Netflix had an absolute smash hit on its hands from the moment Love Is Blind Season 1 premiered.

From its impeccable set design, down-to-earth hosts, and a relatable cast with a flair for drama, the show has it all.

At least, that's what it seems.

While its massive fan base is undeniable, it's hard to overlook the fact that a glaringly large portion of the population is unrepresented on Love Is Blind.

The concept of this reality dating series is that looks shouldn't matter when finding a partner to spend your life with. At least, that's what they tell us.

But as much as they tout that premise, they still happily and exclusively cast conventionally attractive, thin, and mostly white participants.

The producers also haven't explored opening up the series to include the LGBTQ+ community, a move that other similar shows have found successful. The Ultimatum: Queer Love, another standout Netflix hit, drew in a new fan base — one that Love Is Blind is largely missing out on.

That's not to say that there has never been an LGBTQ+ participant on Love Is Blind. Unfortunately, when Carlton Morton came out to his fiance on the show, he was met with a less-than-welcoming response.

The show also has issues with size. In the best case, they want to pretend that fat people don't exist. Worst case? The producers don't think fat people deserve to experience a whirlwind, fairytale romance.

Very few Love Is Blind participants have ever seen the plus-sized clothing section of a department store. Why is that?

Are the producers afraid that the show's premise will fall apart if someone discovers they accidentally fell in love with a fat person and rejects their new fiance on sight?

Is it about the image for the streaming giant? Fatphobia in mainstream television is no secret, and it would surprise no one to learn that Netflix specifically avoided casting plus-sized participants.

Throughout the second season, we're forced to watch Abhiskek "Shake" Chatterjee loudly proclaim that he wasn't attracted to the woman he got engaged to in the pods. Over and over again.

His then-fiancee, the absolutely stunning Deepti Vempati, was the subject of Shake's disrespectful comments for an entire season and beyond.

Again, we're talking about an objectively beautiful woman with whom this man supposedly fell in love through a solid wall.

Once they met in person, he couldn't stop talking about how deeply unattracted to Deepti he was. Ultimately, the two went their separate ways at the altar.

Most of the couples who get engaged in the pods and go on to meet in person for the first time talk about how beautiful their new partner is.

Many of them make comments about how their fiance isn't the type of person they'd normally go for, but they still find them attractive.

At no point on the show has a couple ever said they didn't find their partner physically appealing and then gone on to get married.

To be fair, the hosts of Love Is Blind have never claimed that looks don't matter at all in a relationship. They just set out to prove that it was possible to fall in love with a person without knowing what they looked like.

That hasn't stopped participants from having conversations inside the pods about physical features, though.

One Season 6 cast member learned the hard way that mentioning a potential celebrity doppelganger could backfire.

When Jimmy Presnell asked Chelsea Blackwell during a pod date if she'd ever been told she looked like a celebrity, she answered honestly.

Despite making it clear that she didn't see the resemblance, Chelsea's admission that she'd been compared to Megan Fox created a firestorm.

Not only did Jimmy accuse Chelsea of lying about her appearance, but she also became the subject of countless memes across the internet.

There's nothing quite like being relentlessly made fun of by strangers for a passing comment, is there?

Clearly, looks matter in this show. And not only that — they carry quite a lot of weight.

Other cast members have shared little details about their looks. Height, weight, eye, and hair color: These features are casually brought up because people are trying to carefully suss out whether someone is worth their time.

Would Love Is Blind be successful if they cast average-looking people? Unlikely.

Part of the show's charm is the fact that it takes its viewers on a ride to a land where everyone is glamorous, everyone is a star, and everyone has a chance at a happy ever after.

As long as you're attractive, of course.

Don't forget to be straight and thin, too, or else you might find that love actually has perfect vision.

The show is entertaining, of course. It gives us what we want: drama, romance, suspense, and more drama.

It's important that we recognize that reality TV is anything but real. The folks behind the curtain are methodically choosing who will take part in these shows.

If you don't feel represented, it's not because you're any less valuable than anyone else. It's because there's a system in place that prioritizes certain people because their stories sell.

Love isn't blind, but the system is.

The post Love Is Blind Proves Its Premise, But Only If You’re Straight, Hot, and Thin appeared first on TV Fanatic.

But as she explains in a new interview with Variety, Poche soon found herself in a hellish situation involving abuse, isolation, and some very messy legal drama.

According to legal documents filed by Poche, the nightmare began when production staff seized her phone, passport, and driver’s license and proceeded to lock her in a hotel room.

Poche says her safety was further compromised when she was pressured into an abusive relationship with Carter Wall, a fellow contestant who made his way through the show's vetting process despite being unemployed, unhoused, and addicted to multiple substances.

Poche's story might be more horrifying than most, but sadly, her situation is not unique among the participants in reality television shows.

The genre that boomed in the late '90s and early 2000s, with hit series like Survivor and The Bachelor, has since squandered its reputation as unproblematic fare that's (mostly) suitable for the entire family.

These days, it seems that for every frivolous, relatively inconsequential reality controversy — like Vanderpump Rules' infamous "Scandoval" — there are several darker, more destructive controversies.

And far too many of them involve producers either turning a blind eye or actively making the situation worse.

The most egregious of these recent scandals involved TV's most ostensibly squeaky-clean family, the Duggars.

In 2019, eldest son Josh Duggar was arrested for possession of child pornography.

He was eventually convicted for his crimes and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

It was not the first Duggar sex scandal, and TLC had previously allowed the family to continue filming new episodes even after it was revealed that Josh had molested four of his sisters while they were still children.

Some fault the network for giving the family so many chances, while others believe that the Duggars — religious extremists with a wide array of hateful views — never should've been given a platform in the first place.

The Duggar scandal might be the worst example of a team of professional documentarians collectively ignoring a set of inconvenient facts.

But it's certainly not the only instance of such willful blindness.

Love is Blind Season 5 Reveals Shocking Trailer

Take, for example, MTV's Teen Mom franchise, which has showcased countless incidents of questionable parenting and full-blown child abuse during its nearly 15-year run.

Series villain Jenelle Evans temporarily lost custody of her kids in 2019 after her husband, David Eason, shot and killed the family dog in front of his horrified children. 

For many longtime MTV viewers, the incident did not come as a surprise, as the show had been documenting Jenelle and David's abusive tendencies and substance abuse issues for several seasons.

These days, Jenelle and David are once again under investigation by CPS, a fact that comes as a shock to no one — other than maybe the couple themselves.

Jenelle was fired from Teen Mom following the dog-shooting incident, but that move came after a public outcry, which made it virtually impossible for MTV to continue profiting from her family's dysfunction.

It was another reminder of how dark the world of reality TV can get.

But it certainly wasn't the first time that viewers were forced to consider the ethical implications of making stars out of the most deplorable figures in our society.

For many Americans, reality TV began to seem less like a fun distraction and more like a cause for concern around the time that the host of the popular NBC series The Apprentice was elected President of the United States.

Donald Trump was famous long before he became a reality star, of course, but the show was the driving force behind his early-2000s resurgence in popularity.

And there's a good chance that without that path back to the mainstream, Trump's political career would not have met with such a shocking level of success.

Whether you love the 45th president or think he's a harbinger of the apocalypse, his meteoric rise and unprecedented dominance of our political landscape serve as evidence that reality television is no longer just cheap fodder for gaps in the primetime schedule.

Unfortunately, no one seems eager to discuss the impact that this newest and most nebulous of genres is having upon our psyches and our society.

Love is Blind Season 5 Reunion — With a Catch

In fact, no one seems more eager to avoid having that conversation than the people who produce and platform these shows.

In the years before Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie starred in The Simple Life, celebrities were expected to bring some sort of talent or unique ability to the table.

Now, in the era of Kim Kardashian, the idea of becoming "famous for being famous" is so widely accepted that "influencer" has become one of the most popular career ambitions among teens and young adults.

It's a situation that's given reality producers an astonishing level of power.

These kingmakers are now able to exploit young wannabe stars without paying them a dime, and as stories like Renee Poche's remind us, that's the sort of situation that's almost certain to lead to abuse.

The circumstances are unlikely to change without some sort of legal intervention, but you can be sure that regulating the world of reality television is not a high priority for US legislators — especially since most of them are probably watching these shows before bed, just like the rest of us.

What do you think? Will this be the beginning of the end of the reality world or at least change how it's manipulated for viewing? We'd love to hear from you.

The post Reality TV’s Reckoning: Will Exploitative Producers Finally Be Forced to Answer For Decades of Abuse and Corruption? appeared first on TV Fanatic.