Nick Dorka was matched with Hannah Jiles on Season 7 of Love is Blind (US). Photo / Netflix
Nick Dorka was matched with Hannah Jiles on Season 7 of Love is Blind (US). Photo / Netflix
Note: This story features major spoilers for Episodes 7-9 of Love is Blind.
Episodes seven, eight and nine of Love Is Blind see couples returning to the DC area, moving into shared apartments in Ballston and meeting future in-laws. Easy enough, right?
Not if you ask Tyler Francis, 34,and Ashley Adionser, 32; Nick Dorka, 29, and Hannah Jiles, 27; Stephen Richardson, 34, and Monica Davis, 37; Garrett Josemans, 33, and Taylor Krause, 30; Marissa George, 32, and Ramses Prashad, 35; and Alexandra Byrd, 33, and Tim Godbee, 33.
Nick doesn’t know how often to vacuum his apartment (read: his parents’ basement) or how to boil water for pasta. Nick has a shaky grasp of the stock market. Nick is the proud owner of a black Ikea Malm bedframe. Nick is 28 years old. He’s saved by the fact that he doesn’t live, as expected, in a five-person group house in Clarendon, but it’s hard for Hannah to picture him taking out the trash without being asked.
Nick revealed to Hannah that he had cooked pasta only once in his life. Photo / Netflix
2. Some men can’t be trusted
Tyler’s surprise reveal of his three children had Ashley crying on the couch. People have previous relationships and families - but Ashley only learned about Tyler’s two weeks before the wedding.
Stephen’s unfaithfulness to Monica, the most beautiful woman on the planet, was surprising and disappointing. Was it cheating? Maybe, maybe not. But explicit texts to another woman probably aren’t the best way to start a marriage. We were all rooting for you. How dare you. But points to Monica for insisting that Stephen doesn’t leave without coughing up his share. As Stephen, unemployed and now single, leaves their shared apartment, she says to him: “I would like you to Venmo me the money you owe me for me carrying your weight the last couple days.”
DC yuppies are famously opinionated. Ramses is no exception. During a deep conversation with Marissa, who spent seven years in the Navy, he mentions his disenchantment with US foreign policy and military strategy, saying “I will always heavily critique how the US has destabilized entire countries.”
Marissa brings a nuanced view to the conversation, emphasizing her support for individual troops, but he holds firm in his beliefs. But in his conversations with Marissa’s friends and family, he remains stubborn and doesn’t seem to recognize Marissa’s military service as a part of her personal history. Her friends seem unconvinced, one groaning when Ramses mentions that he wouldn’t marry Marissa if she were still in the military.
Interestingly, while discussing future family planning, Ramses’s reluctance to wear a condom during sex feels very antithetical to his socially liberal persona, seemingly blind to his own privileges as a man of not having to concern himself with contraception or the challenges experienced by women in the military.
4. (Northern) Virginia is for Lovers
The Northern Virginia season of Love Is Blind is off and running. The couples are living in short-term rentals in - where else - the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor: the emotional, spiritual and symbolic capital of “I’m-from-DC-but-actually-I’m-not.” Garrett and Taylor take a jaunt down I-95 to F-Burg (Fredericksburg, for the uninitiated), Nick meets Hannah’s family at Tupelo Honey in Courthouse, and we get a preview of weddings at a venue our colleagues confirmed is in Fauquier County. Besides one or two individual dates, the couples stay west of the Potomac, but about 80% of B-roll footage is in Washington - a place that is decidedly not Northern Virginia.
Garrett and Taylor in Season 7 of Love is Blind. Photo / Netflix
5. By the numbers
B-roll shots of the Capitol building: 12
Times Monica mentioned wanting flowers: 3
Number of children Tyler kept secret: 3
Moments where background music suggests that Marissa’s mother will cut off Ramses’s genitalia: 1
6. Predictions
Taylor and Garrett make it to the altar, announce they’re not ready for marriage but move to San Diego together.
Ashley and Tyler break up because of the “sperm donor” situation.
Marissa and Ramses make it to the altar, but Ramses says no before Marissa can say anything.
Nick and Hannah break up before the wedding, devastating Nick’s parents.
Alex and Tim could go either way.
After breaking up, Brittany and Leo find each other again and fall in love. Weirder things have happened. This is Love Is Blind.
