Ostensibly the show asks whether or not love truly is blind, but what makes it so titillating are the secondary inquiries it makes into human toxicity as it relates to love.
Anyone who's experienced the double-edged fortune of dating past their mid-20s in the Tinder era will know just how much baggage people are lugging around. In the case of certain couples on the show, that luggage springs forth like a drunken cat for our collective enjoyment.
Ever wanted to see what happens to the lady who manages to tame a womaniser? Or the girl who's more interested in not being alone than she is in being with a seemingly sweet guy, while he's blithely ignoring the General Assembly of red flags she's throwing his way? It's all there. Love Is Blind is Schadenfreude as depicted by Banksy's mainstream-friendly alter ego.
But there's also a lesson to be learnt. For all our talk about how trash men are, and they mostly are, when it comes to relationships it's not men but people who are spectacularly maladjusted. Toxicity and immaturity have no gender.
They're simply the gnarled teddy bears adults carry around to help them sleep at night. The only difference between our actual childhood teddies and the emotional ones we drag with us as "grown-ups" is that the grown-up ones don't play well with others - and boy is that fun to watch.
• 'Love Is Blind' is available on Netflix now
Series Review
Reality dating show 'Love is Blind' may be trashy, but it sure is fun
There are also real lessons about relationships to be learnt from watching this guilty pleasure
Every now and then the gods of reality TV, having left the production line of trashy shows on autopilot for too long, have an orgy on the Mount Olympus of unscripted shows and birth something so gaudily brilliant that you can't help but marvel.
The latest spawn from that sweaty cauldron of emotional manipulation is Netflix's Love Is Blind. It tweaks our voyeuristic nipples so deliciously that to deny appeal would be an exercise in chopping off our noses to spite our smug faces.
The premise is simple. Men and women congregate in a warehouse full of single-person pods. A whirlwind of speed dating ensues, in which prospective couples talk to each other without ever laying eyes on each other. The aim is to find their soulmate.
To be successful, someone must propose. Only then can they meet in the flesh the person they've committed their life to. The couples that agree to wed are whisked away on a pre-honeymoon before being sent to live together, meet each other's families and eventually get married. All of this happens over the course of a child's school holiday.
Ostensibly the show asks whether or not love truly is blind, but what makes it so titillating are the secondary inquiries it makes into human toxicity as it relates to love.
Anyone who's experienced the double-edged fortune of dating past their mid-20s in the Tinder era will know just how much baggage people are lugging around. In the case of certain couples on the show, that luggage springs forth like a drunken cat for our collective enjoyment.
Ever wanted to see what happens to the lady who manages to tame a womaniser? Or the girl who's more interested in not being alone than she is in being with a seemingly sweet guy, while he's blithely ignoring the General Assembly of red flags she's throwing his way? It's all there. Love Is Blind is Schadenfreude as depicted by Banksy's mainstream-friendly alter ego.
But there's also a lesson to be learnt. For all our talk about how trash men are, and they mostly are, when it comes to relationships it's not men but people who are spectacularly maladjusted. Toxicity and immaturity have no gender.
They're simply the gnarled teddy bears adults carry around to help them sleep at night. The only difference between our actual childhood teddies and the emotional ones we drag with us as "grown-ups" is that the grown-up ones don't play well with others - and boy is that fun to watch.
• 'Love Is Blind' is available on Netflix now
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