RECAP: “Love Is Blind” Season 7, Episodes 10-11
The Week 3 episodes for “Love Is Blind” Season 7 take us right up to the wedding days, and these couples are dropping like flies. After Week 1 we had a total of six couples we were following (not counting Leo & Brittany, whose coupling we were blessedly spared witnessing post-pods). After Week 2, one of those couples — Stephen and Monica — imploded due to Stephen engaging in sexting with another woman merely days after proposing to his supposed love match. And after Week 3, we are down to just THREE couples, as two more bite the dust before they even get to the aisle. These people are dropping like flies!
I have to wonder what the producers and editors of the show think about so many of the couples this season throwing in the towel before they get to their wedding days. After the proposals, that’s the big Moment of this experiment, right? The will-they-won’t-they at the altar. This season, half the couples have elected to not get to that point, and I have to wonder if this is a symptom of more recent casts not being willing to jump through hoops to please the showrunners.
There have been cases in the past where I was certain that couples only showed up at their weddings to satisfy filming expectations — one or both members of the duo had no intention of following through with it (Zanab and Cole spring immediately to mind). My sense is this group in particular is uninterested in putting themselves, as well as their friends and family, through the incredibly stressful wedding-day process, not to mention the emotional gutpunch of potentially getting jilted at the altar. I respect that as a human being, but as a fan of this show, it feels a bit like cheating the viewer out of the process.
Let’s jump into these couples, starting with the one I think is most likely to make it down the aisle, and moving down the list of dysfunction. Disagree with my takes? Drop them in the comments.
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Previous “Love Is Blind” Recaps
Garrett & Taylor
Our “golden couple” this season hit its first real bump, as the pair fought over Garrett responding to a message from an ex. If the facts are as Garrett laid them out, the infraction seemed pretty minor. An ex texted him. Initially he told Taylor he “liked” the response and that was it. That was enough to send Taylor into a spin before a cast event in which they were all, for some reason, dressed as flappers from the 1920s. But it got worse at the party, when Garrett recounted the story to Tyler, but divulged that he actually did respond to his ex, not just liked the post. This set Taylor off completely.
I’ve seen some people suggest that Taylor was overreacting to all of this, or that she was explicitly playing it up for the cameras. I’m not completely discounting that. Drama = camera time, and on some level, everyone involved in the show at this point must want to be on TV. But I also think it’s possible that Taylor was sincere in her reaction. As she said herself, she was exhausted. They’ve been going nonstop for weeks at this point, being filmed pretty much consistently, and their entire lives have been transformed. She’s planning a wedding. The day after they were flying across the country to meet her family, and she was on record as being stressed about how that was all going to turn out. Add to the fact that she herself has had a history with cheating partners, and she just witnessed the epic fuck-up by Stephen with Monica, and I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Taylor had a moment of crisis about the whirlwind relationship she had committed to VERY quickly.
I don’t think Garrett had any malice at any part of this. I hope the texting situation was as innocent as he painted it. I don’t think he was trying to deceive Taylor, but I do think he was trying to minimize the whole thing because he knew it would make her uncomfortable. And though they did have a difficult moment of miscommunication, I do think he was genuinely contrite for upsetting his fiancee as significantly as he did.
Ultimately it looks like it worked out. I think the San Diego trip actually helped to bring them closer together. It seems that Taylor’s friends and family accepted Garrett — it’s so weird that cast friends/families seem to be getting less willing to film for this show, you would think it would get easier the longer the show exists — and in the end, her Mom even flew to D.C. to help her pick out her dress and be present for the wedding.
I’m fairly confident these two will get married. In fact, I think they’re the only couple that gets married — or at least stays married by the reunion.
Tyler & Ashley
I actually think Tyler and Ashley will get married, and I think that is a mistake on Ashley’s part. I was shocked that she forgave him for his “confession” at the end of Week 2, that he was the “sperm donor” to several kids, and neglected to mention that at any point prior. That’s not an omission. That is not a mistake. That is deliberate fraud on that man’s part. In my opinion, it is a far worse sin than anything Stephen or Leo or any other man this season has done.
I guess the charitable interpretation would be to say that this reflects positively on Ashley’s character and her commitment to this experiment and this couple. Forgiveness takes real moral and emotional strength. And to be sure, prior to the bombshell, Ashley and Tyler seemed to be an incredible couple. But that only works if the bombshell was the full truth, and based on everything that has come out on social media since that shoe dropped — including posts by women who were actively involved in this situation — it sure doesn’t look like he gave her the full story. Not even close.
So it has felt uncomfortable, if not flat-out gross, to watch Tyler and Ashley continue along as though this was a happy occasion. From my perspective, we are watching a lovely woman unknowingly make one of the worst decisions of her life. Ashley deserves better than this. And if the rumors are true about Tyler, he deserves a hell of a lot worse. If these two get married, I would be shocked if they are still together by the reunion.
Ramses & Marissa
Ramses and Marissa traded places in these two episodes. They began with Marissa highly anxious about the wedding, and seeking repeated — and I mean repeated — reassurance from Ramses that he was going to say yes. Her concerns are well founded, because these two should not get married. They have significant philosophical disconnects that really cannot be swept under the rug, everything from Marissa’s experience with and opinion of the military, to Ramses’ extremely strong opinions about sex, birth control, etc. You would think these things would have been dealt with in the pods, but it sure doesn’t seem like it.
By the end of the episodes, the script had flipped. In yet another scene starting in the middle of the action — that happened entirely too often this season, and it’s hugely frustrating for the viewer to not understand what is going on — Ramses suddenly has serious doubts about their compatibility after, apparently, friends of his encouraged him to really think about this decision. Suddenly it was Marissa who had to take the role of the assured, guiding hand. I actually think it’s healthy for a couple to share that role in the relationship, but I think it’s plain that these two can love each other and be very attracted to each other, but not be compatible as life partners. And I think that’s what we’re seeing. I do not think they will get married, nor do I think they should. I like them both separately but they’re just not a match.
SPLIT: Tim & Alex
Generally speaking I have a decent sense of just about every couple on this show. I get the overall narrative arc the editors are establishing, I get the character traits they’re meant to represent, etc. I could not get a solid read on these two all the way up until their brutally abrupt ending.
In Tim’s defense, at the end of Week 1 they had a pretty intense fight — which, again, we did not see — and Tim made it clear that Alex was on notice. That’s important information going into these episodes, I think. Additionally, Tim had made it abundantly clear since the pods that his family was of prime importance to him. There was no way to miss that.
In these episodes, Tim’s parents drove 10 hours to meet the couple. We saw their seemingly pleasant, largely chill meeting. After that, there was a time jump, and Tim had an intense sitdown with Alex. There was some kind of issue with text communication and cars — whatever — but the crux, to me, is that Tim was furious that after the cameras stopped rolling at the parent meeting, Alex immediately went to take a nap. Tim found that disrespectful, and I think that is when Tim fully threw in the towel.
Alex tried to defend herself, explaining that she was tired (like Taylor, I do believe there is truth to this — all of these people must be mentally and physically exhausted). Personally I did not appreciate the way Tim would interject constantly, “Can I speak?” “Can I finish?” when in reality he was just trying to steamroll Alex. But I also don’t really think any of it mattered, because I think when Tim felt Alex insulted his parents, there was no going back. I can understand that. I have absolutely broken up with people who I thought were disrespectful to my friends and family, and even if that wasn’t Alex’s intent here (and I don’t think it was), it was still interpreted that way by Tim. There was no going back.
That said, I did not care for how cold Tim was in the break-up, and actually cheered when Alex said, “Two days ago you solemnly asked my father for my hand in marriage, and now you’re just giving up?” Like, completely fair point. Like I said, I’ve found both of these people hard to fully grasp, and I still don’t get how Tim went from emotional proposal to, “Welcome to Dumpsville, Population: You” in 48 hours because a gal took a nap. There is something inherently manipulative about the way Tim used his family to both bring Alex in (in the pods) and then push her away (in Episode 11), and given his massive swings in personality, there are red flags there.
Still, I’m glad they broke up, because they would have never worked.
Nick & Hannah
Speaking of, “I’m glad they broke up,” let’s talk Nick and Hannah. When I write these recaps, I genuinely try to remember that 1) these are actual human beings, not TV characters; 2) the edit heightens certain aspects of their personalities and downplays others to create a very specific narrative; and 3) generally both parties share some degree of fault in these dramas.
All that being said, Hannah is 100 percent responsible for the implosion of this relationship. I won’t say she is “the worst” — we have had more toxic people on this show, for sure — but her treatment of Nick was appalling. Even if he was every single thing she accused him of being (most of which also applied to her, by the way), her behavior in these last two episodes was unacceptable.
A lot happened between these two, but I think it boils down to one central theme: Hannah thought she was “better” than Nick, and was punishing him for not changing to be the person she wanted him to be. The more insulting part of this is, she kept repeatedly — including bringing in her chorus of harpy friends — gaslighting Nick by saying, “I’m not trying to change you.” Literally all we saw was her telling Nick what an uncultured, immature, idiot swine he was, or telling the other girls how much work she had to put into getting him up to her level. She literally said to Nick more than once, “I turned you from a boy into a man.” First of all: fucking gross. Second: you’ve known this guy for less than a month. When I tell you I was screaming at the TV during numerous scenes between these two…
In addition to nearly unprecedented levels of condescension from Hannah, we also got the additional element of blind jealousy. The whole situation with Katie at the flapper party was maddening. At first she was all for Nick talking to her “best friend in the entire world” (who, I believe, she met in the pods less than a month ago?). Then Nick and Katie talked for 40 minutes in a conversation that — based on what we saw — was meaningful and respectful, with Katie providing helpful guidance to Nick about how he comes across. (Note: this is how a supportive person invested in personal growth interacts when someone, Hannah.) Did Katie make several comments to Hannah about how hot Nick is? According to Hannah, although I find her an unreliable narrator given how casually she has twisted several other interactions thus far. But somehow, this all got spun on Nick as being disrespectful to Hannah.
I was proud of Nick for standing up for himself after the flapper party, and again in the meeting with Hannah and her awful friends. Don’t get me wrong, Nick does need a lot of work. He is immature in a lot of ways. But I don’t think he’s malicious, and I do think he was trying. (Sidebar: why the fuck should that man walk your dog? Especially when you are unemployed?!) And if these things were really a dealbreaker for Hannah, there were many ways for her to uncouple peaceably. Instead, she humiliated this man multiple times, in multiple ways on national television. It was gross to watch, and I hope it has given Hannah some insight into her actions and approaches to life.
The meeting she called to break up with Nick was a masterclass in smug entitlement. She came in there ready to publicly gut that man. It was, again, appalling to watch. I think she actually took pleasure in it. As I said about Hannah in previous recaps, I believe that she has an innate sense of how to ingratiate herself to people (it’s what makes her a good salesperson), but at her core, she seems like a miserable person. Watching this, you would think she wants a partner who is submissive to her every need, but I actually don’t think she does want that — she would never respect that kind of man. And yet, she cannot stand to be told what to do. She just shuts down, we saw it when Nick pushed back at her in these last few episodes.
There are far too many red flags around Hannah, and I’m confident they are being waved in her face by the internet right now. I hope she actually takes this experience as the wake-up call it should be, and figures out how to fix whatever the fuck is wrong with her. Ain’t nobody else going to do that.
Nick, I hope you slid into Katie’s DMs. The two of you seem like a much better match.
As impossible as it seems to say, Leo dodged a bullet when Hannah dumped him. Wild!
Next: the weddings, which…mostly do not feel like happy occasions at this point.
