Thereโs not a reality show that Black folks dig as a collective more than โLove is Blind.โ So, thereโs no surprise we had our tendrils dug in on Season 6โs only Black couple: Clayton Gravesande and Amber Desiree โADโ Smith.
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My god did those two give us all the brewed tea bags we needed for an otherwise just-okay season.
We wanted the Charlotte, N.C. couple to work: Clay, a fit entrepreneur with a blinding smile, his own crib and willingness to express his emotions; AD, a former NFL cheerleader turned real estate broker and nightclub manager with a bleeding heart and a frame stacked like one of those Giant Jenga towers.
But it was obvious from the pods that the two werenโt aligned. It started with his insistence that physical appearance matters deeply to him. This offended AD, who in her early 30s shouldโve understood that not even a show called โLove is Blindโ would court an American male with options who doesnโt care about looks.
From there, Clay kept knitting red flags and shipping them to AD via FedEx SameDay delivery: He made several points to express that his work would likely always take precedent over her and was sometimes aggressive in tone in explaining it. But the largest, and most consistent, red flag was Clayโs constant expression of fear of cheating on his wife.
Clay said he was worried that he would follow in the path of his father, who cheated on his mother (because cheating isโฆhereditary now?) Instead of running, AD, bless her whole heart, tried to allay his concerns.
This appears to be ADโs whole modus operandi: She expressed that she didnโt want to keep getting her heart broken by dudes who didnโt take her seriously and she even acknowledged that Clay was a bright red flag from the word โjump.โ But we watched AD make bad decisions multiple times in 4K: that she was even considering that weird white dude Matthew told us what we needed to know about her judgment.
Clay standing AD up at the altar should have been expected from anyone who watched the whole season, but it still messed us up a bitโฆin large part because the producers let AD go first and say โI do.โ (nasty work, yโall). But even when Clay made so many unserious comments about her physical appearance at the altar, we were hoping for his redemption โ probably not reasonable considering the โLove is Blindโ process takes 38 days from meeting to weddingโฆbarely enough time to find a therapist to process why his ass shouldnโt be standing at anyoneโs altar for a while.
On Wednesday nightโs reunion show, Clay expressed tons of regret and contrition, saying it was hard to watch and insisting that AD is still the โlove of his life.โ He said the therapy heโs completed in the last year or so has put him in a better place. His voice even cracked as he talked, resulting in AD physically comforting him.
You know Black folks werenโt gonna let that go unacknowledged.
Even rapper Wale got in on the Clay bashing, for some reason.
There was no naked animus between Clay and AD on the reunion show; her long pause and request to move on to the โnext questionโ when host Nick Lachey asked her if there was any chance for the couple going forward has some believing that theyโre still creeping with each other on the low.
If I had to conjecture, Iโd say that Clay dragged his happy ass on television to draw attention to his businesses and maybe add another body to the roster in the process. He likely wants to get married someday, but he had to know going in that he wasnโt ready. If Iโm correct, it would make Clay the most diabolical time waster of the season and the main villain if Jeramey wasnโt around.
Iโd also like to believe that AD 10 years from now wouldโve chucked deuces and left Clay in the pods. But thatโs an indictment of โLove is Blind:โ It attracts 20- and 30-somethings without good sense to make these sweeping life decisions in the amount of time it take to come off new-employee probation at work.
But hereโs hoping AD learns something, because good godโฆ
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