Could Unionizing Protect Contestants From The Reality Of Reality TV?

In an industry-wide first, the National Labor Relations Board argued last week that contestants participating in Netflix’s hit reality TV dating show Love Is Blind should be classified as employees. If implemented into policy—which, admittedly, seems unlikely given the fact that Donald Trump is expected to fire the current NLRB general legal counsel—the filing could not only give more on-set protection to participants of shows like Love Is Blind but potentially allow them to unionize. 

Since its oddly prescient premiere in February 2020, which saw 15 men and 15 women dating, falling in love and eventually getting engaged sight unseen, Love Is Blind has faced allegations of mistreatment and coercion. Early contestants have accused producers of plying them with alcohol while regularly denying them food and water; one contestant alleged that production pushed her to continue filming even after she told them that she was experiencing suicidal ideation and wanted to leave. Over the past four years and seven seasons, the two production companies behind Love Is Blind—Kinetic Content and Delirium TV—have faced multiple lawsuits from former contestants. One of them alleges “inhumane working conditions” while another accuses Kinetic and Delirium of negligence, false imprisonment and sexual assault. 

Fans regularly reference the allegedly horrific on-set experience of Love Is Blind, making a sort of drinking game out of noting the vast spreads of food that began appearing in front of contestants around Season 4. Still, the show’s success hasn’t been hindered. Netflix is notoriously cagey about their viewership numbers, but Love Is Blind’s many international sons indicate a sizable return on investment, pending lawsuits or not. There’s Love Is Blind: UK and Love Is Blind: Mexico, as well as Love Is Blind: Japan, Love Is Blind: Sweden, Love Is Blind: Argentina and Love Is Blind: Brazil. Soon, there will be a Love Is Blind: Italy. Most recently there was Love Is Blind: Habibi, which saw singles from Lebanon to Egypt trying to find love through a wall and, like their counterparts the world over, mostly failing. 

The filing out of the NLRB’s regional office in Minneapolis probably won’t increase the odds of exiting the show with a spouse, nor is it likely to lead to any immediate change in the employment classification of contestants. The statement, which came in response to two former Love Is Blind contestants filing complaints with the board, is only the beginning of a long process, even without taking into account the chaos that Trump is likely to inflict on the NLRB. As Vox’s Li Zhou wrote:

The NLRB’s statement is only an initial complaint against the two production companies—Kinetic Content and Delirium TV—that run the show, and multiple things still have to happen before that statement becomes policy. First, the companies have the option to reach a settlement with the NLRB. If they’re unable to, an administrative court will review the claims of labor violations next spring. Then, any decisions that are made could be subject to a series of appeals.

But even if the actual legal reality for Love Is Blind doesn’t change, it could still impact the way the show operates. To understand that possible effect, I turned to the most recent season of The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On, which was drastically altered when multiple contestants called it quits.

The premise of the Nick Lachey-hosted show is another demented brainchild of Chris Coelen, the creator and producer of both Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum, along with Perfect Match and Marriage At First Sight. Now in its third season, The Ultimatum gathers a handful of couples on the precipice of a breakup, where one half of the couple has issued their partner a marriage ultimatum. The experiment requires each couple to break up and then find a partner for a “trial marriage” among the other newly single marriage-wanters and commitment-phobes. After the three-week trial marriage, the couples revert to their original configurations for a second trial marriage. On decision day, each contestant must decide whether to get engaged to their original partner, start a new life with someone they met six weeks ago or leave single.

At its best, the experiment urges its participants to reexamine their feelings around marriage, ultimately hastening what most often feels like an inevitable conclusion. At its worst, it’s a license for cheating. This most recent season, which concluded this past Wednesday, had both. It also had something I’d never seen before in my decade-plus of ingesting the finest of reality TV slop.

The first three episodes hit the familiar beats. One of the contestants, who goes by J.R., was so cartoonishly horny that he gave Pepé Le Pew a run for his money. He openly fantasized about his bucket list, which included sex with a fellow Scorpio and a white woman. His trial marriage partner, Sandy, was both. The two seemed on a road to one of the more chaotic trial marriages of the franchise until 24 hours after the changeover, when four of the 12 contestants left without notice. This meant three trial couples remained and two contestants, including Sandy’s original partner Nick, were entirely alone. What unfolded was a sort of Stanford prison experiment, exacerbated by the fact that Nick issued Sandy the ultimatum.

We watch as Nick’s worst nightmare is realized: His would-be fiancée shacking up with a man she’s clearly attracted to for three weeks while he’s alone in the apartment right below them. He spiraled quickly. As he admits at the reunion, he drank so heavily during this period that he found it necessary to enter recovery after filming wrapped. His internal tumult was so clear that at points the camera’s gaze shifted from voyeuristic to exploitative. 

That this situation had never emerged before is, to my eye, a result of just how tightly contestants were bound by the contracts they signed. In an interview with Zhou on Vox, legal scholar Day Krolik described reality show agreements, like the ones signed by participants of The Ultimatum or Love Is Blind, as “pretty shocking.”

“Some of them say the individual can expect to not have food for a protracted period of time … that you may be subject to what many would consider sexual harassment,” Krolik said.

Still, it’s clear from recent seasons of both The Ultimatum and Love Is Blind that the reins are looser. Early departures were rare, if not nonexistent, in early seasons of both shows. But it’s hard to imagine that the incompatibilities that emerge when preparing or pretending to marry a stranger were less relevant to the contestants then they are now. Instead, what seemed clear to me after watching more and more couples choose to say “No” before the altar on Love Is Blind is that newer contestants feel more empowered to leave the filming process early. Presumably in response to both ongoing litigation and a newly vigilant public, producers seem unable or unwilling to deploy whatever coercive tactics they used earlier to encourage contestants to stick out the experiment. 

It’s ironic, then, that the production’s inability to keep this season’s Ultimatum cast intact still resulted in one of the grimmest situations I’ve ever watched unfold. Some of the most poignant moments in reality TV come from making public a moment of unguarded intimacy. What producers captured in documenting and doing little to alleviate Nick’s unraveling felt like something different, something darker. Under a second Trump term, it seems unlikely that reality TV contestants—or any of us, really—will see additional workplace protections anytime soon. But I’m still unsure if a union, while necessary, could have protected Nick from the caprice that was baked into the show. The ruling won’t change anything officially, at least in the near term, but this season of The Ultimatum suggests that change in the industry has already begun—even if it may not benefit those contestants who stay.