Warning: This article contains spoilers for Love is blind Season 8
In the real world, few highlights are more precarious than a new relationship. You meet, you start dating and every new thing you have in common sets, butterflies for free in your stomach. At the same time, the more cynical among us can spend early days waiting for the record moment. Does this person believe in conspiracy theories such as the “Smaragdstablets of Thoth”? Who did they vote for the last elections if they voted at all? And what if they do not keep up the current events well enough to even give a half -baked opinion about one of the greatest social movements in America?
Welcome to Love is blind Season 8 – Furthermore, proof that the fundamental reality dating franchise from Netflix is much better (and messier) when politics goes into chat. Why don’t all these shows give us the goods like this?
Familiar news and daily pleasure, exactly in your inbox
Watch yourself-the Yodel is the source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
This season, viewers flies to Minneapolis, where the usual gaggle of Telegenic 20 and 30s want to find love. During the first six episodes, their conversations about politics are both fascinating and revealing. Sara Carton, a 29-year-old oncology nurse, makes it a point, for example, to ask her new love, the 28-year-old developer Ben Mezzenga, to explain his political beliefs.
His reaction? “I am a bit ignorant about that stuff. Like, I did not vote for the last elections. As long as I don’t know, it is not going to do much, “he told her in episode 4. When he was printed to share a position about Black Lives Matter, given that George Floyd died by the Minneapolis police, Wafe He again: ‘I am not somehow. I just keep it out a bit. “
Carton had previously been relieved to hear that Mezzenga would support her sister, who is gay, and that he would feel comfortable to attend Pride events with them. But these new revelations, she said, were ‘annoying’. After the date, a jubilant Mezzenga told the boys that he had a girlfriend; Carton seemed more uncertain.
In the meantime, David Bettenburg and Molly Mullaney in another pod agreed that couples do not necessarily have to share everything From the same political views – although they both see some hypocrisy in the Republican platform.
It would have been shocking to see these conversations in the show a few years ago. During his early seasons, Love is blind offered most reality TV dating franchises and only included incidental, carefully compiled view of the political conversations of the participants.
In season 1 we knew that the dramatic fracture of Giannina Gibelli and Damian Powers, at least partly, came from a difference in beliefs, but the details were blurry. Occasionally the show would broadcast a deep and revealing conversation, such as Nancy Rodriguez and Bartise Bowden’s abortion discussion in season 3, but for the most part, viewers were left to guess to everyone’s politics based on their embrace of words such as “Patriot” and , In one case, American flag swimsuit.
For a show that invoices itself as a social experiment, the hesitation always struck me as cowardly.
All that started to change with season 7. Set in Washington, DC, and released only a month before the 2024 elections, Love is blind Season 7 dropped the conversation soft focus so that some of his predecessors felt so cleaned.
Viewers saw Marissa George talking about her difficulties who dating a Trump supporter for a few years with one of her prospects, Bohdan Olinares, who shared his contempt for everyone who would vote for “a man who tried to overthrow the government.” The audience watched Stephen Richardson admitted that he voted for Trump in 2016 because he did not like Hillary Clinton, who did not affect him when he called his future fiancé, Monica Davis, whose parents Black and Honduran, a ‘Mutt’. And of course people watched in shock and awe, while Marissa and her fiancé, Ramses Prashad, their different views on the army, ‘The Hammer of US Imperialism’ discussed, and of course condoms.
Love is blind is in the core, is a speed expression for hot people. Yet it is value to see how these discussions unfold both within the pods and outside them.
Apart from the news, most political discussions we see on TV happen in scripted series. Shows like Wipe are painfully hilarious, and darker dramas such as Follow -up Perhaps brilliantly the moral rot that spreads through American institutions, but in the end these are still products of the imagination of writers. They show American politics by a specific lens, which is not the same as they record as they are.
Most reality shows completely avoid the subject. See: de Bachelor Franchise, which usually avoids as many political discussions as possible. Exceptions include Tayshia Adams and Ivan Hall’s discussion about Black Lives Matter in 2020, followed by the disastrous debut of Matt James, the first black bachelor. In 2018, when bachelor Becca Kufrin was unknowingly engaged to a man who had a whole series of offensive Instagram reports “fun”, the show stopped discussing the real content of those messages, even while he was during the final apologized in the air.
By broadcasting political conversations, Love is blind Gives us a clearer window not only the central couples, but also how average Americans think about politics. Of course, love is blind, but are these people willing to exchange their principles for a theoretical lifelong commitment?
A still from season 8 of Love is blind. (Thanks to Netflix)
Not exactly. But as you would expect, the values of some people are more coherent than others. For example, I really wish we could have seen Bertenburg politics talking with his final fiancée, Lauren O’Brien. Instead, he shares that conversation with Mullaney, his second. On the one hand, said Bettenburg, where Republicans come from because he too “wants less taxes and less government in my life.” On the other hand, ‘liberals probably have better hearts. They want more love throughout the country and the world, “he told O’Brien. Neither of them stated who they voted in the last elections. When I watched the episode, I wondered if that question even arose.
In the pods, political coordination sometimes sometimes seems to be a matter of faith. Just like participants who find out that their only true love has been cheated in the past, Carton must decide whether the former Apathy of Mezzenga can predict his future behavior. She insists that she cannot ‘teach’ him about ‘fundamental values’, and at the same time he promises that he would never put her in that position. Now that they are engaged, we are about to find out how well he keeps his end of the bargain.
Love is blind Is not on a mission to change hearts and thoughts, so politics will only be a fraction of the comparison. Nevertheless, these past two seasons prove that it is an important piece of the puzzle.
These conversations between participants ensure that the relationships feel more nuanced. They give us a clearer idea of where couples stand on each other and where they don’t, and in some cases they help contextual aparts that would otherwise suddenly feel. Perhaps even more important, they reflect on us at least a partial picture of how values are factor in the American dating – the areas where people are willing to make a compromise versus where they refuse. These moments, above all, are what the ‘reality’ TV TV really feels.
