We love a pod love pod here at Rich Text, so we were ready as hell for season 3 of “Love Is Blind” to kick off this week and we’re already back on our bullshit (making pods about pods).

Season 3: Dallas edition, which is dropping just a month after the season 2 “Love Is Blind: After the Altar” special and associated divorce announcements proved the Chicago experiment a bust, hopes to restore our faith in blind speed dating. Can Vanessa Lachey and her statement sleeves (and, less importantly, her husband Nick) help these lonely hearts find love sight unseen?

The first four episodes introduce us to our main daters (e.g. the ones who end up getting engaged and participating in the rest of the show), follow a few love triangle clusters, and see our newly betrothed couples head off to Malibu for a luxury getaway.

At this stage, season 3 might be the least dramatic season yet, with no apparent second-choice engagements, love triangles that linger past the pod stage, or interpersonal drama. That doesn’t mean people don’t find ways to act foolish (doing a loud set of jumping jacks while a potential fiancé shares a painful family story, for example) or say gross things (“I’m gonna pump a couple kids in you,” FOR EXAMPLE), but the season feels a bit gentler and more mature.

One thing was a particularly refreshing change after a season 2 fraught with fatphobia, negative body talk, and weight loss backstories: not only are the contestants presented as less fixated on thinness, we actually see a plus-size woman, Alexa Alfia, who embraces her own body and its beauty and who has a blissful love story in the pods.

If you’ve watched already or if you just want to hear the breakdown, here’s our full recap. Hope you enjoy! xo

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We’ve been reading…

“Nevada,” by Imogen Binnie. I’ve been listening to the Missing Pages podcast Emma mentioned a few newsletters ago, and while it hasn’t necessarily been my favorite podcast ever (for one thing, I’m already pretty familiar with all the big literary scandals and mysteries from covering the book world for half a decade and writing innumerable listicles about the industry), I enjoyed Binnie’s interview on an episode about J.T. Leroy. It got me curious about Binnie’s own cult classic, which was recently reissued by FSG. The novel follows Maria, an almost-30 trans woman who has a miserable job at a Very Famous Indie Bookstore in New York, a rapidly imploding relationship with a long-term girlfriend she used to love, and a brewing internal crisis over her inability to connect with her own feelings and needs. It’s provocative, scathing, and deeply jaded — Maria is even bored with her own traumas and vulnerable places. It’s often uncomfortable reading, in the best possible way. -Claire

Jamelle Bouie’s NYTimes op-ed, “Jim Crow Should Have Made One Thing Clear,” about lessons we all need to take on board from our own nation’s history as we head closer and closer towards terrifying authoritarianism. The whole column is a must read, but this paragraph stopped me in my tracks:

As we look to a November in which a number of vocal election deniers are poised to win powerful positions in key swing states, I think that the great degree to which authoritarianism is tied up in the American experience — and the extent to which we’ve been trained not to see it, in accordance with our national myths and sense of exceptionalism — makes it difficult for many Americans to really believe that democracy as we know it could be in serious danger. In other words, too many Americans still think it can’t happen here, when the truth is that it already has and may well again.

Please please please make sure you are registered to vote, and get yourself and your communities to the polls in November. Our lives and our democracy depends on it. -Emma

We’ve been watching…

I finished “Partner Track” this week. It was a treasure trove of memes for me, given that the villain has exactly the same name as my brother (who is not villainous at all) and the script is littered with gems like “I just want to punch Dan Fallon in his smug, pretentious face,” so I had to see it through. But genuinely, to me, “Partner Track” is an “Emily in Paris”-level binge: so much is going badly (the acting, the writing, the corny plot twists, the often clunky if well-meaning treatment of social justice issues) that it’s impossible to look away. Honestly, get me another season of “Partner Track” to watch alongside Emily’s Parisian adventures — but also, maybe some more actually good shows with quirky female leads. -Claire

The first episode of the new season of “The Vow.” Did this NXIVM docu-series need a season 2? Probably not. Does it lack interrogation of things like the money that went in and out of the self-help cult? Yes. Will I still be watching it all? Also a yes. -Emma

We’ve been listening to…

“Normal Gossip,” because I always save the new episodes to have as a little treat later and then forget I have them stashed away. This week my absent-mindedness paid off because I got to binge, like, six episodes of “Normal Gossip” and I was LIVING, my friends. Boy band fandom gossip! Family Secret Santa gossip! Gay kickball league gossip! This week I was just swimming around in it, letting it sink into my pores. The Telephone Game episode, a time-lapse compilation of the weekly guests playing an extended game of telephone with an anonymized piece of gossip, was perhaps my favorite, just because it is SO INSTRUCTIVE about not just the fact that gossip DOES get twisted with each retelling, but how and why those changes happen. -Claire

The first episode of a new pod series about the rise and fall of pop famous church Hillsong. “Hillsong: A Megachurch Shattered” is an investigative seven-part series which is a companion piece to a discovery+ docu-series. So far, it’s gripping. -Emma

We’ve been buying…

The Emilia velvet rose platform heels from the recent Antonio Melani X Nicola Bathie Dillard’s drop. I am planning to wear a certain lilac tulle dress to an upcoming wedding, and they seemed to call for some striking platform heels. I went with the cabernet color to darken my look up for fall, and I love them. However, I am slightly terrified of falling over and/or injuring myself?? Women who wear high high heels are so brave. -Claire

These brown leather knee-high Vince Camuto boots. They have been having a major fall sale, so I got them at a discount and I am so excited to enter my flowy dress / tall boots era! As someone with ~shapely~ calves I thought I simply couldn’t wear knee-high and over-the-knee boots, but it turns out that some brands (like Vince Camuto!) make a ton of their taller boots in wide-calf sizes too. #Bless. -Emma

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