‘Love Is Blind’s’ Editors Show No Mercy When Andrew Uses Eyedrops to Fake Crying

Love Is Blind has shown plenty of painfully real moments over the past two seasons, moments that make Love Is Blind feel like the ultimate reality show. It turns out that getting engaged to a virtual stranger sight unseen and careening towards a predetermined wedding day is the kind of pressure that most people aren’t built to handle gracefully. It takes a special kind of person to navigate this emotional wringer without having a breakdown — and Love Is Blind Season 3 has just such a person. His name is Andrew.

As introduced in the Season 3 premiere, Andrew is a 29-year-old consultant with a passion for wildlife photography. Within literally the first 59 seconds of talking about himself to-camera, Andrew reveals that he:

• lives a life of luxury travel and nice clothing
• has climbed a 70-story skyscraper, presumably like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol
• has also climbed a crane ladder that was 71 stories tall in order to watch the sun set over the NYC skyline — which if he’d climbed that skyscraper at sunset he could’ve saved himself the second climb
• volunteered at Wildlife Conservation in South Africa, which got him into wildlife photography
• loves luxury, but he also spent 20 days roughing it in the bush, getting up at sunrise, dealing with the mosquitoes, hiding from the sun under Masai blankets in order to snap photographs of lions
• works the phrase “enduring the scent of decaying carcasses” into an interview with a TV producer which, you gotta admit, has to be hard to do
• has been, and I quote, “face-to-face with leopards and lions that are tearing apart their meal”

The Love Is Blind audience tunes in expecting to watch a show starring a bunch of single men and women between the ages of 26 and 36 who are eagerly looking to settle down into the gender roles as defined in episodes of Property Brothers. Andrew’s icebreakers make him sound like a wealthy tycoon who’s done everything… except hunt man for sport. Whether or not any of his claims are true (I’d be just as impressed if the crane ladder was 5 stories tall, I’m just saying…), the producers struck gold with Andrew.

And somehow, somehow, Andrew is just getting started.

Andrew is interested in Nancy, a speech pathologist/real estate investor who has the exact kind of sweet and bubbly personality that we expect to see on these shows. In what’s presented as their first conversation, Andrew takes a question about whether or not Nancy likes kissing (yes, she does) and steers it into a nearly two-minute monologue about his experiences with transcendental sex, his lessons with a 41-year-old woman in Bali who trained him in the ways of “oozing sex,” and his mastery of “sexual kung fu,” which he defines as having lots of orgasms without ejaculating, not even once! Andrew thinks that Nancy needs a teacher, and he’s got a lesson plan ready. Over in her pod, Nancy’s fanning herself and making wtf faces at this stranger saying “caress on the nipples” and “tongue down your tummy” unprompted.

The next time we see Andrew and Nancy talk, Nancy asks him a very straightforward question: will he be bored by typical married life since it will cut into his schedule of climbing tall things and interrupting lions in the middle of their bloody dinners. It’s a fair question! Andrew’s answer reads like a monologue from an American Horror Story character who’s about to reveal that he was the killer all along:

“Of course it’s a fear, right? I think that’s the fear that drove me to start traveling in the first place. In 2019, I’d landed on this new project at work which was… pretty cool. I flew to Paris. The expense account was real flush so I was renting nice sports cars every week. I was stacking up a bunch of cash, and then I was like ‘Fuck it, let’s go.’ Three months plus in South Africa, and, like, a month in Namibia and then three months in Bali, a month in Singapore. I was looking for an avenue of growth “

He throws in a quote from the British philosopher Alain de Botton, and then finishes by chugging from his goblet. I know the joke is overused but, “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”

Somehow, though, Andrew holds Nancy’s interest just enough to form a love triangle with her other suitor, Bartise. And when Andrew realizes he’s got competition for a regular role in a season of reality TV — I mean, Nancy’s affection, he takes the leap and proposes to her. Of course she says no! She pictured the life she wanted, the one with 10 kids, and then envisioned their father spending more time with rhinos in Kenya than his children in Dallas.

And then comes the pièce de résistance: Andrew’s exit interview. Reality TV may not have writers in the traditional sense, but it does have editors. By choosing what footage to show and when to show it, an editor can present anyone in almost any light imaginable. On his way out the door, Andrew gave one Love Is Blind editor a bold choice to make — and that editor chose chaos.

Andrew sits in silence, like he’s waiting for his switch to be flipped. From offscreen a producer asks, “What are you thinking about?” Andrew’s response: “Are you rolling?” “Yes.” Andrew tells the crew to “hang on” while he pulls out eyedrops and asks, “Is this too much? Just a little bit.”

Then, his eyes now wet, he sniffles — he sniffles! — takes a somber tone, and says “It didn’t feel good, to be completely honest.” Showing Andrew lying about crying is maybe the first real thing we’ve seen him do on this show.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

His eyes aren’t wet enough. He pulls out the eye drops again and, as if he suddenly cares about manipulating his narrative by literally faking an emotional response to a rejection to a proposal that he almost definitely did not sincerely mean, asks the producer “is it okay that I’m doing this?” The producer, a genius who knows reality TV gold when they see it, says, “If your eyes are hurting you, by all means.” Andrew dumps a gallon of eyedrops into each eye and…

It’s a perfect moment, one crafted with such care and such shade. Andrew took every opportunity to bring up his passion for wildlife photography and how he routinely outsmarts lions in order to capture them at their most vulnerable. In the bush that is Love Is Blind, Andrew was too busy tearing apart his big emotional moment that he never even noticed the editor, getting up at sunrise, dealing with the mosquitoes, hiding from the sun under Masai blankets, waiting to get the better of a 29-year-old consultant on a reality dating show.