I spent a long, hot summer avoiding conversations about Love Island. I clung to the fact that I had never seen an episode as if it were a badge of honour until, in the early hours of yesterday, I caved. Kept awake by the humidity, I watched my first episode of Love Island, followed by my second and third, before falling asleep on the couch midway through the fourth.
Like many of the island couples, it wasn’t love at first sight. Can you blame me? At first glance, the series isn’t exactly the makings of heart-warming, relatable viewing. Five men and women, usually an assortment of Instagram models and third-division athletes, enter a sun-kissed villa in a meticulously orchestrated bid to find love and fame. There is one winning couple, but does anyone lose when five-figure endorsement deals are up for grabs at the end of it all?
If I sound cynical, it’s because I was. I still am. But, while I still reserve a healthy dose of scepticism for the series, my eyes were finally opened to what apparently everyone else on my social media feeds already knew; that, despite how utterly fantastical and unrealistic some parts of the series are, other aspects are almost too close for comfort.
Read more: Love Island: Lessons from the ITV2 reality TV show
The series showed friendships form, women believe in their self-worth and how alarm bells can ring even in the early throes of romance. Who hasn’t comforted a distraught pal after they’ve been dumped? In the face of heartbreak, how many of us have discovered the somewhat cheesy truth that our friends were the real love in our lives all along?
When Maura Higgins invited Tom for a night in the hideaway (that’s where islanders go when they want to be, ahem, alone), she overheard him telling ‘the lads’ that he wondered if she was “all mouth” and no action. Her reply – “go f*** yourself” – was perfect.
Then there was Joe whose controlling behaviour, telling his love interest Lucie that she should ditch her male pals and get closer to the girls instead, sparked a debate about whether or not he was guilty of gaslighting.
But perhaps Amy Hart, who left the island halfway through, was the real standout of the series. The flight attendant fell head over heels for Curtis Pritchard, who didn’t feel the same way and called time on what he called their ‘half’ relationship.
A tear-stained Amy confessed she thought she’d met her first love and said she was leaving to heal her broken heart.
The Love Island villa might be a bikini-clad goldfish bowl but the idea that the reality series is a microcosm for modern relationships is completely true, whatever you think that says about society. I’m not ready to announce myself a fully-fledged fan, but the show has certainly earned itself one reluctant, retroactive, Scottish viewer.
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