‘Love Is Blind’: Go Inside the Pods That Make Talking to a Wall Romantic

Bars. Events. Volleyball groups. Courting apps. For singles, the query of the place individuals meet is essential. 

“Am I actually going to fulfill my spouse in a grocery retailer?” asks Cole Barnett, a 27-year-old realtor and contestant on season 3 of courting present Love Is Blind. The assumed reply is not any, no matter how typically he stalks the aisles of his native Dealer Joe’s, eyeing each the frozen Thai vegetable dumplings and different consumers’ ring fingers. 

That is why, ostensibly, Cole and 29 different singles have opted to go searching for love not in a crowded membership or bustling bookstore. As an alternative, they’ve headed into “pods” simply large enough to carry a sofa and all their expectations that the particular person on the opposite facet of a soothing, swirly blue wall is marriage materials.

“There’s one thing concerning the pods that actually simply permits individuals to be extremely weak,” Love Is Blind Govt Producer Ally Simpson stated.

The primary 4 episodes of season 3 of Love Is Blind arrived on Netflix this week. For many who’ve managed to keep away from the memes on social media, the present locations singles of their 20s and 30s into small rooms referred to as pods, the place they discuss to one another for hours on finish with out really seeing one another. Till they get engaged, that’s. 

The present explores whether or not individuals can fall in love with out the same old hang-ups like age, peak or weight getting in the best way. (It helps that many of the solid qualifies as conventionally engaging.) After they do meet,  the engaged {couples} spend time at a resort, dwelling in shared residences, and ideally make it to the altar. Because the present began in 2020, there have been 4 marriages, two of which have resulted in divorce. Nevertheless it all begins with dates within the pods.

Each octagonal pod has one of many aforementioned couches — grey and normally rounded or squared off — and a round ottoman that sits on a protracted strip of darkish pink carpet (the pink being a nod to like and romance). The partitions are velvety wanting, and the pillows are sometimes some mixture of earthy browns and reds. Although you may’t see it on display screen, every pod has snacks stashed away.

Simpson stated there are two primary objectives within the pods’ design: They have to be snug and so they cannot be distracting. 

“We would like you to get in there and really feel at residence, really feel such as you’re on a date, and simply be a snug place which you can settle into for a protracted, very long time — they discuss for hours and hours,” Simpson advised me over the cellphone. 

Some daters actually do get snug. Whereas most begin out wearing three-piece fits and silky semi-formal attire, inevitably, they begin going into the pods with athleisure garments, hauling of their blankets and the signature golden steel goblets which have gone viral. Prim posture provides solution to sitting on the ground or sprawling on the sofa. Or, within the case of 29-year-old pilates teacher Raven Ross, leaping jacks.  

Although the pods are furnished sparsely, the solid can ask the producers for something from extra elaborate themed dates to facial skincare masks to nachos. Within the first batch of episodes this season, Ross brings in yoga balls for her and her date (and later an train band). There was a silent disco the place the solid might hearken to music with one another by means of headphones. Simpson even stated there was a beach-themed date together with seaside chairs that did not make the season’s ultimate reduce. 

“If you are going to marry somebody, you wish to know which you can have enjoyable with them,” Simpson stated. “You wish to know, Will we join over the music? When she will get her sushi, is she choosy about what sauce was there or wasn’t there? You wish to create these experiences to attempt to study as a lot as you may about one another.”

Discuss to the wall

The broader coloration palette of the pods could be fairly mellow, however there is a notable brilliant streak of coloration in each pod. The couches face a blue wall that type of glows and swirls. Simpson stated it is meant to represent the power of the particular person within the adjoining pod, to assist the daters really feel nearer and fewer like they’re merely listening to a voice piped in by means of a speaker from some place else. She stated the present’s producers have frolicked sitting, wanting on the wall themselves and asking themselves if it feels proper.

“If it was only a clean wall, you would possibly really feel such as you had been on their lonesome in that room,” Simpson stated. They landed on the wall’s blue tone as one thing that feels inviting with out being a distraction. 

When it comes time to suggest, largely, the {couples} rise up off the sofa and stand going through one another by means of that blue wall. 

As keen because the {couples} are to get out of the pods finally and, you already know, have a look at one another, for some, these pod conversations find yourself being the best a part of the connection. Season 1’s Mark Cuevas and Jessica Batten went by means of their share of tumult — partly as a result of Jessica was hung up on one other man from the pods — however in a final ditch effort to reconnect, Mark tried to re-create the pod expertise at their condo. 

The pair sat on reverse sides of a wall with candles, rose petals and fancy dinners, and as Simpson identified, that night time was the night time they lastly took the step of getting intercourse. 

“It may be scary to look somebody within the eye and to share one thing,” Simpson stated, “This simply makes you’re feeling protected, like ‘I am simply gonna put it out to the wall. I do know somebody is on the opposite facet, however it appears like I am simply telling the wall.'”

Simply do not freak out when a voice from behind the wall asks you to marry it.