The star of the first five episodes of Love Is Blind is Matt Barnett, the Canton, Georgia, native who must decide between three different women. While many of the men who start on the show are hardly edited into the storyline, Barnett quickly becomes a major character.
Barnett, who goes exclusively by his last name, is one of the cast members on the new reality dating show Love Is Blind, which begins with men and women speed dating one another without seeing what the other person looks like. The show is designed to weed out the singles who don’t make a love connection and focus deeper on those who benefit from the process. And no one reaps the benefits, at least initially, quite like Barnett. The 27-year-old connects with Jessica Batten, a 34-year-old who is smitten with both him and 24-year-old Mark Cuevas. Barnett also makes a connection with Amber Pike and Lauren Chamblin (LC). Barnett gets himself into hot water with his indecisiveness.
The engineer appears the most into Batten at first, but after saying he was ready to propose one day, he hesitates with his feelings the next. This leads to Batten walking out on him - even though she is really just walking out on herself because he’s in a separate room - and pursuing a relationship with Cuevas. Barnett is then left with Pike and Chamblin, and he chooses Pike, the woman he first connected with. Neither LC nor Batten were happy with the way Barnett led them on.
Barnett’s worst moment was when he made a crude comment to Diamond Jack, calling her first name a “stripper name.” One would think he probably had a sense at that point it wasn’t going to work out between the two of them, but that’s still an awfully offensive thing to say. He’s proven to be someone who speaks thoughts that come to his mind without properly thinking them through, as Batten learned when she thought he was going to propose to her.
It is difficult to get a read on where Barnett’s story unfolds from here. There is the possibility that Pike sticks with him, or a potential rekindling of romance between he and Batten. What generally happens with characters like him is that he starts out so desirable but then winds up alone, unsure of how. Nonetheless, he’s given us a fun villain to root against, someone who may occasionally put their foot in their mouth and inadvertently stir up drama, but who isn’t an inherently bad person.
Next: Netflix’s Love Is Blind Improves on Average Reality Dating Shows
