Love Island, week 7 recap: Two love triangles, two walk-outs and a suitcase of groceries

Pain is the engine of Reality TV, not love, which is why the producers, who I suspect are much more interesting than the contestants, try to inflict as much pain as possible, and are constantly being reported to Ofcom by viewers. Even though complaining about pain on Love Island is like complaining about blood at a bullfight. It is self-deceptive, and idiotic. There isn’t an almost - or potentially - loving relationship in the villa the producers haven’t tried to smash.

This week they tried to smash Georgia, a larky girl with a loud voice, and Sam the Bird, who has improved, in that he is no longer a complete prat. They forced them to uncouple – that means break-up - or leave the villa.  Georgia slumped on some garden furniture moaning. “I feel so bad for you,” lied Caroline Flack, the uber-pimp who is apparently, and undeservedly, a cult figure, but they didn’t leave the villa.

Life is quite lush in the villa, if you can bear the conversation, but I am worried they will all develop skin cancer and end up in a sequel called Cancer Island. And I haven’t seen a book in seven weeks. Not a huge amount of pain then, the uncoupling of Georgia and Sam the Bird, but some pain – how televisual is disappointment, or ennui? - and it was depressing, and depression is not good TV. Not from these people. They lack the words, and wilt like flowers.

I think this is the week that Love Island ran out of ideas. There aren’t any nutters and without nutters there is no drama. There aren’t any villains either. I think it is because they are obsessed with their looks and give all their attention to making themselves look as much like human porn toys as possible. Being a nutter, or a villain, is hard work.

The potentially interesting women – Georgia, Dani, Samira (who walked out in disgust) – become weaker and more generic by the day. Perhaps the cameras are sucking their souls out. Perhaps comparative luxury is ruining them. It’s all gone slightly Masque of the Red Death, before plague hits the villa. Would you like to see plague in the villa? Of course, you would. I told you this journey to Love Island would be dehumanising.  They are no longer people. They are boring TV.

Love Island | Tanya Gold's recaps

So, it’s whining, and small, easily-digestible pieces of pain in heat with small clothing and Stag and Hen Night games where people dress up as firemen and climb up trees.  There is so little drama they have to use horror film lighting – grainy filters - and romantic film music, which is wailing noises which sound like women tearing themselves apart.

There were two love triangles this week, with women competing, as almost always, in Love Island, for men.  Alex – original Alex, middle-class doctor Alex – has such livid sunburn I wonder why he doesn’t buy a hat. His skin is now the most interesting thing about him. Alex has observed the other, happier, Love Island males for seven weeks, and he has picked up their worst habits. He is still strained, and he still looks at women as if they are wax dolls to be melted on gas cookers. He doesn’t have the easy charm of Jack or Josh. He has, instead, learnt entitlement without charm, and he flitted between a girl called Alexandra – mournful, slightly plump, and pretty – and a surfer girl with a hard face and a soft body. Alexandra was hurt. Her face said so. Alex is behaving like a rubbish Adam (the alpha male Geordie of weeks 1-5). He is, to quote the American comic Mel Brooks, a fish-faced enemy of the people.

Dani – kindly Dani, of Dani and Jack – told him off.  “I don’t like this game anymore,” she said, and told him “to be a man”. He was being a man. He only said he wasn’t ready “to be exclusive” with Alexandra, he replied – why should he choose between his two “options?” Dani skulked off, to a rebuke from Jack: “Why you are being silly?” Yes, just lie there looking photogenic and praise me.

To break the monotony, Jack and Dani went to a supermarket to buy some food which, very weirdly, they brought back in a suitcase. It was fantastically boring. But they are boring. They talk about love as “ticking boxes” and “getting to know you better”.

There was a brief charge of energy at the end, but it was the energy of people leaving Love Island. Larky Georgia and Sam the Bird refused at the Thursday re-coupling to re-couple with anyone but each other. They weren’t allowed to couple because the producers are desperate for bigger pain. So, they left.  That’s two good women in two weeks, exiling themselves from Love Island. What does that tell you?