Maybe “Love Is Blind,” but is politics fitting the relationship lens of this show?

The second episode of Washington DC”Love is blindthe season is named after a game a few women play to pass the time: “Perfect husband, but…” It’s as serious as a sleepover, as it offers a series of theoretical dealbreakers: “Perfect husband , but does not carry. shoes anywhere.” “The perfect husband, but he can’t read.”

One of them, Taylor, gives a recurring version of “I can work with that” in response, offering to peruse the menus for both of them. I’ve heard that compromise is the backbone of any lasting relationship.

Reality shows incorporate these little detours to keep the energy light and lively. Now that the show’s wedding episodes have aired, one can’t help but wonder if the show’s producers were bringing out a bit of foreshadowing.

In the same episode, Ramses Prashad talks about his rejection of toxic masculinity, which warmed the heart of Marissa George, the woman on the other side of the famous blue wall that separates their dating group.

Ramses Prashad and Marrisa George in Love Is Blind (Netflix)“I like it more than you might know because I’m used to military manly men,” George says, adding: “I usually date guys who are pretty smart. I dated a conservative Trump supporter for about three years. . . But then I met a progressive liberal guy. For example, I meet people as they are.”

Later, Monica Davis asks Stephen Richardson if he voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Richardson states that he did, then reveals who he voted for.

“I’ll be completely honest: I voted for President Trump because I didn’t like Hillary in the first election,” Richardson tells Davis. “But I despise the way he has handled his time in office. And I voted for Biden, and I can honestly say I put a lot more thought and passion into that second vote than I did the first. And I’ll happily admit that my first vote wasn’t the most educated.”

Perfect husband or wife, but . . .?

Since its 2020 debut, “Love Is Blind” has invited us to watch people who might not have laid eyes on each other in the real world fall in love in its bridges based solely on emotional connections created by their conversation.

Hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey frequently ask if race, age, family, faith or financial considerations will keep each couple from walking down the aisle.

But this may be the first season where politics joins that list of possible obstacles, even if they don’t say it. Actions Are Louder: Prashad’s knee-jerk response to George revealing that she’s been dating a MAGA man is to hurl an insult.

No reality show is 100% honest in how they present their narratives. This has multiple processes and published allegations from previous competitors about abusive working conditions attached to it to remind us of this.

However, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that it took seven seasons for “Love Is Blind” to show the contestants’ conversations about politics and their voting choices.

Certainly the participants from the previous seasons had these conversations as well. I just didn’t see them.

The seventh DC setting probably made it necessary. The caucus in our nation’s capital is full of single people who either work in government or politics and are unfavorable to Republicans.

“When it comes to revealing their affiliation with Trump, no reason is harder than courting,” Political observed in 2018. “‘Trump supporters swipe left’ — meaning ‘don’t bother trying’ — may be the most common disclaimer on Washington dating app profiles.”

That sentiment holds true six years later and well beyond district boundaries. Some “Love Is Blind” suitors didn’t even have to announce their affiliation to draw partisan-flavored scorn for on-screen missteps.

Season 5’s Jared “JP” Pierce didn’t make it past his engagement break with Taylor Rue after he said her makeup turned him off: “It felt like you were fake.” That’s enough of a red flag on its own, but JP’s 24/7 style commitment to the stars, stripes and the old red, white and blue had viewers scouring images for signs of a telltale scarlet cap.

Some might read clues about a person’s politics during mandatory family visits. In Season 2, Kyle Abrams meets Shaina Hurley’s ultra-religious brood, where one of her brothers lists his hobbies as being outdoors, riding dirt bikes, and “being an American,” before asking him to Kyle, an atheist, “Are you a godly man?”

The assumptions viewers might have made about Shaina’s family in those moments say more about who they are than about her. Reality TV gives us a safe space to judge, and “Love Is Blind” gives us an expansive, cushioned one.

Unlike “The Bachelor,” its suitors come to their matches honestly, in that the audience can see if they’re really advertising themselves before the person who can’t see them before they say yes finds out for themselves. In this sense, it confirms many of the horror stories and trappings of the modern era, while frequently (though less so in later seasons) reminding us that romance isn’t entirely on six feet and can overcome daunting obstacles.

Whether a couple gets to “me” depends primarily on what each man and woman in this heteronormative marriage market brings together, first and foremost, which is truthful communication. Both couples moved quickly past Trump’s pin jumps, although George and Prashad struggled over another hurdle during the show’s seventh episode when they discussed her past naval service. George grew up in a military family. Since leaving the Navy, she has come to oppose America’s interventionist policies while supporting people who, like her, enlist at an age when they don’t fully understand what they’re signing up for.

Prashad, who is from Venezuela, says he has “the perspective of people on the outside looking in. . . I understand that I have the privilege of living in this country. But at the same time, I will always strongly criticize the way the US has kind of destabilized entire countries.”

He would later mention Palestine, mostly in passing. This is yet another show where any twitching inside those ubiquitous golden glasses takes the edge off most of the tension. But not all.

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In the end, the votes of Richardson and George’s former lovers had no bearing on why and how their relationships with Davis and Prashad imploded. Davis came across a chain of messages on Richardson’s phone that showed him exchanging strange texts with another woman, putting his off-the-cuff observations about his uncontrollable tumescence into an eye-opening context.

Prashad’s desire to marry George slowly cooled after he expressed concern about contraception (he didn’t want to use condoms, but he didn’t want children right away, putting the burden on George to figure out ), but eventually reduced to a nebula. sorry for the inappropriate energies.

Stephen Richardson and Monica Davis in Love Is Blind (Netflix)Shaming Robertson or dragging Prashad for driving George to the bachelorette party before ripping him off is easy. Social media users are making it the new hobby of the week. (Davis is preparing a multi-course meal on Instagram (of her heroic insistence, in the moment, that Robertson Venmo her the money she lent him before he walked out of her life entirely.)

But the deeper lesson in both stories, one that repeats itself again and again, is the essentiality of being straight with the other person about history and identity, personal and political. That and acknowledging the obvious mismatches that everyone can see at home.

Before breaking up, Prashad and George wonder aloud if love is enough, as she reveals that it could have been if he had told her what she needed to know instead of what he wanted her to know. hear Sight is only a sense and doesn’t even tell half the story.

All episodes of “Love Is Blind” are streaming on Netflix.