Week 1 on Love Island: #MeToo has not made it onto the island
This was supposed to be the year of #MeToo and #TimesUp. Neither have made it onto Love Island. The producers’ hands are all over it, scheming. No one behaves this badly by choice. If you want to know how the backroom staff of a reality TV show behave watch the American drama UnReal.
A week in, and where are we? A woman’s pants – and bum – appear from the water, a dirty Lady of the Lake. She appears to have no head. She probably doesn’t need one. I initially thought that Love Island is porn, but actually its worse. It’s like watching women burn themselves. “The recoupling is looming,” says the voice-over. This means the women have been sacked from being in “couples” and have to re-apply for their old jobs.
This week Adam, the “hot” guy in the villa, stole Gentle Kendall off Niall who used to hate his ears, and, on Day 4, two new women – Rosie and Georgia – appeared. Rosie appeared to be a sex witch.
Jack the pen-seller (“this pen will change your life”) seems to like Dani. Or is it just salesmanship? Wes seems to like Laura. Or are they calculating that the winning couple will not be villain and slut but prom king and queen, and an example must be set even within the bizarre structures of Love Island?
Adam likes no one but himself. Adam looks like a lizard staring at you from inside a Barratt home while speaking Geordie. He rebuked Gentle Kendall, who was recovering from a broken engagement on Love Island – why Kendall, why? – for not “letting him get to know her”. I think this means she hasn’t had coitus with him in a room containing multiple cameras and 11 other people. How long is a lizard-brick supposed to wait?
Love Island 2018 contestants: The full line-up
While he waited, guilt-tripping Kendall into intimacy and then telling her, after a game of Truth or Dare in which Rosie kissed him, that she was dumped, there was another game. The girls dressed up in super-hero outfits and tried to squash melons using their bums. “I’ve never squashed melons with my arse before,” said one, clearly surprised.
Now Adam slinks – or rather stomps – out of the communal bedroom and lies on the sofa. He then texts Rosie with this invitation: “Plenty of room”. On the sofa, he means. Not between his ears. Rosie replies: “lonely, already are we?” Adam sleeps alone but sadly not forever.
Then there is a Brexit conversation among the women. One says, “What do you think of Brexit?” Another replies, “Does that mean we won’t have any trees?” She means there won’t be any trees after Brexit.
Yet another says, “Does it mean it will be harder to go to Spain?” If only David Davis were on Love Island, he could tell them there will be trees and they will be able to go to Spain. There was a small puddle of romance, which is probably fake, but a critic can dream.
“Am I safe tonight?” Dani asks Jack. “You know you are,” says Jack, rubbing sun-cream into his shoulder. The women primp, agonisingly, as if they would like to rip off their faces and get new, better, other ones. Adam is doing up his tight white jeans in front of a mirror.
“You could almost cut the atmosphere with a knife,” he says, looking happy, but only because he doesn’t know what women are saying about him on Twitter. Wes keeps Laura, like a favourite dog. Alex keeps Samira because “she really deserves the opportunity to find love”. I think she was the only person who knew what Brexit was. Jack keeps Dani: “I fancy you more and more every day!” As she snuggles to him, he whispers, “Was that all right?”
Niall, who used to hate his ears, picks the new girl Georgia. “My time in the villa didn’t start until she got here,” he says, and earns a hurt look from Gentle Kendall who was with him for at least 24 hours.
Fake hippy Eyal keeps Hayley, even though she can’t pronounce his name. And then it’s Adam with – who will it be? Gentle Kendall or Possible Full Sex Rosie? He picks Possible Full Sex because Gentle makes him feel bad in ways he can’t understand and never will. “She’s marriage material,” says Rosie as Kendall drags her case up the path to the airport, “Why her ex didn’t marry her I don’t know”. And it’s over, and out.
Love Island | Read more
