Even in these depressing times, Love Is Blind is a very depressing TV show | Reality TV

IIn this corrupt year, 2026, there is no shortage of things to frustrate us: domestic terrorism by federal agents, war, the dominance of artificial intelligence, and Super Bowl sports betting ads. The Epstein Files. FIFA Peace Prize. Six more weeks of winter. The need for escape, catharsis, or both is more urgent than ever. However, what frustrated me most, in the low-stakes “I can actually wrap my head around this” way, was the pinnacle of escapist entertainment: the new season of Netflix’s Love Is Blind, set in Ohio.

To be clear, love is blind never was good A show, even by reality TV standards. The first season of the series, in which generally attractive young singles form romantic bonds in “pods” and then get engaged without anyone seeing them, had the good fortune to premiere just before the pandemic gave “pods” a new, terribly relatable parity; However, it has been described as “toxic”, “disgusting” and of course “completely addictive”. At its best, the show can critique our judgments and express uncomfortable emotions, bringing up issues of race, politics, weight, attractiveness, and age in addition to the usual alcohol-assisted drama, idealized romance, and the classic reality TV victim and villain. At worst, it’s boring. Overall, it’s baffling and exhilarating — modern dating sure sucks, but getting married in six weeks? This is non-linkable content, perfect for second screen viewing. But the Ohio version, and I say this with much love and ardent loyalty to my home state, has reached new lows, both on the production level and on the scene itself.

For starters, there’s the fact that producers chose to make the season, which is usually centered around a particular city — which is best for couples to see each other — span the entirety of Ohio, the seventh-most populous state in the country that takes at least three hours to drive through in any direction; This leads to great conversations like “Are you moving to Cincinnati or Columbus?” This, to this Cincinnatian, seems truly unprecedented in the realm of reality television, though it couldn’t be as interesting for everyone else. The show’s most promising couple, a professor named Vic and a speech pathologist named Christine, don’t accompany the lucky couples from the pods to their initial honeymoon in Mexico; For reasons that remain unexplained, they went to Malibu and photographed themselves after the sauna. (The show’s producers officially chalked this up to budget — they only had money to send six couples to Cabo, not seven — though they did manage to afford a lot of Top 40 hits, so…) Much of the footage in Cabo, Ohio, was filmed, in fact, by the couples themselves on their phones, with unexpected results. Some pivotal conversations are overtly enriched with unexplained off-screen events, and edited so sporadically that I had to rewind them to track trains of (bad) logic.

These are just tangible things. But there’s something rotten at the core of this season — or at least more explicitly rotten than usual: a clear regression in gender roles that somehow outweighs the entertainment value of staring at people participating in a weird dating experiment. I saw it on Ashley’s face when her fiancé Alex (the worst) suddenly pressured her to quit her job, leave her life in Cleveland, and move wherever he wanted to go (Arizona or Florida) for the purpose of “being a nomad.” When Brittany realizes that her partner Devonta won’t compliment her because he feels pressured by her, in fact he won’t reach out to her at all. When Bree saw that her fiancé, Connor, was living in a glorious frat house (at least he had one). Especially when Jess, the actual doctor, watches her fiancé, Chris, who for two weeks seemed like a friendly, communicative partner, does a 180 and actually tells her he’s not attracted to her because she doesn’t work out every day or do Pilates. (Jess luckily exits.)

Chris then goes on to loudly tell several of Jess’s team members that having sex with her was the “worst” he’s ever had while she was in the room. Trying to seduce a different woman by calling her man a beta male will not take her to the Four Seasons; Reference Andrew Tate in a way that suggests he is familiar with the manosphere; Otherwise, prove to be, as Vulture correctly said, the biggest Love Is Blind douche ever. It is the most egregious and clear example in a season that thrives on curdled traditional values ​​and imbalanced expectations, and it constitutes the best case I have seen for hetero-pessimism in the United States. Almost no one says macro factors out loud, of course. It was almost a relief when Ashley’s father, who does all the talking for his wife and treats his daughter like a child (I can’t hear the phrase “breadwinner and protector” again), asked Alex if he voted for Trump (he didn’t, but don’t worry, he maintains he’s a conservative!) — at least someone is saying the quiet part out loud.

It’s not as if politics don’t exist; Many Love is Blind observers have since combed the social media histories of participants to find right-wing followers or tribute posts to Charlie Kirk, on behalf of both men and women. (In the words of comedian and Ohio native Patti Harrison: “They say you can take the girl out of Ohio, but you can’t take Ohio out of the girl”…well, bitch, I’m in the Labor Party pushing Ohio out of me after watching this Christian nationalist show!!!!!!!!!!!)) I can imagine the conversations happening off-camera. But the show’s notable avoidance of that, and its logical desire to work to keep what previous seasons have discussed publicly offscreen, feels increasingly strange and unnatural as the season goes on. Each episode felt like looking through a looking glass at America The imagined “reality,” where politics isn’t discussed and isn’t tied to marriage but plays a big role, an airless place that I can’t even recognize as Ohio could be anywhere in this country;