the ones that made it without big red flags have had some questionable moments.
Wilnie was the one to inform Wilson that his other connection, Malaine, had left the show. Was she his first choice or just the one he settled for? Michaella and Rob got engaged after a love triangle with Diana that at one point had Rob telling Diana that she was his first choice. Things change fast on this show, but it seems like increasingly we’ve had women who are just willing to wait and see how things play out, or perhaps who just want to give their connection a chance, no matter what.
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This might be representative of how bad things are out there in the real world for women. If dating feels like a losing proposition outside the pods, then perhaps you come into the pods willing to put up with things that you wouldn’t in real life. It’s either that, or we’ve fully entered an age of Love Is Blind where love is secondary and what women really want out of the experience is more time in the spotlight.
If you can’t get a good relationship out of it, you might as well get something, after all.
Plenty of people have translated their time on Love Is Blind into a big social media following and even careers outside of what they were doing before they were on the show. Is that, increasingly, what contestants are looking for these days? Have women recognized there’s no way they’re going to find love or even a meaningful connection on Love Is Blind, so are they now focusing on making sure they behave in a way that allows them to grow their social media following?
There’s no way to tell for sure, but one thing seems certain: there’s no love on Love Is Blind anymore — there’s just a group of men who should not be making it out of the pods and a group of women who deserve better, all out together in Mexico. Whether everyone’s getting what they want out of the deal or not remains to be seen.
Love Is Blind Season 11 is now streaming on Netflix.