Love Island reviewed by someone who has never watched Love Island

I’ve never watched a second of Love Island before. Here are some thoughts I had whilst watching it.

• The second episode of Love Island 2018 is about to start. I missed the opening episode because first of all, I was out and about, and second of all, I don’t watch Love Island. Now I am going to be watching Love Island. I don’t know how this happened, or why. All I can say is that it is definitely happening. That is all that is certain.

• Disclaimer: I am going in completely in the dark here, having avoided every single Love Island conversation from last time around and only knowing the basics. As in, I know that Caroline Flack sends people with visible abs to some sort of dystopian nightmare holiday villa to smoke cigarettes and maybe have sex or maybe pretend to have sex or just lie in bed and look deep into each other’s hollow, empty eyes or something. I don’t know. Genuinely no idea.

• The opening montage of tears, disturbing music, and facial close-ups is terrifying. What have I signed up for? What is this?

• “Single boy Adam is preparing to steal the girl of his choice”? I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. What is he going to do to the poor girl? Use his visible abs to grate her into a million pieces over a bolognese? This is fucking dark already.

• “Niall, you are now single” and then Niall himself reading that sentence out with his voice like a lump of gravel covered charcoal is the most brutal thing I have ever, ever seen. Maybe this isn’t so bad.

• This is so serious. Why is this so serious? Are they actually messing with the very fabric of existence here? They’re acting like it. Are they actually messing with these poor people’s lives and irreversibly changing the course of human history? Are they? That is what they are acting like. Why isn’t anybody stopping them? If that’s what they are doing why isn’t anybody stopping this?

• Kendall isn’t arsed at all, is she? Adam has picked her and if anything, it’s a bit of an upgrade, like trading in a Fiat 500 for a Range Rover or swapping a dull, muscular man for a slighter taller, duller, more defined, muscular man.

• This is like the bit after a school disco when the lights come on and everyone is just dazed and confused, walking around the confetti strewn, sticky disco floor, wondering what the fuck has gone on for the last few hours. You’ve had too many Panda Pops. Head’s gone. Where is that person you got off with an hour ago? Have they left? Why do you suddenly miss them so much?

• There’s lots of whispering going on and the commentator is far too loud over the top of it. He is ruining the ambience entirely. What is his accent? Where exactly is this commentator from? He sounds like someone’s given Graham Norton a helium balloon and told him to do an impression of Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons.

• “Honestly…” count is through the roof for Niall at the moment. Honestly, mate. Find a better way to start your sentences.

• Awwwwwww. Candlelit dinner as a first date for Kendall and Adam. That’s lovely. I can get on board with this. This is proper romance.

• This is painful. This is honestly painful. These two – Adam and Kendall – can’t string a sentence together longer than a few words. It’s just “Yeah, yeah, like” versus “Nah, like, honestly”. And nobody wins.

• Here he is to interrupt the brief love affair: man like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like like Niall. God bless him.

• “He’s like Harry Potter with +10 ab” is a great sentence, actually. I’ll give him that. That is poetry.

• “Mucky pondwater eyes” will now be the name of Ed Sheeran’s next single. Mark my words. I promise you.

• “I’m not being any spoon!” – Kendall, on not spooning Adam. Definitive.

• Aaaaaand the date ends with the loudest, squelchiest mouths-closed kiss I will ever see or hear. Thank you Adam and Kendall. Thank you. That sounded like a toilet plunger. Thanks.

• I had always wondered who Danny Dyer’s female equivalent was. It turns out it’s his daughter! Dani Dyer! Who knew! Fantastic.

• Fucking hell Jack has teeth like a Halloween costume that glows in the dark. Like a 12-year-old dressed up as a skeleton. Why are they fluorescent green? What is wrong with you?

• Hold on, I know who he reminds me of…

• Mixed in with a little:

• Anyway, back to Love Island. Curly haired boy and Scouse girl had a very, very interesting discussion on Game Theory. This is what I’m here for. The guy Russel Crowe plays in A Beautiful Mind whose name I can’t remember would be proud.

• Hold on. Eyal? How did he get that name? Did he rock up to auditions and fill out the form half cooked? He has genuinely forgotten a large portion of his name. He has definitely, definitely forgotten at least several letters of his actual name.

• John Nash! Great movie. Really good film. Only a year after Gladiator as well. Remarkable.

• Awwwww poor Kendall has two handsome men who both want to use her to win a gameshow awwwwwwwwwww.

• “We had a lot of chat” is the worst sentence ever uttered. Again, thank you Adam. You big tall handsome idiot.

• Wait wait wait “he looks like Zeus shagged Angelina Jolie and had a lovechild” is actually the worst sentence. Thank you, instead, Niall.

• Zeus did a lot of illicit shagging actually and I don’t think it gets talked about enough. Zeus would be excellent on this show. Zeus would do all kinds of mad shit. Zeus would tear up Love Island.

• It is a bit chalk and cheese, Niall, you’re absolutely right. It is a bit mate, yeah. You being the crumbly block of cheese and Adam being the crumbly block of chalk all just crumbling in together while Kendall sits in the middle shoving handfuls of chalk and handfuls of cheese in her mouth, chewing and crying, chewing and crying and swallowing and crying and vomiting whilst we all just sit and home and laugh.

• It was muggy, Niall, once again you are right. Her wanting to put your brain in Adam’s body to create some sort of double superhunk who still can’t speak properly is an absolute joke mate and you just shouldn’t stand for it.

• Why can’t Kendall and Niall just patch up their differences, fuck Adam off, and spend the rest of eternity doing what they were meant to be doing: staring into each other’s eyes and saying “like”? Why can’t we let love just take its true course?

• I am sorry, I am really, really sorry but “having banter” is not a phrase. You can’t rule over banter like that. You cannot possess or own banter. Banter can only have you. You do not decide who banters, only banter can decide.

• “Oi, don’t cry man” – the comforting words of Niall to a crying Kendall.

• A hug, a “don’t worry it’s sound” and suddenly it’s settled. It’s all fine. It’s all sound. Niall. Has. Got. This. Under. Control. Ladies. And. Gentlemen.

• A ROUND CALLED EXCESS BAGGAGE! DO YOU GET IT! HOLIDAYS! EMOTIONAL TRAUMA! BAGGAGE AS IN LIKE A SUITCASE! THIS IS THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION PEOPLE LET’S ALL SOAK IT IN!

• SNOGGING!!!!!

• Niall plays the recorder. Predictable, really. That’s the instrument they give to the people who are a bit too good for the triangle, but not good enough for any other actual, real instrument.

• I don’t want to alarm anybody but somebody, someone has had a threesome. And not just any threesome. Oh no. Oh no, sir-ee. A threesome… A THREESOME WITH HIS FRIEND… AND A GIRL!!!!!!! My goodness. These people. The life of Reilly or what? Amirite?

• THE DOCTOR TAKES IT! THE LOVE DOCTOR MORE LIKE. LOL.

• More threesome talk. I’m not cut out for this. The only threesomes I care about are short passing triangles used to escape a high press.

• “That challenge was toungealicious” – Niall, on a particularly toungealicious challenge.

• I’m sorry, Wes, big Wes, if I can call you that, but spending £1000 on a date, is not allowed. That just isn’t allowed. You need to stop doing that immediately. Please cease and desist that reckless behaviour.

• Hayley is confused. Hayley has seemingly spent this entire episode confused. So am I, Hayley. So am I.

• “Mate you’re a fucking doctor” – Niall telling the doctor he is, in fact, a doctor.

• The Doctor has had enough lads. Let’s pack it in. Let’s shut up shop boys, time to go. Enough is enough. The doctor is having a wobbly, time to call it a day. Let’s go home.

• UH OH GEORGIA FROM DRAMA SCHOOL INCOMING!!!

• “THERE’S ALWAYS A BIT OF DRAMA IN MY LIFE!!!”

• You see actually, actually, that is a very clever bit of writing because what they are doing, hehe, what they are doing is, in fact, playing on the fact she goes to drama school and combining that with the fact that the basis of her entire personality is just being a fucking nightmare to everyone she meets. Do you get it? Do you understand? Clever.

• “NOBODY CAN HANDLE ME” says Georgia, 20, from Drama school, waiting to get her heart broken on television and cry into the arms of complete strangers so she can rock up on Instagram next year giving you discount codes for lip gloss.

• I think I could handle you. I think I could handle you with a medium difficulty crossword and a one-man performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream alright.

• Rosie the lawyer. “Legally brunette my friends call me!” Absolutely nobody calls her that. Nobody has ever called her that. Let’s just stop that right now. Let’s just nip that one in the bud, too.

• Can anyone smell the doctor/lawyer collab coming in hot? Ooooo, how adult. How professional. Can’t wait to see how that goes. The lawyer and the doctor. Together at last. Let’s swap LinkedIn profiles and get brunch sometime. Ooooooooo we have good jobs. Honestly. Grow up. Grow up the lot of you. We’ll have none of that. Do not vote for that to happen.

• Oh. It’s over already. Come on now. That’s not fun. Why would you do that? Why would you put me through it all and then just take it away?