TV

Everyone Is Obsessed With Netflix’s New Dating Show ‘Love Is Blind’

Ten minutes into the first episode, you'll instantly fall love with Lauren and Cameron.

by Michelle Rennex  19 February 2020
netflix love is blind

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Netflix loves to pump out shows that we think are going to be really bad but turn out to be really good.

Take The Circle, the reality show where none of the contestants ever actually spoke to or saw each other. Communicating solely through a fake social media app called The Circle, contestants could catfish and build real connections to become the most popular player and win $100,000.

The premise was questionable, and a show with zero face-to-face interaction sounded like it wouldn’t work. But, surprisingly, it actually did. It worked so well that it very quickly became all anyone could talk about, which is probably why Netflix has now rolled out Love Is Blind. 

What Is Love Is Blind?

Netflix’s Love Is Blind takes all the good and juicy anonymous aspects from The Circle but throws love into the picture. Similar to The Bachelor, the show does give participants some time to figure out who they click with best. But just like Married At First Sight, everything is at super speed, and interested contestants are forced to date and propose to their future spouse in just one week.

After the couples get engaged, they finally meet face-to-face and are sent to Cancun for a faux-honeymoon.

Once they return to reality, the couple then start their newly engaged life together. They move in together for four weeks and do all the stuff that’s normally done way before an engagement happens, like actually introducing their partners to their family. Then comes the wedding — after four weeks, if love is truly blind and the couple is happy, they make it official and get married.

The exciting part of the series, however, is that these proposals are decided purely from conversations the pairs have had through dividing walls in the house “pods”. During the dating process, the male and female housemates are in separate houses but are able to speak in the “pods” — two adjoining rooms where the other person can be heard but not seen.

The purpose of the show is pretty self-explanatory. The show is called Love Is Blind because Netflix want to see if real love connections can be made beyond physical appearance. As co-host Nick Lachey so eloquently put it in the first episode: “Physiologists believe that emotion connection is the key to long-term marital success, not physical attraction.”

Who would’ve guessed! Real love is more than just sex! Crazy, right?

Well, lucky for us Love Is Blind has a whopping 30 singles determined to prove they’re not all shallow. With 10 hour-long episodes, Netflix has decided to batch-drop episodes over three weeks, with the final ones releasing next week.

Despite the premise sounding absolutely bonkers, people have very quickly fallen in love with Love Is Blind — much like the contestants in the house have with each other. With only five of the ten episodes currently available on Netflix, people are biting their nails waiting for the next instalment.

Particularly, people are desperate to know whether their favourite couples have managed to make their relationships last now they’ve actually met in real life.

There Are Some Real Budding Romances

The joy of Love Is Blind is that some of the people in the house actually seem like they’re a perfect fit for each other. While there are a heap of people in the house, some pairings really do standout from the first episode. Plus, don’t stress. Despite starting with 30 contestants, the pairings end up whittling down to just six proposals, so the romances are a lot easier to keep up with.

But keeping up is no problem for Lauren and Cameron — the main couple who have stolen the hearts of everyone watching Love Is Blind. 

Before you complain about spoilers, these two basically get together in the first 10 minutes in the first episode. Cameron, a white man who works in artificial intelligence, and Lauren, a black women who is a content creator, very quickly fall for each other. And this truly genuine relationship between the interracial couple have viewers hooked on where their love story will end up.

On the flip-side, others have gripes with characters like Jessica, a 34-year-old woman who constantly makes a huge deal about dating anyone younger than her from the jump. Or with Barnett, the 27-year-old engineer who strings along three women and is the clear “villain” in the show judging by his “stripper” comment to Diamond early in the series.

While the concept of Love Is Blind is kinda crazy and some relationships are totally messed up, people simply can’t stop watching the strange world of this The Circle and Married At First Sight mash-up.

You can watch Love Is Blind on Netflix now, with new episodes dropping tomorrow and the finale premiering on February 27.