'Love Is Blind' Season 6 Wants You to Forget About the Past

The Big Picture

• Love Is Blind faces legal action due to mistreating contestants, despite reunion's attempt to focus on success stories.
• Contestants endure terrible conditions on the show, ranging from withheld food to mental health issues.
• The show's reunion urges viewers to forget past issues and focus on happy couples, but accountability is essential.

Unfortunately, many reality television shows refuse to care for the people they cast, usually resulting in damaging (and deserved) legal action from those who refuse to keep quiet about this mistreatment. While Love Is Blind, the hit Netflix dating series created by Chris Coelen likes to present itself as a uniquely perfect experiment with a proven track record of helping people find love, the show is no stranger to allegations of causing harm to its contestants. Recent years have seen a massive uptick in people pursuing legal action against it as the series' attempts to create jaw-dropping drama have led them to put contestants into more and more dire situations. The program has a serious issue with how it treats its cast - though, the Season 6 reunion wants you to forget all of that. With these suits clearly in mind, this finale of one of the show's most dramatic seasons brought out every positive aspect (and people) from across its many seasons to try and convince audiences that its only product is loving marriages and happy couples. This series is determined to make everyone watching forget about its past, implying dangerous things about where it may go in the future.

With season 6 being one of Love Is Blind's most dramatic yet, audiences were excited to see what juicy secrets its reunion would reveal. From questioning what made particular couples call off their engagement to deconstructing some immensely messy situations, viewers expected more theatrics than the show had ever presented. What they may not have anticipated was the cloying display of love the entire thing would begin with, as the show's start featured a look back at some of the series' most significant successes. From the effortlessly in love Brett Brown and Tiffany Pennywell Brown or Season 4 or the soon-to-be parents Alexa Alfia and Brennon Lemiux, this portion highlighted just how many successful relationships this experiment has yielded. All the returnees in attendance used their screentime to expound on how grateful they were for the show and its tremendous impact on their lives. Their accounts conveniently forget the horrible situations many were forced to endure during their time on the program.

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From shoddy housing to being refused consistent meals, many previous contestants have described the terrible conditions they endured during their tenure on the series. These accusations began with season 2 contestant Jeremy Hartwell, who sued the show for the horrible labor conditions the contestants were forced to endure. He detailed being withheld food, forced to work 20-hour days, and everyone constantly being supplied with alcohol in the hopes of fraying at their mental well-being, all for the sake of 'good television.' Since his accusations went public, he's been supported by others from the show, their critiques (along with Hartwell's lawsuit) inspiring Love is Blind in recent seasons to prominently feature multiple scenes of the contestants eating delicious plates of food and taking all the rest they need. These were barely concealed attempts by the creators to try and disprove these claims - without ever admitting to what they'd done in the past - and for many viewers, they succeeded, though they can never erase the somehow much darker accusations that have recently come to light.

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One of Love Is Blind's biggest selling points is what a great experience it is for the contestants and how, even those who don't end up married, it is a revelatory experience showing them more about themselves. It must be confusing, then, for the many who were shocked when multiple allegations of the show allowing its contestants to suffer became public. In a situation that is already so stressful, contestants like season 2's Danielle Ruhl have terrifying accounts of suffering from immense mental stress and panic attacks during filming - and the people behind the camera doing nothing. They're left alone to suffer through this mental strife, a harrowing experience that unfortunately became physical with season 5 cast members Tran Dang and Renee Poche. Both women were cut out of the show despite getting engaged and going on honeymoons, with each describing horrific treatment from the men they were committed to - something the creators did nothing about despite it all being filmed. And the worst part is that many of them feel that they're unable to leave, as their contracts often establish that leaving the experiment early means they'll face expensive legal repercussions. The team behind Love is Behind has endlessly denied these claims (often gaslighting the women in the process), yet with all these many accusations piling up, it's become clear: Love is Blind can be a very, very dangerous place.

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But the season 6 reunion wants you to forget about all of that. Showing off the many happy pairs it helped create. The show urges viewers to forget about any of those nasty lawsuits they may have heard about and enjoy this manicured fantasy that paints it as a perfect space for people to find love. This doesn't discount any of these people's genuine relationships. Of course not, but their happiness should not come at the expense of the many people who have suffered for the sake of drama. And despite how heavy-handed this reunion was, Love is Blind should be proud it's brought such happiness to so many. There are literal lives created because of the show, signaling a core good at its mission of helping people come together. But until it admits to all the harm it has done in the past, any happiness the program brings will be tainted by its inability to recognize its past wrongs and work to do better.

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Without addressing and taking accountability for its past mistakes, Love is Blind will always have trouble moving forward. There is clearly something special about the show outside these horrible things; the fact that this reunion featured so many long-lasting couples speaks to something extraordinary about the series' premise that does result in lifetimes of love for many involved. But pushing this image of unending joy does nothing to reassure those aware of the actions the series has been called out for. Nor does it even begin offering much-deserved apologies to those it has wronged in the past. Love is Blind's most recent reunion urges its watchers to forget the past, to think only about the good it brought about while making flippant assurances that any previous issues have been resolved. Yet the emergence of even more recent controversies shows this is far from true. The series can try to make people forget all it wants, but until it puts the work into righting its many wrongs, it will just be another reality show that did its contestants wrong.

Love is Blind is Available to Stream on Netflix in the U.S.

WATCH ON NETFLIX

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