Love to See It with Emma and Claire

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.