Love Has 20/20 Vision

It's not "Love Is Blind." It's "Love Has Zero Context."

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This season of Love Is Blind might be the best season of a dating reality show that I have ever seen. And when I say “best,” I mean “this seems really bad for everybody involved, but it’s wildly entertaining.” 

Love Is Blind is a diabolical show about finding love. The premise is so ridiculous that it crosses over into brilliance when it comes to creating drama. I’m sure you know how LIB works by now. But I still think it’s important to spell it out in order to remember how absolutely banana-land-nutso the premise of this television program is. 

So here we go:

First, Netflix and a production company called Kinetic Content choose a city. This year, it’s Charlotte (and, yes, it throws me for a loop every time someone on the show says my name). Then, producers find a bunch of single people in that city. Some contestants apply to be on the show by filling out this somewhat bonkers 64-question long casting form, and others are contacted cold by producers through social media. 

Throughout the casting process, Kinetic stresses that it is looking for people who are there to find love rather than be on TV. Unless you hook someone up to a polygraph test and question them using illegal CIA tactics, I don’t know how you’re ever going to get an honest answer on that one. The production company also claims to conduct psychological evaluations on the people it casts, but past contestants have alleged that they self-reported suicidal tendencies and were still chosen. We are working with — and I cannot stress this enough — some dark shit here. 

Yikes!

Once it has narrowed down thousands of applicants to thirty, Kinetic flies the Chosen Ones out to Los Angeles. The contestants sleep in hotels but are brought to a warehouse to date and be on camera for a bajillion hours a day. The warehouse contains “pods,” which are tiny little living rooms connected to other tiny little living rooms by blue, undulating walls. Men go on one side, women on the other, and they talk to each other through said wall (for up to ten days) until they decide they’ve fallen in love and are ready to get married. Once they are engaged (again, through a wall), they are allowed to see each other. 

Then they go to Mexico, or the Dominican Republic, or some other place that is warm and presents opportunities to do activities. Like ATVing, swimming, boating, or drinking until they scream at each other. This is a great way for our newly engaged couples to practice conflict resolution. Contestants learn important information about the people they’ve agreed to spend the rest of their lives with, such as whether or not they repulse each other.