Few reality shows are as disgustingly addictive as Love makes you blindThe Netflix reality series debuted in 2020 with an outrageously regressive premise: Would desperate American singles get married after dating in isolated groups, not allowed to see each other and strictly forbidden from showing their appearance to the other participants?

The buzz around Love makes you blind It’s hard to overstate the show’s importance when it first aired—it dominated pop culture coverage and social media for weeks. Its slick production and the high stakes of a real on-screen wedding (the marriages are legally binding, taking the dating show to a new extreme) turned traditional reality TV into cinema—with a dash of betrayal, bickering, and alcohol abuse. The contestants’ utter desperation was glossed over with big-budget glitz. The show was compulsive viewing because it quietly touched on a private desire shared by many millennials: the promise of instant security after a life of instability. It justified itself by offering both the contestants and viewers at home the fulfillment of their desires.

The show produced new seasons every few months and delighted audiences. Its popularity and success as a dating show meant that it largely avoided criticism that it exploited the contestants: several couples who met on the show are still happily married. But last year Love makes you blind has lost its shine. The final season, while still popular, failed to capture the zeitgeist like earlier seasons. The highly anticipated release of the UK version – announced for February 2023 and hosted by Emma and Matt Willis – was met with a surprisingly lukewarm response.

While many reality TV formats become boring after many seasons, even when they are moved to a new setting or country (Love is blind (meaning the show’s eighth episode in four years, with additional versions airing in countries such as Japan, Mexico and Sweden), there’s something else at play here. The once perversely popular A-list marriage show is on the decline, and audiences are less enthusiastic about shows that promise quick, contrived partnerships. Indian dating agency – another pandemic hit from Netflix – appears to have been quietly discontinued last year, while The ultimatum (also from Netflix) struggles to act with its nonsensical premise of asking established couples to swap partners. Married at first sight The franchise – both in the UK and Australia – has failed to generate the same obsessive hype as it did in 2020 and 2021.

Why is this happening now? Partly it’s a matter of circumstance. These shows peaked during the pandemic, during a broader reality TV renaissance. Their stimulating, unique concepts helped break the monotony of successive lockdowns. But in 2024, their premises seem flimsy and boring. Their dynamics have become predictable, and the shows themselves have become ubiquitous. The idea of ​​marrying someone you barely know on TV has become a reality cliche. That means it’s all the more difficult to successfully compete for our attention.

Our social context has also changed. Marriage is an issue for generations increasingly disillusioned with marriage. Nonmonogamy is on the rise, even among those who have found the person they could consider their life partner. This trend has only intensified in a post-pandemic environment.

Love makes you blind seems increasingly representative of a bleak, pessimistic view of love and self-worth. Hovering over all of these shows is the idea that marriage is a transcendent solution to all of life’s problems. As Sophie McBain wrote in 2020 about the boom in these marriage shows, “What it really seems to show is how much people crave a sense of personal connection and intimacy; how little it seems to take for contestants to finally feel like someone understands them.” Witnessing this over and over again makes it impossible to ignore the vulnerabilities that are exploited for our entertainment, while at the same time making it hard to remember what is entertaining about the show in the first place.

This is only exacerbated by reports of how Love makes you blind In the last two years has been at the center of a series of ongoing legal disputes between Netflix and the show’s production company, as well as former contestants and crew members. There have been allegations that contestants were deprived of food and sleep during filming and encouraged to drink alcohol. One former contestant even claimed they were placed in an abusive environment. Netflix has denied the allegations and the production company said mental health support is available.

Perhaps that is why producers are now starting to get more creative when it comes to creating romantic reality TV shows. Shows like I kissed a girl And I kissed a boy on the BBC (both are queer versions of Love Island) and the Golden Bachelor and the Golden Bachelorette on the US channel ABC (age versions of these shows) were huge successes as they managed to offer audiences something new while still delivering the dramatic moments that are fundamental to this genre. A fresher but gentler approach might be what viewers are looking for as a respite after half a decade of reality TV marriages.

Marriage reality shows ultimately offer an accurate reflection of our current, bleak heterosexual love landscape—one in which the promise of escape through artificial love still appeals to many. Yet for all the excitement and enthusiasm they once generated, viewers today are left with a tired, lame concept that desperately hopes we’ll find a reason to keep watching.