The ‘Love Is Blind’ Uche-Lydia Nightmare Keeps Getting Worse

This post contains spoilers for Love Is Blind Season 5, Episodes 8-9.

Love Is Blind is no stranger to conflict, but this week, the metal wine glasses really hit the fan.

Episodes 8 and 9 of the Netflix dating show’s fifth season dropped on Friday and find the couples in the final stages of preparation for their trips down the aisle. Obviously, Nick Lachey took the dudes out for tux fittings while his wife and co-host Vanessa joined the ladies as they tried on wedding dresses (with fan-favorite contestant Renée in tow). But first, there was the back half of that cocktail mixer from last week—which, as we now know, devolved into a shouting match about “toxic masculinity.”

However exes Lydia and Uche wound up on this show together, their bad history has soured much of this season. (Love Is Blind creator Chris Coelen recently told Variety that the show had no idea the two knew each other until after they’d figured it out but allowed them to proceed as long as they didn’t immediately tell their castmates.) First, Aaliyah—whom Uche began blind-dating in the show’s “pods”—left the season early because she couldn’t handle Lydia’s oversharing about their past relationship. Then, there was that exhausting talk last week between Uche and Lydia, which ended with her storming off. Now, there’s Uche’s equally tiresome conversation with Lydia’s Love Is Blind partner, Milton—a 24-year-old STEM major who seems convinced that Uche is just not good enough at math to understand human relationships.

Like any reality show, Love Is Blind has aired its share of personal clashes. Amber from Season 1 seemed to have just a little too much fun being mean to her former romantic rival from the pods, Jessica, and last season, Irina’s mean girl vibes sparked backlash online. Still, there’s something different about this season. Maybe it’s because Aaliyah, this year’s most compelling romantic hero, went home early that this season seems more interested in petty drama than it is in romance.

Uche tries to warn Milton that Lydia’s communication skills might not be the best for long-term relationship success, but this engineer is simply not hearing it. “This isn’t the Pythagorean theorem,” Milton tells Uche. “This is like multidimensional calculus.” As far as he’s concerned, the conflict between Uche and Lydia is between Uche and Lydia—whose perspectives will naturally differ from his own. “We’re all on different directional planes,” Milton coolly tells Uche. “It is what it is.” He later tells Lydia that he’s not sure Uche got the message, because “he’s no engineer.”

That might be the case—and Uche is kind of annoying—but that’s still a lot of shade for a guy who’s simply trying to save you from a life of matching your shorts to someone else’s bathing suit, as Lydia has previously demanded.

But Uche isn’t just trying to help Milton; he also seems to want the rest of the group to turn on Lydia as well. He tells them about the time Lydia sent him a photo of his driveway and wrote “I see you”—a moment she claims he mischaracterized—and also repeats his claim that his friends told him she’d been watching their Instagram stories for months. (Is that latter one even that unusual of a thing to do? I and others remain unconvinced.)

That said, Uche’s bid to get the women of this season on his side did not exactly go according to plan; as he sat with Stacy, Renée, Johnie, and others and unraveled his conspiracy theory about Lydia planning for them to be on the show together and subsequently sabotaging his pod relationship with Aaliyah, Stacy stopped him to say, “That’s not how that happened on our side.” She pointed out that Lydia had comforted Aaliyah and urged her to work things out with Uche, even though he was her ex.

Somehow, none of this was the most explosive part of the discussion; that came later, when Uche interrupted Miriam—a fellow cast member who did not match with anyone on the show—and asked her to stop talking over Stacy.

“You are not going to tell me to talk and when not to talk,” Miriam says. “Keep your toxic masculinity to yourself.”

Uche tries to brush her off and call her “bitter,” which only makes things worse. “Where do you live at?” he asks. “Do you live in Saudi Arabia or Houston? Do you have a job or do you not have a job? Do you have a business? Do you not have a business? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you not have a boyfriend? I’m outta here. You’re here for the cameras.” At this point, Miriam repeats a thing she shouted earlier: “I will read you for the filth you are!”

I mean… OK then.

Uche isn’t the only guy this season who claims to be looking out for someone who absolutely does not want his help: Izzy, who dated multiple women in the pods and wound up with Stacy, also decides to warn fellow castmate Chris about his ex, Johnie.

As far as I can tell, the only mistake Johnie made in this sordid love game was to make Izzy her first choice when Chris was clearly her ideal match. When he broke up with her instead of proposing, she returned to Chris, who said he’d need time to think about being her second choice. Now, Izzy insists that Johnnie is “sketchy as fuck” based on one discrepancy between her conversations with him and Chris—and he and Stacy will apparently stop at nothing until she knows it.

Stacy and Izzy both seem to enjoy belittling Johnie, perhaps because their own relationship is visibly fractured. Stacy seems to get at this when she says that the enthusiasm Izzy feels for her shouldn’t only come when he’s comparing her to Johnie. That said, her wording is fascinating: “I want the angst of, you’re afraid to lose me all the time.” Things might’ve gone fine when Stacy met Izzy’s mom, but these are not words that inspire confidence.

Eventually, the conversation devolves into an argument that ends with Izzy crying in a closet. As he tells Stacy, “You make me feel like I’m not good enough for you.” An episode later, she finds out about his bad credit history—which, given her previously discussed enjoyment of flying first class, feels like enough to seriously rock the boat.

Milton and Lydia aren’t doing that much better. Although the 24-year-old’s parents seem relatively OK with the match by the end of their first meeting with Lydia, his sister seems convinced the relationship is “phony.” Still, she says the family will be there at the wedding—so that’s something.

Apart from their age, the main source of friction between Milton and Lydia is how they deal with emotions: He insists that seeing his emotions is a privilege, while she tends to be more volatile. He wants her to “act more like Milton,” but she… doesn’t really wanna, and also feels kind of judged by that suggestion. By the end of their last date from this week’s episodes, the couple seems to be at a bit of an impasse on this conflict. Sure, they love each other, but is that really enough? I guess we’ll find out next week, when Milton and Lydia (and Izzy and Stacy) finally walk down the aisle.

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