Love to See It with Emma and Claire

After just three episodes of obstreperous and mostly ineffective campaigning, Victor finally – miraculously – convinces the castle to give his Fruitgate theory a try. With the season dangling by a thread, production grants Shane the power of the pardon to rescue Victor from banishment. Victor sweatily stalks Tomica around the castle, creating a very weird and uncomfortable (and arguably unnecessary) situation before mustering all of his powers of persuasion at the round table. Will Joe be next? What options do the Traitors have left?

Rob’s golden-boy edit was too good to last, and this week it came crashing down – along with his relationship with Michaella. It starts at their meetup with his crew of loutish friends, where Rob is more concerned ensuring his friend is overserved to the point of being pickled than he is with supporting Michaella as she fields nonstop sexual comments from his bros. It escalates at the mixer, where his erratic rage – at Michaella and everyone else – is on full display. With the relationship that once seemed the most compatible now (thankfully) over, we’re left with a group of couples who barely like each other. Plus, we tour John’s crusty home, learn about Aneha’s “modern traditional” approach to relationships, and learn that Blake still hasn’t learned how to count forward in time.

There’s one thing we can say for sweaty fruit boy Victor: he stands on his convictions. Though his quest to take down Tomica and Joe has only alienated the castle further, Victor is determined to bring up his fruit-based murder-in-plain-sight theory with every breath he draws. At times his over-the-top accusatory harassment is uncomfortable, but he does have the defense of having the Traitors dead to rights. Victor’s bad social game dooms him at the round table – but will a surprise pardon power give him another chance to see Tomica or Joe banished?

It’s week two of “Love Is Blind” Boston, and the couples are… mostly floundering. In a real twist, Rob and Michaella are quickly emerging as potentially the only good match of the season. Meanwhile, tension is brewing for the rest of the couples. John is out here drinking unpasteurized milk and doing his own research, Blake can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth, Aneha won’t let Cam’s nonexistent ear piercing go, and Wilnie can’t stop needling Wilson about Malaine. But at least Netflix music supervisors have The Mighty Mighty Bosstones on hand to welcome us to Boston!

Episode 6 of “The Traitors” brings us up to speed with a flurry of activity: a murder! A mission! A round table! And many, many ill-fated attempts by Victor to make Fruitgate happen. In this episode, we see what happens when a contestant with all the unearned confidence of a white man tries to bend the castle to his will – and discovers that he has, inexplicably, zero credibility with his fellow castle guests. Victor might be right, and he might be the only person marshaling “real” evidence, but that doesn’t do much if everyone else just wants to vote on vibes. Can anything stop these Traitors now?

In episodes 4 and 5, the love chains have been winnowed down to triangles and couples, before heading off to Mexico. The women are busy trying to convince their male suitors to choose them, while the men are mostly trying to decide between the two types of women: Hot ones or deep ones? Dimes or battle-axes? Balkans or non-Balkans? “That” or “It”? Thank god for Jax and Stew, our unintentional comedy darlings. We thank you both for your service.

The pods have touched down in Boston! And we had so much to say about the first drop of episodes, that we had to split our recap into two parts. In part 1 we get into all of the various love chains that form in the pods and the cast of standout characters that populate them – Morrey, the peacocking toxic masculinity mascot; Stew, the rent-a-Kennedy; Jax, who wears a Moncler puffer in an edgy way; Diana, the old soul who has heard of Frank Sinatra despite being younger than 38; and so many more. (Plus Scott, who seems to have a connection with zero women but who still gets a bit of screentime to do overt misogyny and tell his dates that astrology is satanic.)

This week, “The Traitors: New Blood” is back on the air – but we’re down to one new episode. And it’s a relatively uneventful one, with barely a round table or murder to speak of. Instead, most of the episode is spent on the antics of the three Traitors as they try to commit a murder in plain sight. The mechanism: throwing a “cursed” apple to a Faithful on the murder shortlist, and having them successfully catch it. It’s a wildly conspicuous act, especially in a game fueled by paranoia and mob justice, and all three of the Traitors manage to incriminate themselves by the end of the night – especially Joe. Can he wriggle his way out of this jam?

Buckle up, we’re catching up on news & gossip! With Mikayla and TFP out the door, ‘SLOMW’ is down to a skeleton cast. Was there ever any other outcome? And what’s next for the franchise? Then, the breakup between Taylor and Clarke of “Love Island” S7 has gone from amicable to messy, after she claimed on a podcast that Taylor stranded her at a gas station in Oklahoma and he countered with equally troubling, but vague, allegations posted on Instagram. Then, Chris Harrison’s upcoming MAGA-coded dating show on Fox Nation, “The Vow,” dropped a teaser that takes some obvious potshots at “The Bachelor” – so, of course, Warner Bros fired back with a cease and desist. Was this part of a longshot attempt by “The Vow” to get some actual buzz going? Finally, the “Love Is Blind” Boston bios are out, and we trawled through all the Italian-food-loving New Englanders, searching for standouts.

With bodies and banishments piling up, the game is really underway now – and while Joe Vanella is playing his own secret angle, casting doubt on the athletes of the castle, the three Traitors are leaving a breadcrumb trail straight to their teeniest member. The Faithfuls are casting about wildly for clues, and Jay has decided to just cast about wildly in every sense. He drops knowing hints about his secret theories, which will be revealed at the round table – and, once at the round table, he announces that he is a body language expert but unfortunately has been taking a mental health break from observing body language. While he is chaos personified, Victor is flop-sweat personified, though he has finally decided to lean back into his strength: flirting with pretty girls. Can Katie survive another round table? Or will Jay’s chaos be so unbearable that his fellow Faithful just kick him out? We have to wait two weeks to find out!

A cast of non-celebrity American players feature on this season of “The Traitors: New Blood” – an unusually “Harry Potter”-inflected season, especially considering how radioactive J.K. Rowling’s brand has become. (Why, exactly, are the Weasley twins here?) The cast is packed with standout personalities – a funeral director, a dog trainer, a mulleted executive, a 23-year-old, a baseball scout, a lawyer posing as a basketball coach – though some of these newly minted reality stars have done more strategic preparation than others. The first two episodes feature some classic “Traitors” blunders, including one that cruelly ended a blossoming showmance. Is “The Traitors” a dating show? Sadly, not at the moment.

Season 5 of “SLOMW” ends abruptly, after an on-camera revelation that Dakota’s friend has called CPS to report Taylor. But it’s not entirely out of the blue. The last two episodes contain ample signs that Taylor and Dakota’s toxic pattern is escalating dangerously. Meanwhile, Jen is trying to get her “pink back” by becoming a musician and returning to the Mormon fold, Jessi and Jordan throw a housewarming brunch that becomes a de facto divorce brunch, and Mayci and Mikayla have reached their wits’ end with the Taylor-Dakota situation. Annemarie Navar-Gill joins again to finish our discussion of this truncated season – and the path ahead for Taylor and the show, which has chosen to keep her on the cast.

Back in March, when Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of “The Bachelorette” was yanked just days before premiering, cameras were rolling for season five of her original reality show: “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” Production was ultimately paused, but season five wasn’t canceled – and all five episodes of the abbreviated season dropped last week. Annemarie Navar-Gill (the cohost of Bachelor in Retrospect) joined for a discussion of episodes 1-3, including a conversation about why this season aired to begin with, whether that was the right decision, and what it means for “The Bachelor” franchise that this season includes so many spoilers – and so much post-show drama that punctures the franchise’s fantasy brand.

By the second half of “Love Is Blind” UK, all is not well! Our crop of six robust couples has begun to dwindle, thanks to motivational speaker Ryan’s energetic hangovers and Jordan’s failure to find the spark. Ciara pushes Ajay’s boundaries just a bit too far, in the midst of her self-admitted quest to find the outer limits of his patience. And Jack pushes the limits of his ability to trek across London in shower sliders. Will any of these couples say “I do”? And, more importantly, what will they have to say about each other by the reunion? We finally have the answers by the end of this recap, and for once, those answers were pretty satisfying. Except for how Jack’s Find My Friends got turned off – that’s a question to which we may never get a straight answer.

The pods are open, to be fair! Claire and Leigh are finally catching up on “Love Is Blind” UK season 3, and it is a rollicking good time. We have a resident jovial love-bombing lad and a resident soft-life pink-pill girlie, plus an English MAHA type who only eats eggs produced by chickens who listen to “frequency music.” Despite this, and some classic love triangles, it feels like love really is brewing in the pods. In this episode, we talk about great sexpectations, great financial expectations, pot-stirrers, plaid Speedos, jacket potatoes with tuna, and ecstatic dancing.

The “Love Island” USA and “Let’s Marry Harry” reunions finally dropped this week, after we’d finally allowed our brains to move on. The two-hour “Love Island” reunion was shapeless, often boring, and felt as though it would never end. The cast re-litigated endless minor beefs, and rarely introduced new information or found any resolution – though we did finally establish how many times Sol was pied (two, as shown on TV) and how many times Bryce pulled Kayda (one, as shown on TV). Melanie had issues with half the cast, while Sincere just popped up every twenty minutes or so to issue a blanket apology. The women’s behavior is hyper-scrutinized, while the men skate by. Overall, the cast seems sad, tired, and defensive after a summer of being analyzed to death. Please, let’s put this season to bed! Then, we dip into the “Let’s Marry Harry,” where the women are aggrieved and Harry is up to his old tricks: reciting softboy emotional platitudes in order to distract from his proven track record of douchey behavior.

Season 20 of “Married at First Sight” is safely in the can, and, as we hoped, six of the seven couples are safely separated from each other! In this recap, Claire and Leigh talk about Decision Day, from the reveal of Felipe’s vile off-camera comments to Tori to the oddly timed gifting of a Ninja Creami, before diving into the action-packed reunion. Relationship experts Paul and Dr. Lisa have taken off their therapist hats and donned their tea-spilling host ensembles, and they’re ready to take stock of the emotional wounds inflicted on the show’s cast by their mostly short-lived marriages. Mecca and Bellé discuss their post-show split, while Michelle and Cam share mostly happy updates from the first year of married life. Marissa is finally ready to share her truth: She despises Adam and his cooking. Tori wants to know why she was ever even placed in Felipe’s vicinity. Adam makes fun of Courteney’s pickleball skills until she cries, all while wearing his most attention-seeking ensemble yet. Caitlin and Devin somehow slide under the radar, but Nikki and Shawn? They have no shortage of grievances to air.

This batch of “Married at First Sight” episodes leaves us at the brink of decision day – and teasing a scandalous off-camera conversation between Felipe and Tori. But first, the remaining six couples head off on a couples retreat that is more fratty than therapeutic. Felipe leans into his womanizing reputation, and expects Tori to be as tolerant of his foibles as his mother is. Mecca and Caitlin get flirty, and somehow Bellé is the last person anyone is concerned about. Nikki is ruminating on why Shawn told her she was a Seattle 10, but a New York 7. Adam is more focused on stirring the pot than finding compromises with Marissa. Michelle and Cam seem fine, but everyone else is fed up with their meddling and judgment. Even us! Should any of these couples actually stay married – and will they?

As “Married at First Sight” season 20 draws closer to decision day, the pressure on the seven couples is growing – and one has, blessedly, buckled underneath it. After Nick and Courteney wisely remove themselves from the experiment, we’re left with six couples who, in Adam’s parlance, are trying to just vibe and full send it, but are mostly cooked. Adam has imperceptibly tweaked his intensity level downward, while Marissa looks more dead behind the eyes in every scene. Mecca decides that a group dinner is the perfect time to announce that his first impression of Belléjolie was, “she’s not pretty enough for me.” Caitlin is trying to lean into her feminine by introducing Devin to Taylor Swift. Nikki and Shawn put intimacy on the agenda… and hit their KPIs. Felipe realizes that commitment just means thinking Tori is hot in this moment. And though Cam has begun to waver at the idea of a relationship lasting longer than six months, he and Michelle are feeling sufficiently superior to the other couples to put themselves in charge of who should say “yes” on decision day.

Harry Jowsey has had a long and winding road through the world of reality dating TV, most notably “Too Hot to Handle” and “Perfect Match.” He rode his success from these Netflix hits to a podcast deal with Alex Cooper’s Unwell network – and now, his own reality dating show, “Let’s Marry Harry.” In this bonus, Leigh and Claire discuss a show that promises to marry the inveterate womanizer off for good. From its gimmicky concept (all 20 contestants are immediately given engagement rings and referred to as his “fiancées”) to its ill-fated attempt at a redemption arc for Harry, this show is wildly entertaining, frequently alarming, and offers much food for thought about the current state of the reality dating space and masculinity discourse.