Bad Sport Offseason: Love is Blind Episodes 1-6 Recap
Who said that reality TV isn't a sport?
I wasn’t planning on releasing anything for at least a few weeks when the Draft season was in full swing and there would be more football-related content to actually dig into. However, last weekend I started Season 8 of Netflix’s Love is Blind, a show I have watched every season of and will watch every season of until that asteroid hits Earth, and thought, “hey, this is basically the same as a sport.” It’s not, technically, but this is my newsletter and I’ll do what I want.
This was a big drop of six episodes, and I decided sort of late that I wanted to do these recaps, so forgive me for sending this a week late, after episodes 7-9 dropped. I’ll get that recap done by mid-week so we can be back on track. If you like this and want to see more of this, let me know! I’m figuring out what offseason programming should look like and feedback is always welcome and appreciated. If you want to stay up do date on all of our Pod Friends, don’t forget to subscribe. Love you!
Love is Blind Episodes 1-6: Midwest Pod-gatory
(Netflix)
I’ve long said that Netflix’s reality slate has been slowly trending toward a televised Stanford Prison Experiment, and while Love is Blind is certainly less explicitly tortuous than some others (The Ultimatum: Queer Love, anyone?), it was the first real landmark hit for the company. That’s for good reason. The premise—have men and women round-robin style date one another through a wall where they won’t be able to see each other unless they get engaged based purely on their emotional connection—is fundamentally insane enough to spark anyone’s curiosity. However, the show has had sustained success because it has produced a surprising amount of real-life, seemingly happy married couples.
In its seven seasons on air, there are ten couples still together, and a few with children or babies on the way. The Bachelor at this point could just be renamed to America’s Next Top Hot Person with 200k Instagram Followers, and while in more recent seasons of Love is Blind there have proven to be a handful of fame-seekers, there still does appear to be plenty of singles on there hoping to find a lasting relationship.
The reason for the relationship track record on this show probably has less to do with the overall premise and more to do with the logistical setup of the show. Each season, Netflix casts out of only one city or area, meaning that no one would have to uproot their entire lives to stay in the relationship they found on the show, unlike nearly every other reality dating competition program. There’s also the basic fact that despite the billing, Netflix is generally only casting pretty attractive people, not Bachelor Nation hot, but someone who probably doesn’t struggle to find people who are interested in them. The show would be far more compelling if they actually cast people who weren’t conventionally attractive, but Netflix understands that has the potential to make for a very depressing watch.
This doesn’t mean that all of the couples are attracted to each other at the reveal, which is what makes it interesting. Still, two good-looking singles from the same city who have been given 20+ hours to talk to one another and who both ostensibly want to settle down? Not a horrible formula for getting a few “I do’s.”
This season, we are based out of Minneapolis, and if you were only familiar with the city from the show you would think it was composed almost entirely of white people who are or were at some point Catholic, who love Christmastime, their families, and don’t read. The lack of diversity is something that stands out immediately in this season, and the show suffers for it. A diverse cast makes any reality show more interesting, but particularly so for this one. Some of what has made Love is Blind compelling in the past is that it shows pretty frank conversations about race in the context of finding romantic partnerships, which you rarely see in other reality dating shows.
Another problem with the hegemony of this cast is that it’s literally impossible to tell half of these people apart, especially the men. Not only do they all have basically the same face, coloring, and, haircut, they also just all seem pretty … similar? As I got deeper into this six-episode drop that had us completely locked in the pods I began to feel the kind of disorientation that casinos intentionally give people to make them lose track of time. I could’ve spent six hours in the pods or six minutes. I may still be in there. I may have been born there. Maybe I lived and died in the pods and now I’m in the afterlife. Regardless, let’s jump into the main characters and couples from this season:
Devin, Brittany, and Virginia
(Left to Right: Devin, Virginia, and Brittany. Photo courtesy of Netflix)
These three are the only people of color featured in the entire season, and because their storylines were all intertwined, we ultimately learned very little about any of them. Brittany and Virginia are both dating Devin, who at least according to the edit, seems to be choosing between the two of them.
Devin is a basketball coach and works for a youth sports company, and all we really know about him at first is that Ball is Life. Funnily enough, both of the women he’s shown pursuing have a connection to the game. Virginia, a 33-year-old healthcare recruiter was formerly an NBA dancer, and Brittany, a 34-year-old partnership executive used to play and coach Division I hoops herself.
It’s hard for me to know if this was actually what was represented on the show or if I, too, was taken by Brittany’s infectious energy, but it seemed at first that Devin was leaning toward her. The two looked like they had a lot of fun together, and it's suggested early on that Virginia isn’t getting as vulnerable as Devin would like. There isn’t much of a follow-up to this, except that Devin repeats to Virginia it feels like she’s not telling him something, and the only answer she can give is that she’s had limited examples of lasting relationships in her life besides her grandparents, which leaves her more guarded.
Because of this, it appears that Devin first opens up to Brittany about his formative trauma, as one is to do on this show. He shares that he suffered an injury while playing basketball that doctors couldn’t figure out a solution to, so he started abusing over-the-counter medication to the point that he was taking up to 20 ibuprofen a day. I don’t mean to make light of this experience, which sounded genuinely horrible, but it’s almost impressive that he didn’t get addicted to opiates during this. Take that, Sacklers! Anyway, Devin tearfully shares how this experience brought him closer to God, and Brittany responds encouragingly and appropriately.
Then, it’s time for Brittany to share her Big Thing, which is that she’s had romantic and sexual relationships with both men and women in the past. In all fairness, I don’t know how Brittany feels about her sexuality, but from what we saw and the entire energy of this reveal, it seems like she’s still working through a lot of shame about it. She says that her last “situation” was a woman who wanted to have a serious relationship with her, but that she ended things because she’s never imagined herself having a long-term partnership with a woman.
This made me feel not only for her ex, who lived the real-life nightmare many queer women have about not ever being able to stack up to a man romantically but also for Brittany herself. Not to read too far into this, but I got the sense that her feeling about not wanting to be with a woman long-term probably has less to do with her actual sexuality and more to do with the fact that she probably never felt like an option culturally. I remembered something she said early on about her basketball career, and how her mom didn’t want her to play because women who played basketball “dressed like boys,” and she clearly comes from a community that has strong religious ties.
Devin, who up until this point had been totally unobjectionable to me, responds with unfortunate textbook biphobia, asking Brittany if she would still want to date women if they were together. She clarifies that she’s not polyamorous, but Devin seems to struggle with this revelation. Brittany thanks him for his transparency but admits she would’ve liked a more welcoming response. The next time we see the two of them together, she’s in the dykiest outfit I’ve ever seen someone wear on this show and tells Devin that she needs to be with someone more open-minded and ends things. I was sad to learn that we wouldn’t get more Brittany, but happy she broke up with him because of this ultimately very disqualifying response to her disclosure. The two end on good terms, and Brittany says that she thinks Virginia is great, and that hopefully this is the start of a beautiful friendship. If I were a producer on the show, I’d sneak a copy of Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality” in her bag on the way out.
Devin ends up proposing to Virginia, whose lack of emotional openness I guess doesn’t really matter anymore, and at the reveal seems to go well. Devin is clearly taken with Virginia, who is incredibly beautiful, and even though Virginia seems a bit nervous and reserved, I got the sense she was happy, too. I try not to prognosticate too much at this stage, where everyone appears to be destined for the altar as long as the reveal isn’t too awkward, but I have a good feeling about where these two are headed–I just wish we saw a little more of them in the lead-up.
Joey and Monica
(Netflix)
Every season of Love is Blind, there’s a match that gets the “golden couple” edit. This pair tends to lock into one another early and with little drama. We know now that this is mostly an editing choice, many of these people do date around, but it signals to the viewers that this is a couple we should be rooting for.
Joey and Monica seem to be getting this edit this season, despite the fact that we learn nearly nothing about them over the course of this entire six-episode drop. Joey is a physician associate (another term for a physician’s assistant, which I didn’t know and was very confused about) with a thick midwestern accent and matching good-naturedness. As almost always is the case with any contestant on a reality dating show, family is everything to Joey, who turned down multiple offers to play football in college so he could stay close to his family and help them out. He has sisters that he is close with and also shares that he lost a sister at 16 from what sounds like complications due to her cerebral palsy. Joey has the energy of a guy who clearly can maintain normal, functioning, and valuable social relationships with women he isn’t dating, which is really all we can ask for.
The pair bond over the fact that they both used to watch The Sound of Music all the time as children, which is something I think maybe every single American family did, but I’m glad they could connect over that. Monica talks about her Chilean father and tries to show Joey his favorite dance move he does while cooking and listening to Latin music, but they can’t see each other, so it’s all a good laugh.
For as little as I felt I got from this couple through their dates and proposal, I loved their reveal. Neither of them could stop laughing the entire time out of what felt more like excitement than awkwardness, and there was an immediate ease between them that’s unusual even for the couples that end up working out on this show. They both seem into each other, and Monica appears unbothered by Joey’s commitment to flashy Hawaiian shirts. Given their edit, I feel pretty confident that these two will end this season with the knot tied.
Ben and Sara
(Netflix)
We aren’t introduced to Ben and Sara as central figures in the show until the second episode of this drop, and because of this, it took me a few minutes into our first date to realize that these were actually new people and not just another identical white couple. One way to distinguish them was that they are very good-looking, so much so that I wonder if either of them (*cough* Ben) had tried to get cast on another Netflix show but ended up on Love is Blind, which has happened before.
Regardless, by the time we get into their story, it seems like they’ve been locked on each other for a bit. Where we’ve gotten only vibes and bonding over monoculture from most of the other couples, every time we see these two, they’re getting into the weeds about something serious. After a conversation about their evolving religious experiences and ideas, Sara asks Ben if he’d be comfortable around her sister Lisa, who is her best friend, and who is also gay. Ben seems caught completely off guard by this question but reassures her that he’d be fine with it given that he has friends who are “that way” and knows people “in that community,” language that indicates to me that he doesn’t actually have any relationships in his life with any queer people at all. The next time they see each other, he begins the pod date by bringing this up again to let her know that he really really is okay with his girlfriend having a gay sister in the year 2024, but still manages not to use the word “gay” or even “LGBTQ” in doing so. Sarah seems to take him at his word, which, sure.
The real issue between these two comes up when Sarah presses Ben about his politics. She says that activism and political engagement are a really big part of her life. Like many others, she started engaging with politics after the killing of George Floyd, which of course happened in Minneapolis. When she asks Ben what his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement are, he confesses that he just “tried to stay out of it,” and also didn’t vote in the 2020 election because he didn’t know enough and didn’t really feel like it affected him. Sarah, rightfully, is concerned by this and says as much to him.
We get some footage of her in the women’s quarters talking to Virginia about it, and Virginia asks Sarah if she feels like Ben could be pushed on this, and Sarah believes that he can. Obviously we only saw a second of this conversation, so I don’t want to draw too many conclusions about it, but I’ll note that it was a little odd to see one of the only three Black people in this entire season reassuring a white woman that it’s actually okay for her to get engaged to a guy who didn’t care about the murder of George Floyd as long as his heart is in the right place. I don’t blame Virginia for this, who may actually feel this way or who maybe just didn’t want to get into this with Sarah, but it felt like an intentional choice by production to have her co-sign it.
When they get back into the pods, Ben tells Sarah that he’s “motivated” to learn more. If I were Sarah, I would probably ask him if a Black man getting murdered in broad daylight in your hometown and setting off a monthslong nationwide racial reckoning wasn’t motivating for you what would be, but alas, I am not Sarah. This seems to be a good enough answer for her, and they continue on to engagement. When they meet, it’s all giddiness because they are both really hot.
I really liked Sarah at first and thought that this storyline was a really interesting demonstration of the current political moment we’re in. There has been a lot of reporting recently about how growing political divides between genders have made dating harder for people, given how many men have shifted rightward in the last few years. I was excited to see Sarah show that this kind of attitude toward the literal rights and lives of others is disqualifying, but she capitulates almost immediately. As a fellow white woman, Sarah, I urge you: stop embarrassing us!! We now rest our hope on gay sister Lisa, who will hopefully have the clarity and wrath about a hot guy’s behavior only a lesbian has true access to emotionally.
Dave, Lauren, Molly
(Left to right: Lauren, Dave, and Molly. Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Our next love polygon centers around Dave, who jumps out the gate sharing that his career in medical cosmetics has him around so many women who have a lot of work done and he’s looking for something more real. It’s never good for your first impression to be “boyfriend at the beginning of a Hallmark movie whose job indicates that he is the villain,” but naturally, he finds himself in the place of choosing between two women.
At first, it seems like Molly, an executive bank assistant and dancer with questionable bangs I’m still deciding how I feel about a week later, has a slight edge. Things between these two are light, fun, and very surface-level. They have a conversation about politics where they both kind of identify with being libertarian in the sense that they don’t actually understand how anything works, and agree that it’s stupid to have politics on a dating profile. Dave’s only moment that in any way warmed me up to him was when Molly asked if he’d be okay if his child told him they were “LGBTQ+.” Dave also seems to have never once thought about a gay person in his life, but he says that he would just be happy that his child felt comfortable sharing that with him. It’s not that hard!
Dave is also dating Lauren, a former teacher who now sells educational curricula. These two seem to start off a bit more slowly, and Dave provides us with what thus far has been the quote of the season: “I am good at reading but not good at comprehension.” If I were running the reunion, I would spend the entire time questioning Dave on what he thinks reading actually is. Dave decides to Madonna-Whore Complex his two options by assuming that Lauren, a former teacher, is unsexy and stern, whereas Molly, a current dancer, is hot and cool. In typical Love is Blind fashion, though, Dave knows in his heart that Molly is the kind of girl he’d date “in the real world” and that hasn’t worked out, and feels he has a strong emotional connection with Lauren. He gives them both a lot of validation, saying that he’s never felt the way he has with anyone about Lauren, but also asks Molly for her ring size.
Molly feels so confident about her relationship with Dave that she makes a crucial error in sharing in the women’s quarters that she thinks Dave is it. I’m not sure if this was a production decision or a cast decision, but I noticed that both the men and the women in this season are very tight-lipped about their prospects with one another. This is probably a good thing for the actual relationships but certainly contributed to how little drama there was in the pod stage. Of course, Molly inevitably ends up telling Lauren that Dave told her all of this affirming stuff not knowing that he’d been doing the same to Lauren.
Dave continues dating both of them, and at one point Molly is sure that Lauren is going on a date where Dave is going to break up with her, but Lauren returns hours later giggly. After hearing that things were ramping up with Molly, Lauren basically told Dave to move it or lose it with her, and as it often does on this show, applying pressure worked. He ends things with Molly, and afterward, Molly approaches Lauren in the women’s quarters and gives her a very earnest apology for accidentally spilling the beans that they were dating the same guy. It’s a sweet moment, and Lauren even confronts Dave in defense of Molly, not letting him brush away this as “girl drama,” the words he uses to describe an understandable conflict between adult women. Still, they get engaged!
At the reveal, things seem to go well, but I think production is signaling to us that there may be some hiccups with this couple. A big thing I’m taking note of is Dave’s concern about what his sister is going to think, who I guess knew he was going on the show and was incredibly skeptical of it. A lot of people have been saying how weird it is that Dave is so hung up on his sister’s opinion, but it makes sense to me. He mentioned that his mom had passed away, and Dave feels like the kind of guy who needs a woman to be his entire moral North Star. Hoping for the best here but absolutely expecting the worst.
Alex, Madison, Meg and Mason
(Left to right: Alex, Madison, Meg and Mason. Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Five total couples get engaged this season but we spend what feels like over half of our pod time dealing with this complicated love square that ends, spoiler alert, with no one getting engaged. To keep things simple: Madison, a supposed professional artist who sounds like a voice actor who plays an incredibly hot video game character, is dating both skater-boy-turned-cinematographer Mason and Alex, a very normal-looking man whose formative trauma is that he used to be ugly. Mason is also dating Meg, whose personality can be summed up as an “I’m so random” girl whose randomness may have brought her down an alt-right pipeline.
We start with Madison and Alex, who hit it off quickly and bond over having complicated childhoods. Where Alex's struggles in school (both academically and aesthetically) got him kicked out of his house, Madison shares that her mom dealt with substance abuse issues that parentified Madison really quickly. Alarm bells about this past seem to be going off for Alex, who clearly grows concerned when Madison shares she has an avoidant attachment style and a history of dissociation. I left the pods feeling lukewarm on Madison overall, but she is someone who has been to a lot of therapy and can communicate her emotional needs very clearly, and Alex seems to know he’ll be unable to meet them.
Madison and Mason have a much lighter relationship than Madison and Alex. They bond over both being “creatives,” and also are very horny for each other. There’s a flirtiness there that Alex and Madison don’t share, but there’s also very little substance.
Mason’s relationship with Meg seems, I guess, a bit deeper. Mason is thrilled to find out that Meg has seen the movie Her, the quite well-known film where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI robot, which he keeps comparing to this experience in a way that makes me wonder if he too can read but not comprehend. They also share a favorite movie in Interstellar, which they take as a cosmic coincidence instead of a very predictable favorite movie for a boring person who thinks they are interesting (this isn’t a knock on Interstellar, which I like). Meg is so quirky and fun that she once heard an ancient alien historian on the Joe Rogan Podcast and is now really into that kind of thing, which Mason is too. Moving forward in our current political climate I think that Love is Blind should ask any contestant if they think the Jews are shapeshifting amphibians living in the core of the Earth. Just to make sure.
Mason seems caught between Meg, a girl he would probably have a lot to connect with in real life over, and Madison who it seems like he suspects (correctly, I may add), is incredibly hot. Madison, meanwhile, realizes that Alex pulling back a little bit from the relationship which in turn solidifies her feelings for him. Just when it seems like her decision is made, Mason tells Madison that he’s committing to her, which was the affirmation it sounded like she needed from him. This revelation solidifies for Madison that she isn’t actually that interested in Mason, and the next time she sees Alex, they decide they’ll be exclusive with one another.
When Madison tells Mason this, he quickly takes back the commitment he made to Madison, saying that he was continuing to date Meg anyway, which understandably annoys Madison. Madison shares this saga with Meg in the women’s quarters, in theory as a warning to her, but of course, knowing this now, Meg feels like she won’t ever be able to feel more than second best. She makes the right move by breaking up with Mason, telling him that it’s not his fault, but it would be impossible to feel like she was really chosen by him. I don’t love Meg, but I appreciated this move—this dynamic comes up all of the time on this show, and it never ends well.
Meanwhile, Madison and Alex are on a date that should be a celebration of their commitment to one another, but things turn sour quickly after Madison complains about Mason’s flip-flopping to Alex. Alex seems a little annoyed for stirring up gossip here, even though he was actively comforting Mason in the pods knowing full well that he was the reason that Madison and in turn, Meg, ended things. Alex immediately jumps to Mason’s defense, though, saying that if she had pressed him for commitment while still actively dating two people, he would’ve struggled to know what to do here as well. He has a point, and I ultimately found Madison kind of manipulative, but it was annoying to see him jump to defend his man-friend who handled this whole thing quite poorly. Madison is upset by this and finds that this distills a lot of the issues with how they communicate, and they decide to end things.
The previews for the next batch of episodes make it look like we’ll get some updates on these people, and we better, because oh my goodness that was a lot of time for a whole lot of nothing. I understand that the producers needed to inject some drama in what was otherwise a relatively drama-free pod experience, but it definitely dampens the mood knowing that we won’t see much more of the people we got to know the most about.
Taylor and Daniel
(Netflix)
Our final couple to seal the deal are Daniel and Taylor, who are both uninteresting but nice enough to make me genuinely wonder what exactly their struggle in finding a partner could’ve been. Daniel’s cross to bear is his height, describing himself as a “short king” at five foot eight, which I’d like to mention is not that short and certainly taller than most women. He’s annoyed that women seem to only care about height, and wants to find the mother of his children.
He connects with G.I. Nurse Taylor, who definitely gives Nurse and has a lower lip tattoo that says “TACO BELL.” They both seem plenty nice, and bond over a shared love of Christmas. Daniel has a tradition he’s been doing for a few years now where he’s made an elaborate solo Christmas card that he sends out to family and friends, and his dream is to have a partner and family to do that with. Sweet, but does take away the humor of the whole thing, which is an elaborate Christmas card with only you in it. Regardless, Taylor loves this idea, and they find out they even have the same Christmas stocking, which turns out to be a simple red stocking with a white letter for their initial. It must be meant to be!
The two get engaged and while Daniel seems thrilled at the reveal, Taylor is clearly offput. She mentions that he is a little shorter than her normal type, though that doesn’t appear to be the issue. The cameras cut to the next day in the “women’s hotel,” and it’s worth noting that this entire time I assumed that they slept in the living quarters and we just never saw the bedrooms, which in retrospect is very stupid. Taylor is tearful and confesses that when she saw Daniel she felt like she had seen him before. She remembered a very specific Instagram image of a guy who followed her and then randomly unfollowed her a few months ago (this would’ve been during the casting process), who had an elaborately staged solo Christmas image. This concerns her because her bio says “so much about her,” and that he would’ve known it was her if he had followed her, which ruins the point of the experiment. The bio in question, by the way, is “Family. Faith. Registered Nurse. And Taco Bell. Lots of Taco Bell.”
Production brings Daniel to the lobby so Taylor can confront him, and he immediately denies having done this or at least does not remember having done it. He stays very calm and validating through this, and tells her if this makes her uncomfortable they do not have to leave for the upcoming trip together. We leave on a cliffhanger about where these two will end up going.
After some time on this, my guess is that Daniel may have followed her at some point, because that would be such an odd memory for her to have if it wasn’t him, but I don’t think that he specifically hunted her down or knew exactly what she would look like at the reveal. It is also possible that this was just another man completely and that she was spiraling at the fact that she just got engaged to a stranger because apparently being really into Christmas is all the rage in Minneapolis.
Regardless, we’re left with a cliffhanger as we get ready to depart to Honduras, where I imagine that all of these rosy relationships will continue to stay absolutely conflict-free.
Drop 1 Power Rankings:
Joey and Monica: Based on their edit and giddy reveal, these two seem like our Golden Couple. I don’t know enough about either of them to guess what issues may arise, so I’ll stay optimistic.
Virginia and Devin: Virginia is 33 years old, and says in the pods that she doesn’t need any of this—she has a good job, good friends, a good life, and I also imagine that she is able to find men who are into her with relative ease. I think that if she’s into Devin, this will work out fine, and they clearly have a nice way with each other already.
Daniel and Taylor: I guess I’m cheating a bit by putting them in here, but it’s obvious they continue their relationship going to Honduras from the preview. Assuming that they get over this hump, there isn’t really much I anticipate going wrong with these two unless there is just a lack of attraction there.
Ben and Sara: Even though things seemed beyond hunky-dory at the reveal, I have to guess that this issue around political values is going to rear its head given how that was so much of what we saw of them in the pods. I’m also just rooting for their downfall, I guess.
Lauren and Dave: There’s way too much groundwork for conflict being placed here for me to guess that there will be a happy ending. The slightly awkward reveal, Dave’s continued concerns about how his family might react…I just feel like we’re headed in the wrong direction with these two.
Thanks for reading! Go be a Bad Sport this week.