Netflix apologizes for delayed ‘Love is Blind’ live reunion
“This is 2023,” said host Vanessa Lachey.
LOS ANGELES — Love is impatient, love is not kind — at least if you ask fans of Netflix’s “Love Is Blind.” Viewers had to wait more than an hour for the Season 4 reunion special to stream on Sunday – Netflix’s second live event on its own platform.
“Love Is Blind: The Live Reunion,” hosted by Vanessa and Nick Lachey, will stream from Los Angeles starting at 5 p.m. PT. Netflix subscribers can enter the show’s lounge 10 minutes before the start time — and subscribers are still there an hour later. The show finally began airing—apparently live—at around 6:16 p.m. Pacific, although some Netflix users still reported difficulty accessing the content.
“We apologize for being late,” Vanessa Lachey said, the only acknowledgment of the delay at the beginning of the broadcast.
“To those who stayed up late, got up early, missed Sunday afternoon… we are deeply sorry that Love is Blind’s Live Reunion didn’t go as we planned,” Netflix tweeted. at 6:29 p.m. Pacific. “We’re filming right now and we’ll put it on Netflix as soon as we can. Again, thanks and apologies.”
A request for comment from Netflix was not immediately returned. Netflix’s first live event, “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage,” didn’t have any obvious technical difficulties.
On Twitter, Netflix acknowledged the delay without providing an explanation. Two minutes after the original start time, the show promises the special will take place in 15 minutes. Seven minutes later, the company tweeted, “The #LoveIsBlindLIVE promise will be worth the wait…” along with a photo of one of the season’s “villains”.
The last activity from the account was a retweet by US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joking about the delay. With the special’s original end time approaching, nothing has been posted since – and it stayed that way even as the show started airing for some, until the tweet Sorry.
Before the show finally aired, Vanessa Lachey took to Instagram – a brief live stream, perhaps ironically – from the set to try to entice viewers to stay, saying the delay was due to the delay. technical issue in a post thanking fans for their patience and captioned it: “We’ve obviously broken the internet!”
“This is 2023,” she said.
Cast members from the Seattle-based season also took to social media to joke about the delay. Marshall Glaze posted a photo of a man studying a row of electrical wires: “I’m trying,” he tweeted.
Competing streamers and networks also add to the drama.
“We will never let you wait for a reunion,” BravoTV — home of many particularly chaotic reunions — tweeted with a wrinkled face.
“Hmm,” read an introduction to Kerry Washington tweeted by Hulu.
While chaos dominates trending topics on Twitter, the late hour presents a significant threat to Netflix’s dominance of discourse: the latest episode of HBO’s “Success” now being streamed online.
Associated Press journalists Beatrice Dupuy, Alicia Rancilio and Mallika Sen contributed to this report.
