Around the moment that an atheist gave a speech about how he and a devout Christian who doesn’t believe in evolution might work through their differences, I began to wonder if Love Is Blind Season 2 might just fry the last two brain cells I have left. Not in the unpleasant sense, like the way a microwave bores a nuclear core into a frozen burrito, but in the nice way—like a blinding ray of light that hits the pineal gland at just the right angle to send beams of Lisa Frank-colored light out of your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
This is the kind of delightful trash TV that can turn a bad day or even week around—a surreal blend of treacly proclamations, genuine vulnerability, and influencer-chic aesthetic. Who needs brain waves when you’ve got these vibes? (And evidently, American audiences aren’t the only ones who can’t look away from a good reality TV mess when we see one; Love Is Blind: Brazil premiered last fall, and this week also saw the debut of Love Is Blind: Japan.)
Hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey returned this year to open the show’s “pods,” in which 15 men and 15 women try out blind speed dating over the phone. Those who form a connection can choose to get engaged, embark on a romantic vacation, and then, after a couple weeks of cohabitation, approach the altar to decide if they actually want to get married.
Love Is Blind Season 1, which featured such memorable characters as Jessica Batten (aka “Messica”) and runaway bride Giannina Milady Gibelli, became an instant hit for Netflix when it premiered in 2020. But this new season, to borrow a turn of phrase from a certain other dating franchise, might just be the Most. Dramatic. Yet.
Did you like last season’s love triangles? This one’s got two. Did you also kind of enjoy the fairytale, influencer-couple-made-in-heaven romance between Lauren Speed and Cameron Hamilton? This season’s got your earnestness quota covered. But rest assured, the meat of this show is still its rich embarrassment of absolutely baffling decisions.
Standout daters this season include the irrepressibly bubbly Iyanna McNeely, ukulele serenade artist Salvador Perez, and the uber charming Jarrette Jones, an entrepreneurial-minded jokester who survived a terrifying, life-threatening incident. The answer to last season’s villainous Messica? That just might be Shaina Hurley, a corner of one of this season’s two love triangles. (Like many reality TV villains, however, she’d likely tell you she’s the victim of an unflattering edit.) Oh, and then there’s Abhishek “Shake” Chatterjee, a veterinarian who realizes while on the show that perhaps there are better ways to evaluate potential partners than asking whether he could lift them onto his shoulders.
Those who pointed out that Season 1’s contestants were all too conventionally hot to actually test love’s vision will find no reprieve in Season 2. If you told me anyone from this cast, featured or background, had a huge Instagram following and enough sponcon deals to keep their grandchildren in veneers, I’d believe it. This season does strive for some body diversity in its casting, but still only features straight-sized daters. The show also remains—sigh—totally straight. But you know, no one’s perfect.
Love Is Blind’s editors, like The Bachelor’s, love to poke some fun at contestants’ expense from time to time, especially when an opportunity arises to expose hypocrisy. (A highlight reel of a self-absorbed contestant telling a bunch of bored men how many Instagram followers she has? If you insist!) Still, the show’s producers seem to largely be rooting for their contestants; humorous editing never gives way to outright meanness, and for the most part, the show does a good job of getting into each character’s head so that viewers can try to make some sense of every bizarre choice they make.
“It’s like when your kids turn 18,” Nick Lachey himself recently told me. “You’re like… ‘We’ve given the best advice we can, and now you gotta go out and make your own mistakes and figure your own way.’”
Just like its predecessor, Love Is Blind Season 2 sends at least one sincere couple we can root for down the aisle—alongside a couple toxic-seeming pairings who, one only hopes, know better than to say “I do.” Can these couples overcome their disagreements about homemade toothpaste, whether children should be raised saying grace, and where the Rock Band set should go? All I know is that I forgot every single problem in my life while finding out.
