Poor Freddie. All he wanted was to date through a wall, meet someone who didn’t know how gorgeous he was, and spend the rest of his life cuddling on the couch watching movies. Instead, this hot funeral director stumbled into a perfect storm of bad communication, miserable shopping trips, and unnecessarily awkward conversations about money. Love Is Blind: UK might’ve cast more mature couples than other versions of the show, but alas, the drama comes for us all.
Last week kept us cooped up in the pods for too long, but this supersize batch of episodes makes up for lost time. Our couples’ Grecian honeymoon is so intense that Demi and Ollie almost jump ship (more on that later), and things spiral from there. Insecurities are bubbling, parental resentment is brewing, and, in wonderful news for my nosy ass, people are arguing about their financial futures. As someone whose “estate” comprises two dogs, one average-size TV, and about two dozen dusty tubes of lipstick, it’s always fun to see how people with real assets think about their money.
But back to the honeymoon real quick: First, Nicole surprises everyone by showing up with Benaiah. She realized she’d made a mistake choosing Sam over him in the pods, and luckily, Benaiah is still all about her. When these two roll up, everyone loses their minds and group-hugs Benaiah, which further confirms that Sam is as awful as we thought. After that, basically all of the honeymoon drama revolves around the love square between Ollie, Demi, Cat, and Freddie.
Ollie and Cat had a thing in the pods before he chose Demi, and while I believe that Ollie is telling the truth when he says that he never connected with Cat as deeply as he did with Demi, he also can’t help but lick his lips when Cat pulls him aside for a chat. Yuck. The other couples see tension brewing between Ollie and Demi, and they suspect that he might not be into her. Is this a classic case of Shallow Man Who Usually Chases Instagram Hotties Suddenly Gets Cold Feet, or are people like Demi’s fiercely protective pod friend Jasmine projecting a little bit when they grill Ollie over and over about where his head is at?
Demi and Ollie seem to bring down each other’s energy in Greece, and neither of them could communicate their way out of a paper bag if their life depended on it. Then again, if I were Demi and everyone kept insinuating to me that my man wasn’t into me, I’m not sure how cheerful I’d be, either. Ollie is convinced the “external noise” is hampering their connection. At first, I thought this was bullshit, but then they move in together in London and start thriving, which makes me wonder if they just needed everyone to leave them the hell alone.
Freddie’s a pure-hearted hunk, so he mostly just stays out of this mess and tells Cat he’s got her back. But when he admits that he once cheated on a partner seven years ago, you can see the storm gathering. Cat claims that every man she’s ever dated has cheated on her and tells Freddie that she stands by her old mantra: “Once a cheat, always a cheat.” This doesn’t leave much room for progress in their relationship.
I’m not here to condone cheating or say that cheaters should not be asked to answer for their past behavior. Still, if past philandering is a total deal-breaker for Cat, couldn’t she have asked this question during the million hours we spent in the pods? Things don’t get easier for these two when they move in together in Camden.
The best illustration I can think of for Cat and Freddie’s miserable vibe is that cursed shopping trip where she walks around looking at tacky clothes and he cracks innocuous jokes about various items he spots on the racks. (To be clear, these are not items she’s choosing.) You can feel the heat rising in Cat’s cheeks. When Freddie dares to show her affection through physical touch, she says, “I’m not a dog. Stop stroking me like I’m a dog.” Later on, she’ll complain to a friend that he isn’t physically assertive enough. Cat insists that she’s not still hung up about the cheating comment; they’re just not vibing. Maybe that’s true. Either way, she visibly perks up when she sees his big, carefully decorated house.
We need to pause here for a moment to discuss Freddie’s decorating style. His home is a work in progress, which means that none of the doors are on hinges yet, but if you ignore that, you’ll notice the careful aesthetic curation — the cool color palette of baby blue, silver, charcoal, and cream; the accent wall covered in a geometric wallpaper; the sparkly silver mirror and crystal doorknobs. Freddie’s place is the opposite of a boy room; it’s a curious and charming display of creativity. Freddie might not be the next Bobby Berk, but he’s done a fine job with this place!
Which brings us to the prenup. Freddie eventually tells Cat that he’s uncomfortable with the idea of marriage affording her the right to his assets. Would she, perhaps, feel okay with him drawing up a document bequeathing his worldly possessions to his sister, Betsy-Dora (who, by the way, expressed covert concerns to Freddie that Cat seemed to be making him feel inferior)? Reader, she would not! Cat’s friends — who look like they’d hang out with Anna Delvey — don’t like the prenup idea, either. From the finale preview, it looks like Cat and Freddie do make it to the altar, but I’m getting the vibe that it’s going to be a “no.”
The good news is that Sabrina and Steven — your OTP and mine — still look like a definite “yes.” They’re the very picture of engagement bliss. He’s cracking eggs with one hand while making her pancakes, and she’s charming his friends and brother, even though they all think this experiment is daffy. Her mom and sister are skeptical but hopeful, and meanwhile, I’m on the floor writing their names in bubble letters with little hearts around them. On the subject of grown-up premarital arrangements, Sabrina’s also decided to hold on to her apartment in Belfast just in case — which is how you know these are two 30-somethings with good heads on their shoulders.
As for Nicole and Benaiah, I’m really not sure. They are absurdly cute together, but his sister suspects he’s incapable of staying in one place. Ben adores Nicole, but part of me wonders if his feelings are so strong because he’s been single for more than a decade. In a normal situation, they could date long enough to learn all of each other’s annoying habits and find out. Here, though? It feels risky, especially because they are still so at odds over her pod ex, Sam, who, of course, shows up for a cast mixer.
Ugh, Sam. Just the sight of this man makes me want to throw a metal wineglass through my TV screen. Nicole gives him back his bracelet and engagement ring and even tells him she thinks he’s misunderstood — to which I say, oh, puh-LEASE. But Benaiah clearly cannot STAND that Nicole wants to believe that her past relationship was based on something real. Nicole, meanwhile, seems unwilling to tell Benaiah anything that happened between herself and Sam; instead, she shuts down the conversation when he brings up Sam’s comment that she wanted to sleep with him. Every woman has a right to discretion, but it seems like Benaiah won’t be able to move on until they actually hash this out. As much as I love watching these two play around in vineyards, I don’t think they’ve got the juice long-term.
Another couple I’m on the fence about is Tom and Maria. Like Cat and Freddie, they’ve got very different visions about finances. Tom initially judged Maria for being a makeup artist, but she’s not about that. As she puts it to producers, “Who the fuck are you?” Maria is flexible about some aspects of her Muslim faith, but she still wants her husband to be a traditional “provider,” which rubs both Tom and his sisters the wrong way. I don’t begrudge anyone their beliefs, but it’s wild to me that Maria offered to pay for ice cream on their first date and was taken aback that Tom would let her. First of all, it’s just ice cream, not dinner at Nobu, and second, it feels like a weird trap. Why offer to pay for something only to scold your partner for acquiescing?
At the same time, ugh, they are so damn cute together. Their rapport is dynamite, and when she jokes that she finds him “vile, disgusting,” my heart melts. Tom’s devotion to Maria doesn’t waver at the cocktail party when he sees his pod ex, Natasha, and while Maria’s family is understandably skeptical, they also seem to love Tom. Still, if these two are going down the aisle, they need to decide whether or not she’s helping pay for the mortgage.
Jasmine and Bobby, meanwhile, are still totally on the same page. They’re doing face masks, talking through her insecurities about him rubbing up on a hot dancer in an old music video, and hosting her extremely protective mom, Marisa, for dinner. I’m not going to lie, though — that meeting is rough.
Marisa apparently used to go through Jasmine’s phone contacts and call each one and block all the boys. (What?!) When Bobby says he never went to university, Marisa says that it’s sometimes “very difficult to communicate with an uneducated person” and implies that he won’t be able to afford to live in London. Heinous! Marisa wants Jasmine to tell her everything, even before her own friends, and she doesn’t like when Jasmine sets a boundary that some things will remain private between herself and Bobby.
Somehow, Bobby is unfazed, although he clearly doesn’t love hanging out with Marisa. At least she lives in the Philippines, which will limit her meddling when Bobby and Jasmine inevitably say “yes” at the altar, as they should because they’re perfect.
And, finally, for our most fickle couple: Ollie and Demi really turn things around when they leave their honeymoon from hell. Once in London, he makes vegan nachos for her friends, who seem to really like him, and he even opens up to Demi about his ADHD diagnosis — a condition that he has not discussed with many others and which he describes as somewhat debilitating. These two clearly care about one another, but they’re also still pretty cagey about intimacy. In the finale preview, Ollie suggests they might be better suited as friends, which is either an excellently deployed red herring or the most disappointingly predictable outcome this franchise has ever seen. We’ll find out next week!
Pod Goss
• “Budgie smugglers” is apparently British slang for Speedos, which is absolutely hilarious. Why budgies, specifically? And wouldn’t it be hard to smuggle anything in a Speedo? Anyway, the real news here is that “budgie smugglers” really work on Steven and he should wear them all the time.
• It was VERY cute to watch Demi and Ollie make good on their pod flirtation and play arcade basketball. I really do want those two to work out!!!
• I also want Maria’s family couscous recipe because that plate looked divine.
