WARNING: Contains heavy spoilers for Love Is Blind Season 4 and light spoilers for Season 3. 

Read at your own discretion.

   As a gay man, I found Love Is Blind to be remarkably straight. And I simply can’t get enough of it. Heterosexual tomfoolery is one of my favorite genres of media. Some might call me a connoisseur of trashy reality tv. I’ve seen the Selling Sunsets, the Kardashians, and the Dance Moms, but Love Is Blind is different. There’s something about watching these people go through this scary and unnatural ritual; it triggers my deep fight-or-flight instincts and feels like looking into the sun. 

   If you’re unaware of the concept, in Love Is Blind, marriage-ready singles take ten days to speed-date in “pods” where they can connect emotionally without viewing each other physically. During these ten days, they manage to fall in love but only get to see each other after a marriage proposal. After they meet face-to-face, they go on a romantic honeymoon-esque vacation. After the vacation is over, they return home to test how well they will integrate into each other’s lives before their wedding day. And at the altar, the couples decide to say either “yes” or “no,” and someone always says no!

   At a base level, Love Is Blind is a social experiment. Asking the question, can two people find real love without seeing each other? This idea has of course been explored in other reality television shows like Married at First Sight & 90 Day Fiance, but Love Is Blind was the first one to do voice-only dating, lending it a little more authenticity as the contestants would be able to establish an emotional connection before establishing a physical one. But it would truly be irresponsible to not mention that the drama can oftentimes be the best part of Love Is Blind. Season 4 leans into this tension like never before, so if you love drama, then this is the season for you.

   My research for this article started, of course, watching season 4 of Love Is Blind three complete times. For a total of 42 painful hours, It’s safe to say that all the love I had for the franchise quickly vanished. All my years of reality tv show brain rot could have never prepared me for this. I might as well have gotten my Ph.D. in Love Is Blind because I could talk about this rotten and rabid show for hours. I found myself on r/LoveIsBlindonNetflix, a subreddit/forum for fans to discuss the Love Is Blind franchise. I also started watching people react to all of these clips from the show (Psychology In Seattle and Bachelor Fantake‘s videos in particular). And thus the rabbit hole got deeper. These several bloodshot hours watching everyone’s thoughts on season 4 had made me ascend to a higher plane of spirituality; I became one with Love Is Blind. Even though I’ve risen past ideas such as time and space, I’ll take some moments to tell you about Love Is Blind season 4.

   Micah SUCKS. Although maybe the most redeemable out of the season 4 “villains,” her blatant disrespect for Paul, her fiance, is inexcusable; like, girl he can literally see you flirting with another contestant’s fiance during the vacation. At the altar, when the officiant asks “Do you Micah take paul to be your wife blah… blah…” instead of answering, she threw it to Paul (as if it’s like improv, like this is yes and) who then said “We’re not in a place to choose each other right now”, a completely reasonable answer since they’ve been dating for 4 weeks. So naturally, she storms off. It doesn’t help that she and Irina play off each other’s awfulness.

   Irina SUCKS TOO. A clear frontrunner for season 4’s villain. She tells Zach to propose to her instead of another contestant, putting extra pressure on him, but when they go on their vacation, she puts in zero effort to be with her fiance, instead opting to flirt with her best friend’s fiance. Which is literally not why they are on this experiment FYI. She also is incredibly rude to the other women during the pods, laughing with Micah at Jackie breaking down and sobbing.

   Jackie IS EVEN WORSE. In my opinion, she is the true villain of season 4. An incredible amount of ignorance and vanity, with an edit that makes her look so incredibly “two-faced” that it’s scathing. She plays the pods well, seeming like an amazing and emotional person to her fiance, Marshall. But when they meet, it’s extremely clear that she thinks he’s ugly. So what does she do? On her way to her wedding dress fitting, she meets up with another man for a date. Marshall doesn’t even know she’s doing this. AND she even had the audacity to not even show up for the reunion.

   Oh, there’s a reunion. God, I forgot about the reunion. A few weeks after the release of every season, all the contestants get together to discuss the juicy drama of their season. This obviously can get real messy, which is key to the enjoyment of Love Is Blind. Ignoring the technical failures of season 4’s reunion, it was pretty awful. The hosts, Nick and Vanessa Lachey were most of the problem, they lacked awareness of what the fans really wanted. Micah got to act like the victim, Irina “apologized,” Jackie answered questions in a pre-filmed video where she got off scott free because Vanessa didn’t ask her any hard-hitting questions. Honestly, it was terrible.

   You might be noticing a pattern here. Literally everything I have just told you is the most useless information anybody could ever want. Being absorbed into the Love Is Blind zeitgeist was the most brain numbing thing to ever happen to me. The fact that I don’t have to clock in any more hours of Love Is Blind is a privilege I never knew I had. The farther away I get from my last watch of Love Is Blind, the more I feel at peace with my world. I become endlessly thankful that I don’t have a fiance who I don’t like, who doesn’t know how to clean his apartment, and that I am not being televised to millions of discerning people. I’ve frankly had enough of watching objectively beautiful women fight for a man with the emotional and actual awareness of a broken printer.

   You might have noticed another pattern. Everyone I just critiqued in season 4 are all women. There’s always something to be said about the men of course, but it’s clear to me that the women get the real brunt of the attention. Everyone has more to say about these women’s actions and choices, laying all of these expectations on the women, whether realistic or not, is certainly damaging to everyone involved. As more pressure gets put on them, the easier it is to crumble under said pressure, creating even crueler expectations. And the internet may be vicious, but the producers have made sure those impulses are well-fed with provoking edits. Often editing in tension and awkwardness to make it more dramatic. It’s easy to see how these women get characterized as “crazy” when they’ve been driven crazy with the pressure of this public scrutiny.

   But it can’t all be bad. I found myself loving Brett and Tiffany, the only relationship in season 4 to pretty much be unanimously loved by everyone. Their instant chemistry makes all of these hours worth it. There’s a reason that I haven’t talked much about Brett and Tiffany. There’s a lot less to say about them. They are beautiful amazing people, who mostly get less attention than the mess-boxes we’ve gotten oh-so-familiar with. Their wholesomeness can really only take them so far. Good communication skills get pushed out of the spotlight when Jackie just called her fiance “fruity.” They were basically overlooked during the reunion because of their lack of drama, aside from a cute married-life montage at the end.

   Love is blind is at best, optimistic. At worst, it can feel like a romanticization of the most toxic traits of our current relationship climate. There’s a reason that there will never be a gay season of Love Is Blind. The show mostly relies on these ideas of heterosexual relationships that, depending on who you ask, should be outdated by now. There’s also something to be said about our innate voyeuristic desire to spectate as people process deep joy and pain on this often humiliating journey of publicly searching for love. Watching these people fumble around in their relationships for 12 hours is the most eye-catching thing I’ve watched in years. But for now, I think I’m done with Love Is Blind… until season five!

   I still think there could be a gay season of Love Is Blind, of course, there would be complications with this concept, but we’ve put a man on the moon, let the gay people on your terrible show please.