The seventh season of the reality show Love Is Blind promised to deliver a Washington, D.C., experience. In a sense, it did. In typical fashion for the sprawling D.C. metro area, cast members claiming to fall under the shadow of the Capitol hail from cities as distant as Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland. Among participants, there is frequent talk of politics and Rolexes, but not everyone is who he or she appears to be. 

For the uninitiated, the show’s premise is simple: Young singles meet each other while in separate “pods,” and they converse but are not allowed to see each other. Once contestants pair off together and get engaged, they see each other for the first time and are whisked away to a tropical vacation to test their physical connection and the show’s premise: that love really is blind. Following the trial by tiki torchlight, the couples are deposited into new apartments, where they see how they live together day-to-day. If all goes well, the couples walk down the aisle weeks later, saying their “I dos” — or, just as often, running away in tears.