‘Love Is Blind’ Finale: Blame the Edit

Well folks, season six of Love Is Blind—perhaps the messiest season yet (and that’s saying something after season five)—has come to an end. The most compelling—and conflicted—couple of the season was Chelsea Blackwell and Jimmy Presnell, who seemed like a nice enough pair in the pods, but it was all downhill from the moment they saw each other in the flesh. Presnell was visibly not that stoked by his potential wife’s appearance, and their every interaction following that meeting was charged with awkwardness. Of course Blackwell is a beautiful woman, and of course appearance is literally not supposed to be the point, but it was painfully obvious that he simply wasn’t feeling her, and that she knew it, and that knowledge understandably made everything she did seem insecure and clingy.

It took a turn, though, when Blackwell met Presnell’s good friends, who just so happened to be two attractive young women. She tried her best to persevere through the hangout and not let the insecurity consumer her—they had, after all, already moved past the conflict of finding out what Presnell’s second choice, Jess Vestal, looked like, which is basically an AI robot’s idea of a female reality show contestant (read: conventionally very hot)—but we soon found out that something was simmering beneath the surface.

It turns out Presnell had slept with one of the women he introduced Blackwell to. He told her this off camera and assured her it was just a one-time thing, that it happened years ago, that she’s now one of his dearest friends and nothing more. He didn’t want this information revealed on the show because he wanted to protect his friend’s privacy.

But Blackwell couldn’t stand it, and she threw it in his face during an on-camera fight, shouting, “I know you fucked her!”

Never did I think that, on a show that capitalizes on a patriarchal industry, in a season rampant with misogynistic tropes, it would be a woman who so recklessly objectified another woman in defense of a weeks-old relationship. Now, feeling insecure in a relationship can lead one to madness—I speak from experience—but in her statements since the fight has aired, Blackwell has proved she’s learned nothing.

“I was really, really blindsided,” she told US Weekly of Presnell’s decision to break up with her. “We had our ups and our downs—and our downs were down—but our ups were so good to this point. A week before that we were over the moon [and] we were so good. We were just right before we walked into that date, we were talking about our wedding songs at the reception.”

As for the “You fucked her” fight and their other fights, she says, “I think there was so much context missing from both of those massive arguments, which is so unfortunate because I look like a literal insane person when it comes to exposing my life and having my relationship open to the world. There’s so much context that led me to those points that we’re missing. So it sucks to see those parts not be shown, but it is what it is.” Ah yes, blame the edit. Never heard that one before.

She admits she “definitely” regrets “bringing it up on camera” because “That was something that he made very clear he didn’t want exposed to the world,” but added, “But in reality, this is my relationship, these are our issues, and I’m really sitting with this issue that I am not allowed to bring up at certain times, and that’s not fair.”

“I had to have that conversation. I didn’t care about the cameras. He was just very concerned about how he looked and how he was portrayed, and I just didn’t—clearly, I just didn’t give two craps.”

Presnell sees it differently.

“She broke my trust in a big way, and that really, really hurt me,” he says. “And it was all I could think about. And that came from a place of me caring about my friends and not wanting my friends’ details and everything out there. I loved her.”

“I’m not happy with how things ended, but I’m happy with everything that I learned through this,” he admitted. “I hate how it ended, but not a lot of regrets to be honest.”

As long as we’re being honest, I don’t necessarily think Presnell should have regrets either. If it’s a competition for who acted the worst, Blackwell wins. I hate that this woman’s behavior has me saying that about a man as vanilla as him, but a female villain was at least a nice surprise in a season otherwise overrun by male ones.

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