The 'Love Is Blind' season 6 reunion was a masterclass in bringing receipts
The "Love Is Blind" season six reunion didn't shy away from addressing off-screen drama.
The producers brought all the receipts, and it was thrilling to watch it unfold.
This is a major improvement over past seasons' reunions, which virtually ignored all the best off-screen tea.
The "Love Is Blind" producers did not come to play in the season six reunion.
The team behind the hit Netflix reality dating show seems to have taken the criticism of previous reunions to heart. In season six, hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey left no stone (or viral TikTok) unturned.
Featuring unaired clips, personal text messages, and one very cringey TikTok, it was a masterclass in letting the evidence speak for itself, and it paid off with one of the most entertaining reunions in years.
Jeramey had to address his past engagement, and Sarah Ann was grilled about her viral TikTok
Real "Love Is Blind" fans know that the actual drama happens on TikTok and Reddit, where internet sleuths and scorned exes are unearthing everything the contestants don't want us to know about their lives outside the show.
TikTokers like @storytimewithrikkii and @realityashley, arguably the best-known "Love Is Blind" gossip bloggers, helped disseminate tea, like the fact that Jeramey Lutinski was engaged right before filming the show. (I talked to his ex-fiancée, who said she broke up with him after she caught him cheating on her thanks, ironically, to location-sharing.)
The reunion drama kicked off almost immediately, when the Lacheys came out of the gate hot and started grilling Jeramey about his relationship status (yes, he's with Sarah Ann Bick) and whether he was engaged when he applied to be on the show. He maintained that he had broken up with his ex and applied "after I was out on my own, doing my own thing."
Fans (and Jeramey's ex) were also wondering whether he'd even disclosed his past engagement to his "Love Is Blind" connections. The reunion addressed that too — Jeramey reiterated that, as he said in his Instagram response video, he did have conversations about his past engagement during his pod dates, but that footage wasn't shown. His "Love Is Blind" ex-fiancée Laura Dadisman and current girlfriend Sarah Ann were also asked to confirm that was true, which they did.
Sarah Ann also took a lot of heat during the season for reaching out to Jeramey when he was still with Laura, and for posting unapologetic TikTok videos about it while the episodes aired. The Lacheys specifically called out one of Sarah Ann's most-watched videos, where she emphasized that the show was all about entertainment and that she'd provided that with her actions. They played the TikTok, much to the glee of the tea-loving "Love Is Blind" alums in attendance, and forced her to explain what she meant by that — and asked whether it was all just for entertainment.
The producers also showed unaired footage of a conversation between Laura and Sarah Ann at the pod squad meet-up in episode 11. Not only was that scene excellent drama, but it was extremely cathartic to see Laura say her piece and warn Sarah Ann about Jeramey being fake — even if Sarah Ann didn't actually listen to her warnings in the end.
Trevor was confronted with actual screenshots of his texts to the woman he was dating during filming
Trevor Sova had one of the most dramatic falls from grace of any reality show contestant.
Trevor, who was left "heartbroken" when Chelsea Blackwell picked Jimmy Presnell over him in the pods, was dubbed "Teddy Bear Trevor." Thirsty fans were in his Instagram comments and DMs, saying "protect Trevor" and admonishing Chelsea for making a big mistake.
The narrative turned swiftly when a woman named Natalia Marrero came forward to say she was dating Trevor right before the show, and that they'd decided to stay together when he left for filming. She says they did — and that he only dumped her weeks before the season premiered.
Natalia provided proof in the form of texts that Trevor sent her, sharing them first with @realityashley and @storytimewithrikkii. She also sent BI those texts (and we verified the number they're from belongs to Trevor).
Trevor was completely silent on the accusations as they spread like wildfire on social media, but he was finally taken to task during the reunion, when he was directly confronted with screenshots of his texts to Natalia. The Lacheys, who literally read the texts aloud, made him explain himself (it didn't go well) and chastised him on-camera for going on the show with the wrong intentions.
Trevor, for his part, said in the reunion that Natalia was never "technically" his girlfriend and maintained that he really had gone on the show to "try to experiment with something else" since Natalia was the type of woman he'd typically go for in real life. But he admitted that the two of them were "toxic," that he was "toxic" and needs "a lot of therapy," and that it was "fucked up" how he spoke to Natalia right before and right after filming the show.
He insisted that his connection with Chelsea was real and that he'd told Natalia that if someone on the show picked him, he'd be with them and not her.
Vanessa Lachey also directly asked Trevor if he'd gone on the show to further his career, as Natalia has said he told her.
"No, what career? I did come here for good and bad reasons. I can't take back that I went on the show," he said. "I'm glad I went on the show cause it taught me a lot about myself."
Eventually, Trevor asked to leave the stage when it became clear he wouldn't be able to explain his way out of this.
We saw actual footage of the tense pod date that Jessica and Jimmy remembered differently
The one questionable choice the reunion made was to virtually ignore Chelsea and Jimmy's tumultuous relationship in favor of giving a boatload of screentime to Jessica Vestal, the fan-favorite who Jimmy connected with but didn't pick in the pods. (Although giving the stage to Jessica makes a little more sense in context, given the end-of-show reveal that she's going to appear on "Perfect Match" season two.)
Jessica was vocally supportive of all her fellow contestants, including Jimmy, in interviews as the season aired. But she was upset about some things Jimmy said about her in an interview of his own, where he implied that she had "hammered" him to make a decision about her and that she'd "stormed out" of one of their dates 10 minutes in.
"It seemed like you took the first opportunity you had to just make an attempt at throwing me under the bus," she told him, also tearing up when recalling how he'd said in the interview that she got a "good edit" on the show.
Jimmy tried to explain himself and maintained that, as far as he recalled, it was 10 minutes (or maybe 45) into the date that she left, pointing to it as the incident that soured him on their relationship. Jessica asked for the receipts, and lo and behold, there was the footage — which showed definitively that the date (which was over two hours long in all) had been going on for over an hour, not 10 minutes, when they mutually agreed to take a break.
As it turned out, those receipts helped them patch things up. Jessica said in an Instagram comment that Jimmy "apologized after the reunion was over when we were backstage" and they all took pictures together after that.
Showing Matthew's dates with Amber cleared up whether he really said the same things to her and AD
One controversial contestant who wasn't present at the reunion was Matthew Duliba, who left the show early after being accused of saying the same things to both Amber Grant and Amber Desiree "AD" Smith in the pods. (He "politely declined" to attend the reunion, according to Nick Lachey.)
While viewers only saw AD and Matthew's dates on screen while the season aired, the producers pulled the footage of Matthew and Amber's dates to prove the point that he was making very similar overtures to both women. To make the segment even better, one camera was on AD's face, to capture her reaction to seeing the footage for the first time.
"This is insane," she said to Clay, who was sitting next to her as the footage played.
The tea-heavy season 6 reunion is 'Love Is Blind' at its best and a major improvement
This isn't the first time producers have pulled out unaired footage in an attempt to clear up some drama — remember Cole and Zanab's Cuties debacle back in season three? But this first time nearly all the hard-hitting questions were actually asked, and reams of receipts came along with them.
The season four reunion, in particular, was a mess for a variety of reasons. Between the nearly two-hour delay for the "live" broadcast and the Lacheys failing to address some of the most controversial topics of the season, season four star Zack Goytowski served as the voice of the fans more than the actual hosts.
Viewers were also annoyed that controversial contestant Jackie Bonds, who Zoomed into that reunion with her then-boyfriend and costar Josh Demas, wasn't asked to address her insulting texts about her ex-fiancé Marshall Glaze, despite the fact that the Jackie-Josh-Marshall drama dominated TikTok for weeks while the season was airing.
There were indications that "Love Is Blind" would right the wrongs of reunions past. Before filming, the show's social media team posted a teaser of the Lacheys prepping for the reunion and inviting fans "who always have the best questions" to tell them what they needed to address.
While that could have easily been lip service, the Lacheys did, in fact, come through.
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