Dating shows are often written off as frivolous or trashy TV, but Netflix’s Love is Blind is a rare gem among its raunchy cousins. The premise of Love is Blind takes the blind date game show idea a step further, asking the couples to possibly get married within six weeks of meeting each other through a wall. The men and women in the show are separated into two different living quarters and go on “dates” with one another in a cubicle-like room with a wall in between them; these are called the pods. The pods inherently take sex, the main attraction in nearly every other dating show, out of the equation entirely. This makes the perfect reality show for the hopeless romantic in all of us.
Now on its fifth season, the show has proven that actors don’t need to be scripted to create the drama people crave in a reality TV show. The show has become increasingly more dramatic and drama-oriented from season to season, which has only made the show more interesting. The real drama lies within the people, who don’t need producers to create it artificially. From dramatic excess to wandering eyes, Love is Blind shines a light on the stressors of dating in the sped-up “experiment.” The cast is always filled with the typical archetypes. The mean girls, girls next door, players, and good guys often dominate the episodes in the pods with these self-assigned character arcs. Once they leave the pods, the drama kicks into high gear as the new question of looks comes into play. In the most recent seasons, 4 and 5, there has been an added element of people meeting up and dating outside the pods who didn’t get engaged on the show. Allowing this new type of relationship into the show, viewers become increasingly invested in the outcomes of each couple. As they watch their favorite couples fight and make up, the viewer experiences the same level of intense emotion that sex-based dating shows often illicit.
Highlighting the very real conversations couples have leading up to marriage and the tensions that arise because of them, producers capture the audience with the relatability of the contestants. By creating a more relatable and real show, the cast is taken more seriously than the contestants on other dating shows, which makes the drama of these conversations infinitely more enticing than the fabricated situations of other shows. The couples are also allowed much more autonomy in their relationships. There is no monetary prize at the end of the show, nor the threat of being kicked off if they cannot find a match, only the possible marriage they choose to enter into at the end of the six weeks. Without these additional distractions, the cast’s entire focus is their relationships, and often friendships, in the show.
By taking the show’s role as an experiment very seriously, the producers have created a hilarious, drama-filled dating show. By keeping their personal incentive out of the production, the purely human experiences and reactions from the cast create their own relatable drama. Love is Blind is a criminally underrated dating show that truly has something for everyone. There’s romance for the hopeless romantics, love triangles for the drama lovers, and so much more.