‘Love Is Blind’ Season 6 Makes a Great Case for Therapy

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Love Is Blind Season 6, Episodes 1-6.)

There are many great mysteries in this universe, but for me personally, one will always reign supreme: How do Netflix’s Love Is Blind casting calls always seem to attract the weirdest men alive? From Abhishek “Shake” Chatterjee and his remorseless fatphobia in Season 2 to all the walking red flags in Season 3—including Andrew Liu, who used eye drops to fake-cry in front of producers—this show has long been a magnet for absolute dillweeds. (Don’t even get me started about Izzy and his cabinet full of paper plates from Season 5, or we’ll be here all day!)

And yet, like a delusional moth to a flame, I continue to enter each season with fresh hope that history will not repeat itself. “Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky,” I think to myself. “Maybe this time, they won’t have dead plants and toilet flies. Maybe this time, they’ll stay… or at least stay functional.” Alas, Love Is Blind Season 6, which takes our grand experiment to Charlotte, North Carolina, has once again reminded me of the perils that often accompany wishful thinking. This time around, however, bizarre behavior is not solely or even mostly the purview of the men.

More than perhaps any other season of this compulsively watchable trainwreck of a dating show, Love Is Blind Season 6 is all about ignoring red flags—and, in fairness, there’s a lot of that on both sides of these relationships. Some of the villains in this season emerge pretty quickly, like the wealth planner named Matthew who uses the same script to seduce multiple women and ultimately tries to sidestep accountability by pointing out that “America” loves an “underdog.” (Sir, what???) Others are more subtle, like the smooth-talking Clay, who reveals his shallowness and issues with commitment in pieces. Flight attendant Chelsea struggles with self-confidence, while her partner, Jimmy, seems to think the women who date him should be able to read his mind and just know his feelings. And then, there’s Jeramey, who chooses to be with one woman before turning into a complete mood killer.

The formula for this series remains the same as always: Dozens of men and women agree to date in “pods” and get engaged without seeing one another. After a quick reveal, they jet off for a honeymoon and then retreat back to their regular lives to test the waters before ultimately deciding at the altar whether or not they want to get married. Our hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey are as absent as ever for most of the proceedings, leaving the cast to wade through this emotional whirlpool on their own.

Each season of Love Is Blind brings its own flavor, and some are deeper than others; Seasons 1 and 4 featured genuinely compelling relationships we could root for, while 2, 3, and 5 were mostly there for the drama. Producers will never know for sure what kinds of connections a season might generate based on casting alone, but like the season before it, Love Is Blind Season 6 skews heavily toward drama. Six episodes in, I can safely say there is only one couple I actually believe would have a shot at success after the altar, and that might just be because I’ve seen them the least. For the most part, these connections feel shallow, unstable, and above all confusing. Thank God the drama is so damn good.

This season, five couples make it to the honeymoon phase in the Dominican Republic.

Chelsea and Jimmy are probably the most fascinating, because they emerged from a love quadrangle: In addition to Chelsea, Jimmy was also dating a single mother named Jess, while Chelsea ultimately chose Jimmy over a be-mulleted heart of gold named Travis. While Chelsea mostly seems to have put Travis out of her mind post-engagement, Jimmy is clearly a little hung up about what happened with Jess. (Maybe it’s because she warned him, “When you see and realize what you missed out on, you’re going to choke. You are going to need your EpiPen to open up your airways.”) He also couldn’t help but tell producers that although Chelsea is gorgeous, she “lied” about her looks when she said people have compared her to Megan Fox.

Pretty much immediately after these two arrived in Mexico, you could tell the vibes were off. Chelsea constantly needed verbal validation, and Jimmy—who once told a very annoyed Jess his feelings should “go without saying”—didn’t seem to know how to support her. He did not help things when he commented at the group’s first cocktail mixer that Chelsea’s former housemate, Amber Desiree (“A.D.”), is “stacked.” Until Jimmy learns how to boost Chelsea’s confidence in their connection, it’s going to be rough sailing.

A.D., meanwhile, got engaged to an entrepreneur named Clay, who was at first reluctant to get engaged without discussing looks. He eventually relented, but then again, he also couldn’t understand why she didn’t like his comment that he’d tell her to “get in that motherfucking gym” if she ever got out of shape, even due to pregnancy. (I mean, swoon—did he get that from an Andrew Tate seminar or something?) Clay seems very interested in listening and learning and all that, and he even cried on screen once, but it’s unclear how deep certain lessons will ultimately permeate. For A.D.’s sake, let’s hope they do!

Apart from Jimmy and Chelsea, our other complicated couple this season appears to be Jeramey and Laura. He was dating another woman, Sarah Ann, while in the pods, and from the future episodes preview, it appears they might not be quite finished talking. Laura loves Jeramey’s cleanliness—he’s got not one but two robotic vacuums running constantly at home!—but she also hates his Hawaiian shirts. Their humor might also not be quite aligned; when Laura jokingly suggested to Jeramey that he “bean dip” A.D. at the cocktail party (a term I’d been blissfully unaware of until now and refuse to explain) Jeramey went ahead and told everyone, which really did not please Clay… Or, for that matter, Laura, who said the whole thing was just a joke in confidence, although I’m still fuzzy on the actual punchline. Regardless, Johnny left the mixer early after that unfortunate kerfuffle, signaling that trouble might have already erupted in paradise.

Johnny and Amy might have the greatest chance for success. They’ve at least had some of the deep conversations you’d expect people to have before they got engaged. When she confided in him about her worry for her younger brother, who is on the spectrum and is working toward living independently from their parents, he genuinely seemed interested and eager to step up, should the need ever arise. Their relationship seems to be built on the kind of care that this show can cultivate in its best moments—a reciprocal, no-holds-barred kind of dedication. Too bad we also seem to spend the least time with these two out of all the couples!

And then, there’s Brittany and Kenneth. She’s a teacher, he’s a principal, and they both love God. As aligned as these two are on a religious and professional values front, I can’t help but wonder what their day-to-day might look like. To their credit, however, they have already discussed how they might confront prejudice in their day-to-day lives as an interracial couple; A.D. also pressed Kenneth during the cocktail mixer to consider whether Brittany would be up to the task of raising Black children, and he seemed confident on that front as well. These two definitely have a more solid foundation than many of our central couples, but as a godless heathen, I am also admittedly skeptical of any relationship that delays physical intimacy until after marriage. We’ll see what happens once they leave their honeymoon!

Things aren’t quite as chaotic this season as they were during, say, Season 3, but still, the groundwork for disaster all seems to be in place. Chelsea is trying not to notice how “uncomfy” she feels with Jimmy, and he can’t help but constantly tell her things that she does not want to hear. (Did I mention that he literally told her during their in-person reveal that he’d thought about going home that morning? I mean, woof!) A.D., a self-proclaimed recovering “fix-a-ho,” is trying to fix a man with an admittedly huge ego. Laura is already annoyed at Jeramey for failing to appreciate her humor, and he’s already storming out of parties, which is never auspicious on this show. As for the other two couples, eh! We’ll see. Only one couple got married last season, but who knows? Maybe this time, more than two couples will win true happiness.