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PORTSIDE CULTURE

LOVE IS BLIND: DC SADLY DOESN’T FEEL LIKE DC  
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Alex Abad-Santos
October 4, 2024
Vox
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_ There seems to be a reluctance to get into politics this season, a
missed opportunity. _

A reveal from Love Is Blind trying to prove whether or not love is
blind. , Courtesy of Netflix ©2024

 

While Virginia is reportedly for lovers, most everyone acknowledges
that nearby Washington, DC, is not. The nation’s capital has
been consistently
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as one of the worst
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date
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one of the US’s worst cities for singles
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Too many type As, too many people too into their jobs, too many people
ready to leave after two years — it’s not exactly a city that
screams romance. They say that politics is show business for ugly
people
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which would make DC the Hollywood of uggos.

Given Washington’s notoriety, it was only a matter of time before
Netflix took _Love Is Blind_ to the nation’s capital.

In its first season, the Netflix reality dating series asserted the
hopefulness of romance — the possibility of falling in love with
someone sight unseen and marrying them within a month — but it has
become a show about irreparable incompatibility
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terrifying tales of red flag-waving monsters
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There have also been lawsuits from contestants
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toxic and inhospitable workplace environments
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and out of the “pods
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the love experiment is one of Netflix’s biggest hits
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and each season a captive audience tunes in to see a new batch of
daters and the horrors — body shaming, weaponized therapy speak,
flies in toilets — that await them on the other side of the wall.

[A group of women in colorful dresses gather in a beige living area
and raise glasses of wine to each other in a large circle.]
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Let’s go girls! Time to talk to faceless men!

 Courtesy of Netflix

Now we have what sounds like a perfect, hellish match: one of the
worst dating cities in the US, combined with one of the bleakest
reality TV dating shows in history. On paper, it feels more like a
dare or taunt, a gift to haters. Truly only the freakiest freaks, some
real District of Columbia sickos would sign up to be on _Love Is
Blind: DC_.

But while this immensely watchable season has plenty of villains and
inter-crossing love triangles, it, sadly, doesn’t feel very DC.

For one thing, no one on this season explicitly works in government.
To be fair, the show isn’t very specific when it comes to its
participants’ professions, so an “IT specialist” could
ostensibly be working for some military government contractor and an
“engineer” could be doing research for, say, Lockheed-Martin.
Still, the closest we get is a cast member being described as a
“policy advocate,” which seems like a nice euphemism for lobbyist.

Capitol Hill keeping their employees from representing on _Love Is
Blind_ is understandable because of how embarrassingly and negatively
many of the participants are portrayed. But that dynamic of an
adjacency to national political power fueling a person’s dating
identity is exactly what makes DC dating unique and (from all these
news stories about people who hate dating there) so hostile. That the
show spent a season in DC and couldn’t capture the snobbiness of a
staffer asking “Who do you work for?” feels like a loss.

There seems to be a reluctance to get into politics this season, too.
A contestant talks about how he voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections,
and there’s a conversation about what kind of political beliefs one
has while serving in the military, but politics as they relate to
dating preferences — e.g., whether love trumps politics, whether
similar politics mean compatibility, etc. — is barely addressed.
That’s a missed opportunity, not only given how politically active
DC allegedly is, but also because finding partners who share the same
politics has increasingly become more and more important
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singles.

That said, there’s still enough relationship dysfunction this season
to sustain its horror-junkie audience.

Brittany, a beautiful woman who wants to be a trophy wife and tells
the camera she cannot spell the word “physicist,” falls for Leo, a
young art dealer who tells everyone that one of his insecurities is
that he inherited a humongous amount of money and never has to worry
about anything financially. The more the audience gets to know Leo,
the more it seems like this isn’t an insecurity at all. The more
Brittany gets to know Leo, the more interested she is in his
“insecurity.”

[A group of men sit and stand around a long table, all dressed in
suits or business casual, raising wine glasses to each other.]
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The dudes from Love Is Blind

 Courtesy of Netflix

There’s also Hannah, a 26-year-old woman who quit her “dream
job” to be on the show. The dream job in question? Medical device
sales. Perhaps there is honor and allure in, say, the vending of CPAP
machine accessories, but she’s given it all up for the possibility
of sight-unseen reality TV love. To that end, she tells Nick, one of
her pod suitors, that she dates athletes and she’s always worried
that men only see her as a hot girl. Nick tells her he looks like a
less buff Henry Cavill. Neither is setting themselves up to
overdeliver.

Hannah, Nick, Leo, Brittany and their cohort deliver a season draped
in red flags and dealbreakers. From chilling fights about yapping too
much to roundabout conversations about getting the ick from watching
your partner straddle patio furniture, there’s plenty here. If
you’re coupled, they’ll make you breathe a sigh of relief that
you’re not in the dating pool. If you’re single, they’ll make
you relish it.

_Love Is Blind _is still a riveting, deranged exploration of the
worst people falling in and out of love, even if it doesn’t feel
like DC.

_This story originally appeared in __TODAY, EXPLAINED
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daily newsletter. __SIGN UP HERE FOR FUTURE EDITIONS
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* love is blind
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* Washington DC
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* politics and culture
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