I genuinely enjoyed the first season of Love is Blind on Netflix. If you haven’t heard of it, the show is hosted by a couple: Nick and Vanessa Lachey, where they seek out the answer to the question – is love really blind?
There are 15 men and 15 women on the show, and for ten days, they will only be able to communicate with each other in pods – where they are only able to talk to each other. Towards the end of the ten days, the individuals have the opportunity to extend a marriage proposal. If the proposal is accepted, they move on to the next phase: seeing each other for the first time.
This show season had some interesting characters. Some honorable mentions, in my opinion, are Abhishek ‘Shake’ Chatterjee, Jarrette Jones, and Mallory Zapata, all for various reasons. Now I am not saying that season one of the show was drama-free and perfect; obviously, there were some questionable circumstances. But season two was just something else; I can genuinely say there were no couples that I was rooting for; all of them seemed terrible for each other.
For the next part, I am going to explain why I disliked almost every pairing this season, so – spoiler alert!I am going to start with Shake and Deepti. Shake was definitely an exciting and prominent character on this show, not for good reasons. He came off as extremely rude and presented a sense of internalized racism. He kept putting Deepti down, telling the rest of the contestants that he was not physically attracted to her, comparing her to his aunt. He also kept stating that he has only dated white blonde women in the past, which rubbed me the wrong way. Being a South Indian woman myself, I understand what it is like not to fit “the beauty standard” sometimes. It was disheartening to see a South Indian man sharing those thoughts on a popular television show. Although I would like to add that both Shake and Deepti’s parents had appropriate reactions, I feel like that type of support is not shown in western media. An article discusses the parents’ willingness to understand, especially Shake’s mom, who did not side with her son but with Deepti. Also, during the reunion episode it was very hard to watch Shake’s constant inappropriate replies to which other castmates were also seeming uncomfortable with.
Jarrette Jones and Mallory Zapata were not a couple, but maybe they should’ve been? Before Jarrette proposed to another woman named Iyanna McNeely, he proposed to Mallory. She rejected the proposal for some reason, and they both cried. Mallory then accepted this other proposal from Salvador Perez, but it seemed like she regretted that decision as the show progressed.
Later, during the engaged couples retreat trip, Mallory and Jarrette saw each other for the first time and had a pretty inappropriate flirty conversation that I feel was not addressed enough. They both had the power to shut that conversation down and respect their partners but did not.
All of the other couples were boring, with their separate issues that needed to be addressed. But overall, I would definitely recommend watching season 2 of Love Is Blind – it is certainly entertaining!