Is getting married after five weeks a good idea? This seems to be the question on Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s minds, the hosts of Netflix’s original show Love is Blind.
The three-week, ten episode show calls itself “an experiment” on whether you can find true love without ever seeing the person you’re dating. While the Lachey couple claims this experiment has never been done before, the show is actually produced by Kinetic Content, which also produces Married at First Sight on Lifetime.
If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t seen the advertisement for the show, here’s the premise. For ten days, 12 men and women effectively speed-date without ever seeing each other. At the end of those ten days, they choose who to propose to, then finally get to see each other in a dramatic hallway reveal. After going on their week-long pre-wedding honeymoon in Mexico they head back to their hometown and move into a show-provided apartment. After three weeks, the couples get legally — contractually binded — married to each other.
This show is successful because each step towards marriage allows for more and more drama. Even the completely blind speed-dating has opened itself to drama, with one guy seriously dating three girls at once and telling each of them they were the “only one”. And with a literal wall built between the two of you, who’s to say he’s lying?
Of course, the couples seeing each other for the first time lends itself to massive drama. During these long, dramatic, hallway reveals, the couples quickly find out who’s hotter than who, and this lends itself to some pretty dramatic cutaways. There’s no chance to linger on looks though, as they quickly get sent off to Mexico. Unbeknownst to the couples, all the contestants are in the same hotel, creating even more drama since they were all literally dating each other last week. After just one day, one couple breaks off their engagement — seriously, one day together.
After heading home, the couples see each other’s homes and lifestyles, meet friends and families, and move into a show-provided apartment. This period exposes huge secrets like “I don’t technically have a house right now” and “I’m 20 thousand dollars in debt.” But, at this point, the wedding is three weeks away — who would really pull out?
Oddly enough, the wedding days feel almost optional, one contestant saying she “didn’t know” whether she’d say yes or no at the altar. The wedding day seems like one of the first time contestants realize, “Oh, marriage is kind of a big deal!”
Watchers have been biting their nails as they wait for the full wedding episode to see which couples will power through, providing well-deserved data to this very weird show. With any luck, the experiment will have failed its attempt to ruin ten people’s lives through a five-week marriage.
While I’m not sure whether love is blind, I can clearly see this show is trash.