The Love Is Blind Experiment Finally Broke
Daniel Foster We’re now seven episodes into Love Is Blind’s fifth season, and the mess is everywhere. At the end of episode four, the Netflix reality dating show revealed that Uche and Lydia, two contestants who were supposed to be complete strangers, had actually been in a long-term relationship prior to appear on the show. Not only that, but Uche and Lydia had recognized each other on their first day in the pods and kept this information secret from the other contestants until they were both in serious relationships with other people. This discovery led to an enormous breakup between Uche and Aaliyah, the woman he’d grown close with in the pods, and fed the ongoing tension among Uche, Lydia, and Milton, the man Lydia eventually became engaged to.
And that’s just one little corner of the Love Is Blind season-five chaos! There’s also JP and Taylor, who got engaged at the end of the pods only to discover that in fact they sort of hated each other by the time they got to Mexico. There’s Uche’s growing conspiracy-theorist paranoia about Lydia’s involvement in the show. By episode seven, Uche, Lydia, Milton, engaged couple Izzy and Stacy, and improbable post-pod relationship Johnie and Chris end up in a nasty battle royale over trust and loyalty and truth and authenticity and Lord even knows what. It’s a trash heap! The mood is “in shambles!” Let’s talk about it.
Kathryn VanArendonk: One of Love Is Blind’s greatest strengths as a reality franchise is that each season has entirely its own mood. Because so much of the season is driven by unpredictable intercast dynamics, and because each season is set in a different city, Love Is Blind has been able to dodge the impersonal, producer-defined blandness that can make a dating show grow stale over time. Every new group has its own distinct flavor of romance and its own unmistakable whiff of catastrophe.
So my opening question to you, Dee, is this: How would you define what’s going on in season five? What’s the mood?
Dee Lockett: Where to even begin. The mood is Love Is Blurry ’cause this season makes me feel drunk and dizzy … but I’m addicted to the mess? For at least the past two seasons, there’s been a growing sense that both Netflix and this show’s producers have lost the plot on the Experiment that this thing was based around, opting instead to let the contestants pull all the imaginary levers. What Lydia — and I guess Uche, too, but I can’t pay that man any compliments — did was Oz-level masterminding and then what Aaliyah did in turn, choosing to exclude herself from this whole narrative for the time being … producers can’t write that kind of reality TV, baby. That’s Kris Jenner Bossing Up. What do y’all make of what has transpired thus far?
KVA: No question this season feels like it’s spun the farthest away from the original intended Experiment, at least as we saw it in the earliest seasons. That episode four reveal?! It’s the first time this show has played with our sense of what’s fair game to hide from viewers. We all know that every reality show edits around the raw footage, but that kind of Rashomon rewind back to the beginning is a much sneakier edit than a straight dating show is typically willing to perform! And yeah, it’s contributed to a sense of chaos that’s different from previous seasons. The mere presence of the pod squad this late in the season is evidence that the format’s been shaken up and reworked. But I’m curious whether this is the sort of thing that feels like it will change the show forever, in the way that major strategy shifts on Survivorhave permanently changed the game, or whether you think this kind of mess will be contained to season five.
Nic Juarez: The Survivor comparison is one I’ve been thinking about for a few seasons now. More and more, the pods portion feels like the pre-merge part of Survivor: People are having intense conversations to see if they can trust each other to continue in the game, weighing their options, and cutting people loose in favor of someone they vibe with more. Look at Izzy, who had three (three!) women to choose from in Lydia, Johnie, and Stacy. In particular, when he broke up with Johnie toward the end of their time in the pods, she went back to Chris, whom she originally broke up with in favor of Izzy. It felt like watching someone scramble fifteen minutes before Tribal Council.
Season five thus far feels like it’s being defined by competing narratives. That’s obviously because of Uche and Lydia’s prior history, but it’s also because of the casts’ personalities. There’s the meta factor, too: At this point in the series’ run, the participants know that unless you have a magical, drama-free ride to the altar (and you never know what you’re gonna get with the edit!), there is a fair amount of damage control necessary when the show is over. It seems to be making them hyperaware of the camera and encouraging them to work closely with producers to make sure their versions of events are the ones that stick. Johnie revising her story to Chris and Izzy is one example, but nothing really compares to Uche’s phone conversation with Aaliyah as far as having the last word.
DL: Wow, I hadn’t made that Survivor connection, and now it’s the only way I’ll be able to analyze this show going forward. You’re both so right; this season has been excessively focused on making alliances and spinning truths that you almost forget “the point” is to “find love.” There were ulterior editing motives at play, but even putting so much spotlight on the female friendships in the pods (particularly Lydia and Aaliyah’s) and then making so much of the competing blowups at this mini-reunion focus on who was a shittier “friend” in the pods is deeply telling of what this show now considers its main selling point. (This is also the most transparent LIB has been about selling its remaining singles to the audiences of other Netflix reality shows — shout-out to you, Blonde Pod Girlie. See you on Perfect Match.) It’s almost like they don’t want you to notice there are only two couples left standing to pretend to care about.
What did you both think of how JT and Taylor’s implosion played out? I thought the producers closed the loop on that too soon, but again, they got outgamed the same way they did with Johnie and Chris reconnecting at the airport post-pods. (WHERE WAS THAT REVEAL FOOTAGE???)
KVA: It’s one of the things that still makes this particular dating series so much more compelling than most. The shift between the highly regulated pod space back to something like “real life,” the way contestants can actually leave whenever they decide to, the occasional incursion of very grounded pressures like credit-card debit and long commutes and how many hours a day people work … All of it turns Love Is Blind into a show where sometimes, people just end up running into each other at the airport. And we all have to live with it!
The JP-Taylor breakdown, to me, played out exactly the way it should have. She was bored with that man, and I don’t think they could’ve spent much longer trying to create television of her dragging each vowel and consonant out of him like she’s hauling buckets of water up from a well. I did also think about the quiet, side-stage features of the season that now seem more obvious than they have in the past, things that appear onscreen more and can demonstrate that Love Is Blind wants to be a comfortable, understanding space. Taylor can decide to leave, even though they went to Mexico! Aaliyah can leave, too! Look at all this food everywhere! Snacks and love and freedom of movement!
DL: Okay, correction: They closed the loop too soon on Taylor. JP can go get lost in a Sephora and never return :)
NJ: I echo all of what you said about what makes this show so compelling, Kathryn. To paraphrase an observation you made about Succession not really being about who sits atop the Waystar throne, Love Is Blind is hardly about who gets to the altar and says “I do,” but more about the millions of tiny compromises made in getting there, the suspense of asking ourselves if this is thered flag that compels someone to tap out. The JP-and-Taylor breakup is just as interesting as, if not more interesting than, watching some couples make it all the way to the end. What the hell happened there? I felt so bad for Taylor, who was communicating her insecurities and asking for a morsel of reassurance from JP, and all he could do was sit by silently in American-flag-themed swimwear. Maybe Taylor could have lasted a few more weeks making tiny compromises, but his blaming his shyness on her wearing makeup during the reveal? Be fucking for real. And then having exes see each other in Mexico and the “real world” and mixing their pod baggage with real-life baggage? It’s good stuff. On the surface, sure, it’s about getting two people to march down the aisle and the suspense of what they’ll say. But to me, it’s more about creating an environment that reveals the humanity (and cruelty) of these people as they’re falling in love or breaking up.
KVA: Speaking of creating an environment, one of the very quiet but most fascinating things about Love Is Blind is the way it becomes a sideways portrait of what dating scenes are like in different cities. Season four was set in Seattle, and it had such a different overall tone — a little calmer, a little more adult, very focused on performances of authenticity and maturity. This season is set in Houston and … I don’t know, Houston seems like a lot to me.
DL: Houston bad! And now Drake’s a resident!?!?! I can’t tell if it’s the city or the producers. but the casting this season felt especially partial toward a specific type: Hot Hustlers. They checked all the boxes ranging from the seriously employed (Lydia and Milton) to the vaguely employed (Stacy) to the questionably employed (Miriam; sorry, girl) to the definitely not employed (Izzy; not sorry) to I don’t even know what Uche’s real deal is but I’m not buying a word that man says. It’s the most flagrantly dishonest bunch yet in a season that benefits from skewing mostly older; it’s no coincidence that the ones most in over their heads, Milton, Taylor, and Izzy, were under 30 during filming. There’s just something so compelling — so relatable? –– about watching adults self-sabotage while thinking they’re in full control. The best examples of that, to me, are Stacy and Lydia, who seem to speed through every red flag gleefully blindfolded. Izzy masking his financial troubles? Milton lacking home training? And don’t get me started on Uche’s inability to recognize himself as a walking stop sign.
NJ: A city’s dating scene is always vaguely highlighted, but this is the first time we’ve had two people with prior dating history on the show … and they are main characters! I know it goes against everything the Experiment stands for, but I thank the Netflix Mess gods it happened because it made for the most exciting, combustible moments in the show’s history. If we look at the ensuing chaos, there’s a case to be made for including more exes. Lydia spilling all the tea on Uche to Aaliyah? Inspiring. Uche proposing to an empty pod? Art! Uche showing up to the pod squad’s night out with an agenda of exposing Lydia as the saboteur of his Love Is Blind experience? Wretched-main-character energy! And I’m sorry, but his claims that Lydia is a “stalker” had me screaming at my television. The text messages of screenshots of her viewing Instagram Stories do not hold up in court.
DL: The audacity of Uche to think Milton is even remotely invested in what happens to him, and now this mini-reunion’s gotta drag into a two-parter so Uche can have an “I come to you as a man” moment with Milton. As if Uche is even remotely invested in what happens to Milton, to Milton and Lydia, and especially to Lydia, whose voice he could not even recognize! Give me strength. Give me tequila.
KVA: In the name of the pods and the opaque wine glasses and the disembodied producer voice, amen.
The Love Is Blind Experiment Finally Broke
