Is Sam from ‘Love is Blind: UK’ just Trevor 2.0?

The debut season of Netflix’s UK-based Love is Blind is officially in full swing, and the drama is ramping up.

This season may well prove, conclusively, that America falls far short of our neighbors across the pond where maturity is concerned, but no season of Love is Blind would be complete without a heaping helping of conflict. That arrived early in the UK iteration’s premiere season via one Sam Klein, who may just be a repeat of an increasingly common trend in the Netflix favorite.

Sam represents Love is Blind‘s biggest issue

We Love is Blind fans can pretend all we want, but there’s no denying the truth — we love a good villain. We may enjoy the participants who take the experiment to heart, but we stick around for the drama. It’s the mess that really reels us in, and no amount of true, passionate love will ever stir up as much conversation as the chaos of a good dumpster fire.

This season doesn’t have nearly as much mess as other seasons of the series — apparently, Brits are just less obnoxious than we state-siders — but there does seem to be an official villain of Love is Blind: UK‘s debut season. Sam isn’t a complete jerk or an unabashed liar — at least so far — but he seems to represent the worst aspects of the “experiment” in much the same way as season 6’s Trevor.

Trevor seemed like an absolute dream, and Chelsea’s swept-aside soulmate, until troubling details about his motivation for coming onto the show were revealed. It was eventually exposed that Trevor came onto the series for nothing but clout, and was even in a relationship when he proposed to his pod match. Text messages exposed his true colors, which were starkly addressed in the season’s reunion episode, leaving everyone with a sour taste in their mouths.

The same may be gearing up to occur with Love is Blind: UK after Sam’s own motivations came under scrutiny on several occasions. Nicole’s eventual match, Benaiah, saw straight through Sam from the get-go, and subsequent appearances from the London native have largely served to reinforce his stance.

Sam may be getting a bad rap, and an even worse cut, but he’s certainly not coming across well this season. He appears from the very start to be saying only what the women he’s speaking to want to hear, rather than taking the experiment seriously. Time and again he seems to reinforce the idea that he’s in the pods to get famous, rather than to find love.

That’s increasingly become Love is Blind‘s biggest issue as seasons wear on. Now that people are onto the formula, there’s almost always one person who works to manipulate the system to come across well and emerge from the show with enough of a following to launch a career in the spotlight. This season it appears to be Sam, and next season it will be someone else. So long as there’s fame to be found, bad actors will emerge to take advantage, but at least in Sam’s case, his match saw the writing on the wall before she was in too deep.