If you’re anything like me, you’re currently doing five things right now:
1. Looking forward to Kate impaling Dave with a pointy piece of firewood at the final Bonfire.
2. Quickly throwing together a betting pool so you can win some money if you happen to guess with the exact gallon of tears Casey will shed when his “sales pitch” to become Ashley’s husband doesn’t work.
3. Paging through Psychology textbooks to make sure you clearly understand the symptoms of “delusions of grandeur” because you think it’s very important to properly diagnose the people you write about in your recaps.
4. Including “Never go on a fucking reality show” in your growing list of New Year’s Resolutions. To be fair, such a creed has been on that list for well over a decade, but so has “Stop swallowing gum” and sometimes you falter a bit with that one.
5. Coming to terms with the idea that there is no way this episode will not end on a cliffhanger. Sure, we will get some satisfaction, but we will have to wait until the show’s final episode to really know what will happen with the four couples who arrived on this island together and then betrayed one another in every conceivable way possible.
It’s official: I’m throwing every ounce of my vicarious support at the people who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Temptation Island. I wish they’d had it in them to fight back, to not allow this soul-corroding excursion to become even a possibility (they could have tried ranting, raving, or attacking their significant other with those awful tiny pinches that don’t actually hurt but still feel like momentary death), but I can’t entirely fault them for not being able to talk someone out of a free trip to Hawaii, especially one that comes with amenities like free alcohol and faux fame.
Where last we left him, Rick was sitting beside a smoldering fire watching footage of his girlfriend of four years getting slammed by a man she’s known for four days. So what I’m saying here is that no matter how bad your week has been, Rick’s has probably been worse. But as he watches KB and Ashley writhe around under the covers, he holds it together like a champ. He does not cry. He does not scream. He does not fall to his knees to begin gathering blades of grass and small rocks and twigs that he can fashion into an Ashley voodoo doll. Instead, he informs Mark he’s not sure his relationship can recover from this, and my presumption is that any clinically normal viewer would agree with him.
Don’t be jealous, but I’m sort of a scholar when it comes to slasher movies. I have read every single academic text written about the hemoglobin-spattered dirty subgenre of horror – there are far more than you’d think! – so I am quite well versed in the narrative and stylistic iconography particular to a collection of movies that all seem to end with a body count. I know slashers are set in isolated locations and that those locations are populated by a gaggle of nubile young adults who are ready and willing to sit on some faces. I know the viewer is meant to feel exactly nothing when most of the characters suddenly disappear because we haven’t invested in any of them in the slightest. I know there is usually one survivor – our resilient Final Girl – and we are meant to root for her because she seems decent and kind and because she’s the person about whom we’ve learned the most. And I know with the certainty of a person who has watched hundreds of these movies through a shield of shaking fingers covering my eyes that anything that transpires beside a fucking bonfire in the middle of the woods will only lead to terror.
We’re going back to basics, people. Temptation Island has just experienced its own mini version of The Purge and now only a few people remain: the original couples; the well-meaning host who guides the group through their bouts of scorching pain and then giggles as he collects his paycheck; and enough of a skeleton crew left behind to mic and film the participants so that every tear sliding down a cheek and every uneven heartbeat will be recorded for posterity. The Tempters were sent packing. My guess is Morgan is home trying on wedding dresses and swearing to her family that the guy she’s fully committed to is for real and not just dealing with either Rebound Syndrome or a psychotic break and he is so excited to come meet them – you know, after he officially ends his commitment to that other girl he was with for five years and once planned to marry. I figure Brittany is sitting in a lotus pose inside a yurt somewhere staring at Karl’s Instagram page without blinking and Katheryn is at a toy store buying a dolphin stuffed animal that she will name John and Val is pretending to be King of the World in front of his bathroom mirror while he shaves and Johnny is waiting for the official call from Kady telling him that she gave John the boot so Johnny can chivalrously rush to her side like a Real Man would. And I assume the producers are currently dancing a fucking jig beside a production van because all this has worked out even better than they even expected.
While I absolutely commend Kaci for the brilliant strategy she whipped out during the last Bonfire – refusing to open her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see footage that would likely cause her insides to feel as though they were sizzling – I think it’s important that we acknowledge right here and now that her plan will not work moving forward. I’m positive Kaci will want to continue to avert both her eyes and her mind from the truth, but these producers know exactly what they’re doing and they will not so much as pretend to entertain the notion that one of their contestants will manage to avoid all the hours of incendiary footage they’ve nabbed of her boyfriend. See, effectively skating around misery is not how reality television works. If Kaci refuses to watch what they stick in front of her face, fine. There’s another move here: play on a sense other than sight. I’m predicting the next thing Kaci will have thrown at her be a sound bite and it will be of Evan telling Morgan he loves her and such a thing will prove devastating. Hearing the synchronized moans of your boyfriend and some chick during probable sex is horrible. But hearing your boyfriend of five years declaring his love to a woman he’s only known for a few weeks? That’s takes “horrible” to another level entirely and that level is subterranean and it’s guarded by demons who have terrible breath and you’d probably have to slay them with a really pointy scythe just to escape and slaying demons is hard.
My sweet readers, several zillion ultra-important questions have been swirling round and round inside of my head since Are You the One? aired a new episode. It’s sort of been hard to sleep, what with my grave fears about what could happen (nothing) should Nutsa and Brett turn out not to be an MTV-approved soulmate match. And that concern isn’t even slightly comparable to the wave of stomach-clenching terror I sometimes feel (it’s probably just cramps) when it dawns on me that this right here will be the very last time these people can try to pair up correctly. But the most ominous question weighing heavy inside of me (along with that fistful of Twix I consumed on Halloween night…and then the next night…and then the night after that) is the question about these contestants and their futures. Let’s just face it – the vast majority came on this show not to find temporary love, but to snag themselves very non-temporary careers as H-list reality stars on every show this network produces until the end of fucking time. I’m pretty sure what’s really been keeping me up nights is how very certain I feel that the very worst of these people are not going anywhere.
Since my mommy and my daddy committed a long time ago to the act of effective parenting, I was raised to be a decent human being. As such, I was able to muster up a bit of empathy for Kwasi when he lost whatever was left of his sanity. I mean, the man crumbled into the lap of a producer while wailing, “I came here for love!” Who amongst us hasn’t had a moment where real love seemed unattainable? Unfortunately, my empathy sort of shriveled up and died rather quickly because though I do happen to be a decent human being, I am also a smart human being and – though it saddens me to say this – intelligence and pragmatism kicks decency’s ass pretty much every time. And so as a smart person, I find myself feeling exactly nothing for Kwasi as he experiences a televised breakdown because what kind of faulty planning must be involved for you to decide that your greatest chance of finding forever love will occur if you enter a house loaded with booze, exhibitionists, exhibitionists drinking booze, something called The Boom Boom Room, and fifty-three cameras? And what insane lies did you need to tell yourself so you could become convinced that a show that’s been on for seven seasons and has ended with most of the couples breaking up both publicly and rather spectacularly would be your emotional safety net? As I cannot even force the decent side of my brain to attempt such a leap in logic, the only thing I feel for Kwasi right now is the hope that there’s some Xanax on the premises.
Romeo and Juliet. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Holden Caulfield and that metaphorical kid he keeps trying to save over there in the rye. Kim Kardashian and herself. What do all these pairings have in common? I think the main link between them is a level of adoration that borders on the obsessive. What these people feel for one another (and what Kardashian seems to feel for herself) is the kind of adoration that’s so powerful, its very presence causes the world to feel electrically charged. And now it’s time to add another couple to this illustrious list, so let’s all grasp hands and welcome Tevin and Kenya! They are the stars of what I like to call THE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TO BE TOLD ON REALITY TELEVISION AS THE APOCALYPSE LOOMS. Tevin, you see, is a modern day Renaissance man. Okay, I actually have no idea what the kid does, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say he’s an artist who happens to look a great deal like one of the greatest lipsynchers of our time so I’ve decided that factor alone makes him Renaissance-adjacent. His for-right-now beloved is Kenya, a woman who enjoys sitting on the lap of her ex-boyfriend probably way more than she should. But ever since that most recent ex left the island, Kenya decided that it might be kind of fun to settle and she declared her love for a very sweet (but a very very dim) Tevin. And guess what?! The MTV-sanctioned “relationship experts” (anyone besides me want to see the degree that officially deems these people experts?) agree with her! The lights of that Truth Booth – the ones that don’t actually do anything integral to the process – pass over their bodies and we learn that this house filled with emotional misfits has finally identified another perfect match! There are cheers and shouts of elation, but if you listen carefully, I’m pretty sure you can also hear the sound of nails and a very busy hammer. That noise? Oh, that’s Shamoy and Maria. They’re barricading the door of their until-now private Honeymoon Suite. Wouldn’t you do the exact same thing?
The last episode ended with a cliffhanger, but I feel compelled to assure you that I managed to sleep soundly all week long, even though I didn’t know with absolute certainty whether or not Cali’s ceremony strategy worked. Sure, the melatonin spray I’ve recently fallen in a deep sort of love with helped, but my restful slumber was really due to the fact that it’s almost impossible to care if beams of light will eventually illuminate the nighttime sky in a dramatic visual that’s meant to make us cheer for the success of these people instead of doing what we should be doing: shaking our heads at their continued idiocy. In any case, the results come back, they get four beams, and this definitively proves that Cam and Kayla and Cali and Tomas are not matches. This result also proves these people still have no earthly idea what they’re doing and Terrence J shakes his head at them like a disappointed parent. His reaction reminds me a lot of that one time I came home from a party in high school with hickies lining my entire neck and I swore to my mother that we’d all just sucked on each other’s necks for fun and of course nothing sexual had gone down, but she didn’t believe me for a single second because the woman has a brain. But instead of my neck, let’s talk about Kayla. Poor Kayla. Now officially one of the dethroned self-described “power couples,” she sits in the confessional wearing a bustier I don’t for one moment believe is actually her own and she bursts into tears because Cam is not the man MTV said she was meant to be with. Don’t despair, Kayla! If you miss the guy after you leave the island, I’m sure you will be able to find him at some Hitler-esque rally. He will be easy to spot; he may very well be the only African American in the crowd cheering about the destruction of our civil liberties.
