Smart People Can Like Dumb Stuff Too, Okay?!

A kind-of defence of trash reality TV… except, not really.

I am not a dumb person. I have an English degree, for crying out loud! (Although I managed to get it without reading Ulysses, which honestly I feel makes me even smarter.) I use the word “myriad” as often as I can. I read books about gender inequality and social science and I can almost always get my Wordle within four tries!

I am not a dumb person, and yet I watch a lot of what you could call dumb-person TV.

As I write this, I am watching the second season of Love is Blind, a Netflix show in which an undetermined number of single women go on dates with an undetermined number of single men, all within “pods”, separated by a wall. In other words: they go on dates with one another without ever seeing one another. Hence: love is blind.

Right now, a man named Salvador is playing the ukulele and singing a song he wrote (about her) to a woman named Mallory. This is a confluence of a few of my least favourite things – a public display of affection, spontaneous guitar-playing, earnest singer-songwriter vibes – which isn’t helping my growing feelings of discomfort.

I do not like this show. And yet, I watch.

Love is Blind is not the only show on my hate-watch list. I became an avowed member of Bachelor Nation during Katie Thurston’s season of Bachelorette, the 17th in the franchise. After Katie succeeded – and failed before kind of succeeding again – in finding love on screen, I watched Michelle get the ring on her finger in season 18. I then moved on to The Bachelor, starring Clayton, a reject from Michelle’s season.

This is de rigueur in Bachelor-world; Katie first popped up in season 25 of The Bachelor while Michelle was runner-up in that very same season. Those who don’t make it as the next Bachelor or Bachelorette will very often be next seen popping up on the raunchier, rowdier Bachelor in Paradise, which is, incidentally, where I draw the line. No BiP for me, thanks.

While there is a certain social sciences defence you could use to justify your watching Love is Blind – and yes, I have – there is no such excuse for indulging in any of the many Bachelor iterations. While Love is Blind purports to examine whether or not a true connection can override physical attraction (spoiler alert: it can’t!), there are no such philosophical queries being raised in Bachelor Nation.

Contestants argue over who is here for the “right reasons” (love, as opposed to fame and/or a potential starring role in future seasons); the current season had a very long, boring storyline that revolved around whether or not one contestant was in the hot tub when another contestant cooked shrimp, which she then offered to share. (This should have been part of a pre-show psychiatric evaluation; only psychopaths would eat shrimp in a hot tub.)

In Love is Blind, we see Shayne trying to figure out whether his connection with Shaina is stronger than his connection with Natalie. We, the viewer, watch as he struggles to ascertain whether the long, nuanced conversations he’s had with Natalie about relationships and humour and loyalty will reign supreme over the long, nuanced conversations he’s had with Shaina about what she’s wearing (a crop top, which he finds “so sexy”).

It all reminds me – bear with me, I have an English degree – a bit of Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours, where “women are no longer born naturally, girls (called "eves") are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age” (Google Books).

As Only Ever Yours approaches its chilling denouement, the girls are introduced to their potential husbands – the men get to choose, obviously – and we witness one young man choose between two girls, one of whom is prim, proper, almost aloof, while the other is more physical, more obvious in her desire (to be chosen, honestly, although to him it must surely seem more carnal).

Though Love is Blind presents itself as being more egalitarian in its design – there are equal numbers of men and women, and each person is free to choose whomever they like – there is a certain inevitability about it that feels, for want of a better word, depressing. Season two, at least, offered an alternative in the form of Mallory, who ultimately has to choose between Jarett (Jare Bear, I could not make this up) and Salvador (the ukulele player), the one woman who seemed to truly have “options”.

The show does not, of course, offer as an option the choice to walk away from it all – at least not an option that is in any way woven into the narrative. People we meet early on – like Trisha, who has, “a lot of Instagram followers” (8,000-odd) – slowly fade from view as they, presumably, fail to elicit a “true connection”, and therefore an engagement, in the “pods”.

It will not surprise you to know that there is a spin-off I would watch: what did the contestants who did not make it to the next stages – a pre-wedding honeymoon in Mexico, followed by a fortnight of co-habitation in Chicago before the will-they-won’t-they moment of the wedding ceremony itself – take from the experience?

Are they glad they didn’t end up on Netflix playing beach volleyball in their swimsuits? Do they envy Shane the meaty pastry he ate on a candlelit beach? Are they relieved that they didn’t have to endure being jilted, live on camera?

The sad truth of it is: probably not. How else will they achieve Instagram fame and shill $50 jumpers to the masses?!

The sadder truth is, of course, that I can’t wait for part 2 to drop on February 18th. I am looking forward to watching last night’s Bachelor, in about 15 minutes’ time when my coffee has brewed. And as for Love Island? I’m counting down the days.