RECAP: Love Is Blind Season 8, Episodes 7-9
At the end of the first batch of episodes, I was concerned that this Minneapolis-set season was going to be a stinker. I was wrong. It is so much worse than I anticipated. I truly do not think I have ever seen such a boring group of people headlining a reality TV show. I need to be clear: I like most of this cast. I think they are generally decent people (at least based on the edit we are seeing). But Love Is Blind is sold to us as an experiment in which we explore how potential partners interact with each other via unconventional conditions, as a sweeping romance, and as a drama-filled reality show. This season is delivering on almost none of those promises.
I was chagrined when the big dramatic cliffhanger from Episode 6 was revealed to be an absolute nothingburger — based on what we saw, it was all paranoia and not based in fact. Things got worse when we got one single episode set on the tropical Honduran “honeymoon” trip — which in previous seasons have quickly revealed the cracks in these newly forged couples. For the rest of the second cache of episodes, we got a lot of perfectly fine meetings with perfectly fine friends and families, but very little conflict with the actual couples. In fact, the ONLY conflict heading into the third act is coming from external, off-camera sources, which is supremely frustrating from a viewer perspective.
The producers and editors must have been losing their minds watching hours and hours of footage of these couples giving them absolutely nothing to work with. This was the best TV they could make from the days of shooting they filmed. This! Can you imagine? As awful as it would be for the cast and especially the crew of this show, I just kept thinking, “They should have just buried this and taken the tax write-off.” This season is so dull that in addition to struggling to care about this group of couples, I am struggling to stay engaged with this show at all. If the only conflict we are getting is from outside sources who are — it seems as of now — trying to get their own 15 minutes of fame, then maybe this experiment has reached its ultimate conclusion.
Read on for my takes on the second batch of episodes (7-9) of Love is Blind Season 8. SPOILERS AHEAD!
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I’ll go over these couples from most dramatic storylines to least. Please understand “most dramatic” this season is maybe a 3 on a 10-point scale compared to other seasons. There is basically no content here. This is not a television season, it is a parade of banality.
Daniel/Taylor
We picked up at the big cliffhanger from Episode 6, with Taylor confronting Daniel at the hotel post-reveal. After their meeting, Taylor grew suspicious that Daniel had previously followed her on social media prior to the show, knew exactly who she was/what she looked like, and used information available on her profiles to ingratiate himself to her. What we ultimately discovered, after several painfully boring minutes of Taylor struggling to connect to wifi and scrolling through her follow/unfollow information — gripping television, you guys — is that apparently Taylor was wrong. There was no indication that Daniel had followed her in the past, and she had an app that apparently would track that information even if he unfollowed.
If I am being charitable, I can understand how someone in Taylor’s position would feel overwhelmed by the whirlwind in which she has been carried, and would throw up some caution flares. But the reality is, those were some big allegations she was making about Daniel, and I found the whole thing to be a terrible look for her. To me, she came off paranoid or delusional, and there was more than a touch of narcissism involved.
For his part, Daniel handled this whole situation with astonishing grace. He did not seem upset. He did not seem offended. He listened, he apologized for anything he did to make her feel uncomfortable, and he was supportive as she got her confirmation. He even admitted that it was possible that he DID follow her months ago, he coudln’t be sure that he did not. I cannot think of a better way to handle this whole drama over nothing than what Daniel exhibited here. I also wonder how much heat he took on social media in the week between Episode 6 and Episode 7 airing, because I’ll bet there was more than one viewer who took Taylor’s concerns as verified fact.
After that very rocky start, the two of them went off to Honduras (Daniel made it clear he would only go if Taylor wanted to, and was comfortable with it) and seemed to have a perfectly lovely time. They then met each other’s parents, and the only real friction they encountered was Taylor’s intense and dubious mother. Even that was quickly addressed, and by the end of Episode 9, they seem well on their way down the aisle. I think they’ll be just fine, so long as Taylor doesn’t have another freakout.
David/Lauren
The only truly rocky couple this season. I knew David was going to be a problem from the moment he was introduced, and he has lived up to that expectation. Everything seemed fine in the tropics. David was clearly preoccupied with the fact that the two of them hadn’t had sex during their trip, even as he kept saying, “Oh that’s totally fine, I will respect whatever she wants to do.” And yet it was almost all he could talk about with the other couples. (Most of them had apparently not had sex either, by the way.)
David saying one thing and exhibiting opposite behavior was a trend in these episodes. Because once they were back in Minneapolis, we got our big “drama” of the season — which again, is by no means real drama compared to some of the other crazy shit that has happened previously on this series. Let me see if I can break this down, because it’s simultaneously complicated and stupid.
David was informed by friends that they had a mutual acquaintance who was seeing Lauren prior to filming the series.
This person apparently lived in the building in which the couples moved in for the filming of these episodes.
Lauren admitted that she had a friends-with-benefits situation with this person, and that it lasted at least a few months. But it was never serious, they were not dating, and the last time they saw each other, he told her about another girl he was dating via Hinge.
David’s friends claimed Lauren saw this man as recently as the weekend before she left to go filming. Lauren and her friends denied this. (This part seems easy enough to prove via text messages/DMs, so I’m not sure why this is in question.)
David was disturbed that Lauren was seeing someone so soon before going on this show, and questioned Lauren’s seriousness in actually finding a partner. Lauren stressed that they were never a real couple, and a casual hook-up in no way invalidates her interest in finding a husband. (I thought it was telling when Lauren’s friends asked David what the acceptable cut-off date for dating pre-show would be, he had no answer.)
Lauren’s former fuck boy allegedly tried to reach out to David via social media, but David did not respond.
David’s friends, who were leading this bridading, refused to speak to Lauren directly, and did not want to film for the show.
I’ll be blunt: this is juvenile nonsense. It’s not even high-school drama, it is 8th-grade dinner-dance shit. It is also misogynistic and, I would argue, slut-shaming behavior.
I cannot think of another case in this show where someone was so upset to learn that their chosen partner had been dating someone else prior to the show. Some of these people had been married before being on the show. Even if Lauren was seriously dating this man weeks before the show — which Lauren denies, and for which David is taking the word of a person he barely knows over his now-fiancee — has she been in contact with him since? Are David and Lauren happy? Then why is this an issue? Why is the fact that he lives in the building in which they were staying even a factor? Did he think Lauren had anything to do with that? That is 100 percent a Production decision.
Lauren was obviously devastated by all of this. I don’t blame her. Her previous sex life is now being held up to public scrutiny, and given the rather puritanical values this show seems to be suggesting for Minneapolis, this could impact multiple areas of her life. She is not being listened to by her supposed partner at all — he is trusting completely in the words of this third-party guy (the fact that the dude is trying to reach out to David directly screams desperate for camera time), and his friends, and this much-talked-about sister, who is the Love Is Blind equivalent of Chekhov’s gun at this point. You know she’s coming in eventually, and she’s going to be a nightmare.
Even worse: David apparently refused to speak with Lauren about it, or attempted to work through it. Even though he would say that he wasn’t judging her, and he wanted to make this work, once again, his actions clearly revealed the opposite. He abandoned her for a week and wouldn’t stay in the apartment even after Lauren specifically asked because he was “uncomfortable.”
Unless there is evidence that Lauren was not only in a full-blown relationship with this guy, but also intended to CONTINUE the relationship after the show — basically doing what meathead Trevor did in Season 6 — I find this whole plotline deeply disrespectful to Lauren specifically, and all women in general. I literally cannot imagine that we would be having this discussion if a woman on this show discovered that her male fiancee had been casually having sex with another woman prior to filming. HIGHLY dubious. The expectation that these people were all sexless shut-ins prior to arriving to the pods is lunacy.
Based on what we have seen, my sense is that David does not want to go through with this wedding. But he’s too much of a loser to actually admit that, and so he’s using whatever ammunition he can find to make Lauren look like the bad guy. That’s fucked up. Remember, he also more or less prodded Molly to end things with him instead of him dumping her in the pods, because he didn’t want to “hurt her.” He’s a coward.
I clocked this guy as a Peter Pan within minutes of his appearance in Episode 1, and he continues to confirm that suspicion. I think he logically knows he needs to grow up and settle down because, while conventionally attractive, he is not hot enough to play the (debatably) charming rake forever. But I don’t think he is emotionally ready for any of this, and he’s panicking.
I doubt David and Lauren get married. I hope they don’t. She deserves way better than this clown.
Ben & Sara
I actually came to like Ben and Sara together in this second bunch of episodes. They have a nice, easy chemistry, and Ben seems like a better guy than I initially thought. The meeting with Ben’s friends in particular helped me to see that he is maybe not the clueless chud that the first chunk of episodes painted him to be. I generally think Sara is great.
The issue with these two came up right at the end of Episode 9, when Sara brought to Ben’s attention a TikTok in which a woman from Minneapolis cried about how she was sick of seeing mediocre, manipulative men raised up and “platformed” by this show. Ben acknowledged that she was probably talking about him. When prodded for details, Ben told Sara that he had gone out with this woman four years ago, that he didn’t feel a connection, and then he ghosted her. Sara did not fully buy that argument. She found it unlikely that a person would be so dramatic over a one-time date that happened years ago, and made it clear to Ben that if something more happened with this woman, she wanted to know about it, and wanted to know then. Because if things came out later, she would not be OK with it. For his part, Ben looked highly guilty in that scene. (That said, Daniel also looked guilty in the cliffhanger in Episode 6, and that was apparently over nothing.)
My take on this: last season, several HUGE fights/moments happened between the couples off-camera, and we heard about them via talking heads after the fact. It was supremely frustrating as a viewer that major developments were being told rather than shown, and several of those proved critical for those couples. THIS season, we’re not even getting conflicts between the engaged couples off-camera, we are getting third-party characters not even on this SHOW causing drama offscreen, which is even WORSE. A social-media peanut gallery is driving the drama this season, and it is maddening.
I regret to inform you that I went down a rabbit hole looking into this TikTok situation. I’m not going to get into my thoughts, because real talk, I don’t see anything good coming from it. I’ll say that if you want more context, it’s easily available via Google search. But you should also know that spoilers for Ben and Sara’s arc are very much out there. So I won’t offer my prediction on where they end up.
Joey & Monica
Joey and Monica are our solid couple this season, and I don’t see that changing. Joey met Monica’s family and found them to be charmingly offbeat. Monica is dealing with Joey’s significant OCD. I like them a lot and I think they’re well matched. I am not in any way trying to make light of the challenges of living with someone with OCD — I live with one myself — but this is also a real nothingburger of a plotline. We also again have another sister (Monica’s) who is apparently causing drama, and I have to ask: What is going on with the sisters of Minneapolis? Why are all of you so afraid of your siblings? I literally cannot conceive allowing my sibling’s kneejerk reaction to my partner seriously causing me to rethink an engagement. Grow up. Get with the program. Like, what the actual fuck?
I predict Joey and Monica will get married and I also think they’ll be quite happy together.
Devin/Virginia
Another perfectly fine couple. I like Virginia more than I like Devin, but they’re fine. They met Devin’s family, including his pet pig. The big issue here is Virginia expecting Devin to sign a pre-nup, and just…yawn. This is not drama. This is not conflict. We have done this before. To my knowledge, neither of these people have significant assets. Devin has outstanding medical debt and student loans. This plotline in particular feels like the editors were desperate for some kind of plotline for these two besides, “Yeah, we’re just…gonna get married.” They may be the least dynamic couple of the entire Love Is Blind series for me.
I predict they’ll get married and be perfectly happy.
All in all, a truly dreadful batch of episodes. I will continue watching the next batch out of a feeling of obligation, but I have never been less invested in this series and I have to wonder if perhaps it’s time to call it quits altogether.
What do you think of Love Is Blind Season 8? Who do you think will make it to the altar? Drop your thoughts in the comments.