It honestly baffles me how much people love dating shows, and for the longest time, I didn’t get it until I started seeing discussions on Reddit. I guess it all boils down to community building, and if your spleen tells you to, you should, eh? (If you know, you know; if you don’t, go watch this season and come back here to discuss.) The concept of Love Is Blind is super simple on paper. You talk to people from inside pods, you get a vibe check, you ask all the arranged marriage questions, and then you find yourself an emotional connection that will last you much longer than just physical attraction. However, the first thing I want to point out is that if you’re on this show, you’re already a 10/10 in terms of attractiveness. Because why is every man a gym bro and every woman a model? I can’t remember if I watched the first season specifically for work, too, but I didn’t know how things worked going into this (or I erased the memory). It does feel like you’re jumping into something that’s already sort of going. But it’s easy breezy for sure. Soon after a few couples are engaged, they’re sent off on a fancy vacation, and this is where the drama begins. With that said, though, let’s jump straight into the 8 episodes of Love Is Blind UK season 2. To make things super easy, I’m just going to break down the couples one at a time.
Billy and Ashleigh
Ashleigh and Billy hit it off right off the bat, and it’s really surprising how quickly they form this connection and also say “I love you” to each other. Ashleigh also acts like an agony aunt for the rest of the group; she’s always asking the girls how they’re doing, trying to get all up in their business, which does feel a little bit over the top in my opinion. Billy’s an army guy, and Ashleigh’s a flight attendant, which is something that he didn’t want even before coming on the show. But since they hit it off, he tries to put that thought aside. But the difficulty is that Billy’s previous marriage didn’t work because of the long distance and them not being around each other enough. This already makes Billy somewhat skeptical about their situation.
In the pods, the couple is absolutely fantastic; they have banter, they get along superbly, and they have similar backgrounds in that Billy’s a military trainer, while Ashleigh’s also ex-army, so they’ve got more than just an emotional connection. It makes it very clear that they’re meant to be, until it’s not so clear anymore. After they see each other, their bond grows stronger, and it seems to get even better when they’re in Cyprus, but it’s when they start living together in Manchester that things get a little bit difficult.
I think the turning point is specifically when Ashleigh doesn’t want to eat a routine meal like Billy has done his whole life. This is something he doesn’t want to change about himself, but I don’t understand why he wouldn’t just let her get cake. They later have a conversation about it, though, and it seems like they’re communicating, and Ashleigh mentions that she was bullied for being skinny as a kid, which is why her relationship with food is something that she cherishes. It helped her gain confidence and learn to love herself. Billy seems to be understanding of this.
Additionally, Ashleigh’s father is on board almost immediately seeing her beaming, and he even tears up when she asks him to walk down the aisle, which is so sweet, but Billy’s dad tells her straight up that he told him that he was going to leave the show if there were any flight attendants, which is something Billy failed to mention to her. It just makes her realize how big a deal it really is, so her career is essentially the one thing in the way here. But Ashleigh meets his mother, and she seems to be getting along wonderfully with them, and everything looks fantastic until he tells her he’s 50-50 about the wedding! What? The man’s been convincing her that he’s obsessed with her this whole time, and suddenly he says he’s 50/50! She’s left absolutely heartbroken because she’s all in, so we’ll just have to wait for the next two episodes to find out what happens with them.
Kieran and Megan
Oh, the drama with these two is quite crazy. Kieran first makes a connection in the pods with a girl named Sophie, but then later makes connections with another girl named Megan. Sophie and Megan are drastically different from each other because the former is reserved and self-confident, while the latter is more excitable and cheerful all the time. Kieran realizes pretty soon that he’s more into Megan and decides to give her a present without even telling Sophie that he’s exploring another connection. This is definitely manipulative, because yes, everyone knows they’re there to date, but if you’ve made two strong connections, they both need to know about the other. Sophie’s left broken-hearted, and she confronts him about it too, but he’s so nonchalant (absolutely red flag behavior).
Also, that whole conversation with gamer man Kieran’s boy gang was so awkward because why were they there to interrogate them both? “Why should it turn into a marriage?” Bro, what? I was so confused, and Megan was just sitting there between 5 boys, who looked like they were forced to be on the show. It was just so uncomfortable to watch. To make matters worse, the show paints it like Megan and Sophie have such bad blood because, as the show progresses, even when Kieran and Megan are perfectly lovey-dovey and they’re crazy about each other, Megan brings up Sophie a few times after she shows up to the big party.
Kieran looks immediately regretful and calls Sophie attractive, but Megan then thinks the woman is trying to be rude by making snarky comments to her about Kieran. She just commented on his jacket; I mean, fine. Kieran then apologizes to Sophie for the gift situation (finally), and they part ways, but then the craziest thing happens with Javen, which we’ll get to in a bit because that is some TEA. I mean, these two are a cute couple. I think they’ll end up saying yes. They’ve both got some things about them I find iffy, which I guess makes them perfect for each other.
Jed and Bardha
This Lebanese-Albanian couple sounds like they stepped out of a fantasy show. I mean, look at their names; I can totally picture it. But leaving fantasy world aside, this couple seems to be the most natural of them all. They ease into dating slowly, with caution, before realizing they both want the same things for the future, which is children. Honestly, the amount of time they spend talking about children was a lot for me, but hey, you do you, eh? Jed and Bardha seem to be doing great, even in Cyprus, until they have a slight disagreement. Bardha’s an immigrant, and she’s been the caretaker of her family since she was a teenager. This makes her a very independent woman; she’s very self-serving and doesn’t need a “man” to be a provider for her. I really like how she says, “I don’t need you; I’m here because I want to be.”
This is something Jed can’t really understand at first, because he’s grown up thinking he’s going to look after his wife and be the provider and protector. But after meeting each other’s families, it seems their bond grows stronger, and they’re going to really enjoy each other’s company. They also don’t really interfere with the other couples; they seem sweet and loving even in front of everybody else, which is nice. However, the trailer for the final two episodes has people questioning if they end up together. There’s mention of an argument, which could imply that this independent nature of Bardha’s has ultimately rubbed Jed the wrong way.
Kal and Sarover
Kal is half Pakistani and half British, and Sarover is Indian, which makes for very interesting combination. These two are also a couple that takes it slowly; they build vulnerability and an emotional connection with each other in the pods. But it’s only after the proposal and after meeting each other that Kal reveals that Sarover is nothing like his type. Now, one could argue that they’d never seen each other, so he wouldn’t have known, but he knew right from the start that she was Indian, and his type is blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, so… Anyway, this is something that irks Sarover because Bardha and Ashleigh are exactly his type. I found this to be quite a forced issue because it doesn’t seem like she’s the insecure type, plus the real problem for Sarover is her family.
When Sarover meets Kal’s mom and grandmother, it’s really pleasant, and they’re delighted to have her. It also looks like she’ll fit in just perfectly, but his brother is super skeptical, specifically because of that type of thing at first. The other thing is that he’s apparently never shown interest in marriage and would break off relationships before they got serious, but then he suddenly went on this show, which is very odd. But Kal does seem to be committed to Sarover, except when he’s more committed to Demola, a fellow contestant.
So here’s the other drama with our final couple, Katisha and Javen. I’ll get into the details with them in a bit, but Kal starts to have issues with Katisha specifically because she broke Demola’s heart last minute and didn’t seem to care about it at all. Kal takes it upon himself to find out what happened, even when Sarover tries to take Katisha’s side. They even chat about it in Cyprus, and Katisha simply tells Kal that she went into this whole thing with emotions, and she just felt like she had a better connection with Javen.
Javen and Katisha
The most controversial couple award goes to, drum roll please, Katisha and Javen. Now, the drama begins right in the pods when Katisha makes a sweet connection with Demola, a man who is very expressive of his feelings for her and very gentle and straightforward. On the other hand, she’s into Javen, too, a man who seems to be emotionally unavailable and only cares if he’s a good catch, to be honest. The thing here is that Javen is exactly Katisha’s type. He’s the player she’s broken up with a million times before. The worst part is that the man literally only talks about physical chemistry for the most part in the pods, and he’s way too excited when he sees her and gets to stay with her. “We didn’t sleep much.” Ew, man, grow up. Additionally, they don’t say “I love you” at all, and even when they’re living together, they don’t seem to be into each other at all.
The real issue I have with Javen is also that he tells all the boys that he’ll propose to her only if she admits that she would want to propose to him—just wow. So when the gang all get back together, and Sophie’s there, Kieran and Javen are both immediately excited to see how attractive she is. To make matters worse, he decides to go out partying with the rest of the “boys,” even though Katisha is visibly upset that he spent most of the night ogling Sophie. Now, here’s when Megan comes in and basically says Sophie and Javen had some alone time while they were out later in a photobooth. Megan and Kieran are sure they saw him also with Yolanda and Aanu, another one of the contestants (also a girl; well done with calling Patrick a liar in front of everyone; his spleen probably broke hearing that; sorry, I won’t make any more jokes).
Megan calls Katisha to her room and tells her everything that happened, and Katisha immediately decides to leave the show. She says she’s had enough, and she’s not going to believe a word he says, because she knows he’s lying. Javen tries to convince her that Megan’s the one who’s mistaken, but Katisha really doesn’t care. She leaves a note and the ring on a table and scoots off (good for you, girl). The other thing is that Javen started to act as if he was iffy about her after having a word with Demola, as if he cared at all about Demola’s feelings. Katisha and Demola had a word with each other, and that should’ve been the end of it.
Anyway, in the end, Javen calls Megan and Kieran to his place and has a massive argument with Megan, making her cry. Kieran calms her down, and Javen says he didn’t mean to make her cry and leaves. He basically claims he was not with the girls “all night,” while Megan’s focus is that he was flirting, and that’s the bit that matters. Javen then calls spleen guy to feel consoled, tsk tsk. But yeah, I can’t wait to see what comes next with the rest of the couples and if anybody will end up being married, because the trailer makes it look like nobody is happy, so is love really blind?
