The Men Are Not Alright in Love Is Blind Season 9

There's a certain kind of person who agrees to put their life out there for public consumption. And though that decision doesn't inherently carry positive or negative connotations, it's not the kind of choice everyone makes. So, when we look at Love Is Blind contestants in general, and Season 9 contestants in particular, we have to look at both the women and the men through that same lens. But even with that in mind, there's just something about the men in the latest season of the show. And I don't mean that as a compliment.

Six couples made it out of the pods in Love Is Blind Season 9, though one — Patrick and Kacie — broke up before even making it to the "honeymoon" in Mexico. That left five couples: Ali and Anton, Madison and Joe, Kalybriah and Edmond, Annie and Nick, and Megan and Jordan. And just from the pods, it felt like there were reasons to be optimistic about most of them. Then, the men showed their true colors.

To be fair, Nick kinda showed his true colors before, with Annie doing her best to match him as the two discussed how being LGBTQ+ was just a fad and how Nick's mom once thought he was gay when he was younger, so of course, he had to bring a girl over right after that. But Nick still wins the horrible people award in this relationship, as he seems to have only picked Annie because they aligned in their conservative religious views, even though he told Kait he loved her just a few dates before proposing to Annie. Awkward.

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But the other men do their best to live up to the bad vibe of the season once the Mexico vacation gets underway. Anton is perhaps the better one, in that he doesn't treat his own fiancée badly at all. But he does make the kind of comments that get under Edmond's skin and ultimately lead to his crash-out. That's mostly on Edmond, though, so we're going to give Anton this one.

Jordan, meanwhile, gets obnoxious at the party — seemingly after too much to drink. Not great, not horrible, and he kind of dials it down after Megan points it out. That's not the case when it comes to Joe, who gets really, really drunk at the party with the rest of the Pod Squad and ends up choosing to leave early after Madison confronts him about his behavior. Just drinking too much one day would normally not be a problem, but Joe had already been on thin ice — even if Madison didn't know the full story.

Since their first meeting, Joe seemed a little unsure about his attraction to his fiancée, admitting that he was having a hard time connecting the woman he had formed an emotional connection with to the one physically in front of him. He tells the camera that she's not exactly his type, but says that attraction can grow. (Not exactly all that reassuring.) Madison even calls out how she's always the one saying, "I love you," unless they're being intimate. But it's after the party that things take a turn for the worse, when Madison returns to check on Joe and finds him asleep and very, very confused about where she was, what's going on, and why she's even talking to him. The two get in a big row, with Madison feeling unsupported and Joe just wanting to be left to nurse his hangover. Just remember, these people have been together for less than a week.

Edmond, however, wins the worst man of the first batch of episodes award, and it's not even close. After he finds out that all the other couples are already having sex at the cast party, Edmond's reaction is anything but calm and collected. Instead, he brings it up with his fiancée when they're back in their room. Kalybriah wants to wait until they're married, aka in a couple of weeks. Edmond takes that personally. He takes Kalybriah saying that she's waited longer with other partners, while also having one-night stands, even worse.

"I think I'm more locked in with you emotionally than you are with me," he tells her. "I'm in it more than you, and it's OK, but it just hurts." And then, even though Kalybriah explains that it's possible that the two of them just view sex differently, come the tears. "I'm just always the f*cking nice guy," he says, while crying. "That's what f*cks me up. I'm too f*cking nice!"

As if that's not worrying enough, he also adds, "I can't lie, I'm kind of stuck on you having one-night stands."

So, to recap, this man sat down in bed with his fiancée and had a total meltdown about the woman he's supposedly sure he wants to marry asking him to wait a couple of weeks to have sex, because that's somehow about him being "too nice." He also threw a tantrum about her having casual sex with other men in the past, because even though their relationship isn't casual, that apparently is also about him.

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The stereotype is almost a little too on the nose for something that's supposed to be reality TV. Edmond was indeed giving "nice guy" before this conversation (or before the party). Afterwards? He's giving Ramses from Love Is Blind Season 7, someone who pretended to be the good guy until it became clear he was only that while it was convenient for him.

But the worst part of Love Is Blind Season 9 — or of the men cast in it — isn't even that they've all shown their true colors this early. It's that this is, indeed, Season 9. In the first few seasons, when contestants did horrible, misguided, or ill-advised things, we at least had to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know how the show worked and how much of their behavior would be shown. Or, they had no clue what the likely edit would be, much less how people would react.

Now they do. And these men still don't care. Or worse, they can't help themselves. Neither of those is good. Rooting for love? Right now, we're just rooting for all these women to find the strength to walk away.

The first 6 episodes of Love Is Blind Season 9 are available to stream on Netflix.