Take the aforementioned Nick, a 28-year-old luxury-watch dealer who shares with his love interest Annie Lancaster that his mother sat him down in high school and asked him if he was gay. The two then commence one of the most grossly homophobic conversations I’ve seen on television in recent memory, where they bond over their agreement that being LGBTQ+ is a “fad” influenced by “peer pressure.”
“No matter what, I’m always going to love my kids, but I can’t tell you I would be the first person to be like, Yay, you know what I mean?” Annie, a 31-year-old hairstylist, says.
Nick eventually chooses Annie over his other connection Kait, who he dumps after learning that she lost her religious faith while watching her mother die of cancer (how kind). And this is just one of the conversations in the pods that made me sit up straight and say, “Did they not realize they were on TV?”
Another occurs between Mike and his love interest, Megan Walerius, who informs everyone in the pods that she is known as “Sparkle Megan.” But the main sparkly object Megan, a 35-year-old self-described extremely-successful-badass-bitch career woman, seems to be interested in is money. (She notes her normal type is wealthy men.)
Her main storyline is choosing between Mike, a 38-year-old investor who is her usual “type,” a.k.a. rich and successful, and Jordan, a single dad five years her junior whose main strike against him is that he is, well, not rich and drives a Kia. Really, car-shaming? In this economy? Megan eventually chooses Jordan, it seems because she wants to fight against her normal dating instincts, but is this a couple we are supposed to root for?
In fact, none of the couples this season are giving “happily ever after.” The best of the bunch, Ali Lima and Anton Yarosh, seemed teed up to face similar issues over finances. Another pair, Kacie McIntosh and Patrick Suzuki, barely last five minutes out of the pods after Kacie tells production she’s not attracted to Patrick and breaks it off. This is particularly sad because Patrick’s just spent the past five episodes telling her—and the viewers—that he’s insecure about not being considered traditionally handsome because he is Asian.
