Warning: This article contains spoilers for Love Is Blind Season 8
With each passing season of Love Is Blind, I’m amazed at how long it takes for couples to talk about issues like politics and religion. Far too often, these conversations seem to come up after the engagement — derailing relationships that, had these talks happened earlier, might never have gotten so deep.
But sometimes, the issue is less about when the conversation took place and more about how deep it got (or didn’t get). Consider, for instance, Ben Mezzenga and Sara Carton, who despite having a TikTok scandal hovering over them throughout Season 8 seem poised to break up over Ben’s place of worship.
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On the surface, Mezzenga and Carton seem like the perfect couple. They both like posing in front of mirrors, taking photos with their air fryers and glamping. What more could a solid foundation possibly require? But then, there are those brass tacks that poke and prod the perfect facade.
A lot of news coverage this season has centered on the TikTok posts “exposing” Mezzenga’s alleged past mistreatment of women. But Episode 11, the final from this week’s batch, ends on the sound of Sara’s heartbeat as she decides at the altar whether or not to say “I do,” the social media mess feels almost inconsequential compared to bigger questions about their long-term compatibility.
The TikTok drama started before this season even launched. In a viral video that never mentions Mezzenga by name, TikTok user Andra Berghoff laments that Netflix cast someone in LIB who had mistreated women in the past. During last week’s episodes, Mezzenga confirmed the video was about him but said he couldn’t fathom what prompted Berghoff to make such remarks. He said they’d met on Tinder, gone out for drinks a few times and kissed but never hooked up before he ghosted her four years ago. Carton wasn’t thrilled that Mezzenga couldn’t provide more details but didn’t consider it a deal-breaker.
“I’ve trusted Ben, so I wanted to continue trusting him,” Carton recently told Entertainment Weekly of their conversation. “But of course, this TikTok, I needed to keep in the back of my mind. I wasn’t going to dismiss it or disregard it, by any means. I just felt very conflicted and there were feelings involved, and I didn’t want to end the relationship just because of this one thing when we were so happy.”
Ben Mezzenga and Sara Carton in Episode 7 of “Love Is Blind.” (Courtesy of Netflix)
This week, Mezzenga and Carton seemed to have put the TikTok matter behind them.
“I’m just, like, confused as to why it’s such a big deal for her,” Mezzenga told Carton. “And obviously, you know, I’ve grown as a person since this was a thing.” Ultimately, he added, the people that know and care about him are “not questioning my character.”
Carton didn’t seem thrilled by any of this. Still, the matter felt settled. As fun as social media drama might be for all of us at home, the issue centers on all the things many people prefer not to discuss.
In the pods, Mezzenga revealed that he’s ignorant about the issues that matter to Carton, like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights. This week, Carton’s sister, Lisa, and her partner, Kelsie, shared their reservations about the relationship not seeming real and urged Carton to ask more serious questions about Mezzenga’s politics. Carton attended one of Mezzenga’s church services and struggled to connect with the message, and during Episode 11, she confronted Mezzenga after looking up the church’s views and finding that it espouses “traditional” values about gender and sexuality.
Mezzenga was passive throughout these conversations; more often than not, he seemed to be running out the clock, waiting for them to end rather than thoughtfully engaging with Carton’s concerns. During drinks with Carton’s sister and her partner, he said that he and Carton are both fiscally conservative and socially liberal. But as Kelsie pointed out, plenty of people under that broad umbrella still vote differently.
“I think you guys need to have serious conversations about politics,” she told Carton, “because he’s in a different privilege bucket than you’re in.”
When confronted with points like this, Mezzenga often offers a nervous smile and a few vague words gesturing at alignment. Somehow, it never quite feels convincing.
Never is this more apparent than during Mezzenga and Carton’s glamping trip during Episode 11, which includes one of the most tedious conversations in Love Is Blind history.
When Carton tells Mezzenga that she’s watched one of his church’s services online and discovered that the church addresses trans people by saying “love does not equal affirmation,” Ben struggles to project any real concern.
“I’m trying to find their stance on LGBTQ,” he said. “It seems they’re open, but you can’t just Google that stuff.” (How did Carton find the video, then? Some kind of divine provenance that delivered it straight to her like a prophetic vision?)
Over and over, Mezzenga sticks to the same line — that his church centers around “good, wholesome messaging that everyone can get something from.” Never does he seem to consider that a trans person might not “get something” from a sermon like the one Carton described. When Carton said outright that she doesn’t agree with that speech, he said he doesn’t “agree with that either” but does not elaborate further.
“Who am I to say that I’m right and everyone else is wrong?” Mezzenga wondered aloud. When Carton asks what he means by that, it’s back to the uncomfortable rambling.
“It’s not my job to convince someone or tell them that I’m right,” he said. “It’s my job to be excited for everyone.” Something tells me that Mezzenga’s “Sermon on the Mount” would not make the history books.
When Carton asked if he had any questions for her on the eve of their wedding, he pleaded the fifth and said he’s tired from work. “I had a long day today, and I have not thought about too much stuff,” he said. “Putting me on the spot, trying to think about it, I don’t know if I can.” Alrighty, then!
In its early seasons, Love Is Blind mirrored most dating shows’ approach to politics, which is to say it rarely came up. But Seasons 7 and 8 have included more of these conversations, giving viewers a more grounded sense of how these couples actually relate (and, in some cases, do not).
Carton and Mezzenga aren’t the only couple who seem divided on politics this season either. Devin Buckley and Virginia Miller’s conversation around abortion in Episode 10 unfolded in a similarly awkward fashion, with Miller espousing her support for a woman’s right to choose while Buckley asked if she votes according to her “faith.” When Miller asked Buckley outright if they’ll vote the same way at the polls — which is to say, for Democrats — he asked if voting differently would be a deal-breaker. Just like Mezzenga, when Miller asked Buckley if there’s anything else he’d like to discuss, he offered little more than a shrug.
Within this context, the whole TikTok ordeal starts to feel a little underwhelming. And while LIB creator Chris Coelen’s reasoning for including the Mezzenga TikTok mess makes sense (as he noted, it did affect the couple’s relationship on the show) it feels somewhat silly, in retrospect, that it’s generated so much media attention when details are so few and far between and the real cause of Carton and Mezzenga’s potential breakup has been sitting right there in front of us.
Real-world drama might creep into our dating shows more and more — just ask the Bachelor franchise, which is no stranger to off-screen gossip making its way on screen come reunion time — but in this case, the train wreck has been unfolding in front of us all along.
We won’t know until next week if Carton and Mezzenga say “I do,” but either way, we can bet that the road ahead is far from clear.
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