S01: Week 4: July 29. 2019-August 2, 2019 - Love Island (US)

If the show ends Aug 7 that is a very short run compared to the UK and even the Australian versions.  But it's a sign of CBS being tentative - they moaned publicly about the big chance they took with a 5-nights-per-week show - and the realities of network primetime with what is considered a summer replacement show.

By the way, this program (and all the others) are now being watched on YouTube TV.  I'm in two minds about handing Google more cash and more metadata but DirecTV became ridiculously expensive and top-heavy with absolute rubbish - PPV channels, infomercial channels etc.  YTTV features an unlimited (!) DVR and it's a very strange feeling not having to fret about running out of disk space and one almost feels guilty amassing such a huge library of things that will probably never be watched.  Conditioning and un-conditioning is a strange, powerful thing.  DirecTV Now, by comparison, limits DVR space to 20 hrs (!?) and is priced higher (depending on channel lineup) with more price increases inevitable given the depressing (for them) and now-regular stories of quarterly drops in satellite subscriptions.

And then there's the app.  DirecTV subscribers can, to a man, provide horror stories of their balky, unreliable, bug-filled app.  Now it works, now it doesn't.  You haven't left the house, left the room or even left the couch.  Log in.  Log out.  Log in again.  Oh, sorry, you wanted to catch up on the last set of that tennis match but 'the channel provider has disabled skipping ahead on the time line.'  'Watch your DVR from anywhere!' claimed the DirecTV ads.  The Big Lie.  Trying to access the DVR remotely (ie on another network while traveling) is impossible by rule or in practical terms as it attempts to 'register' your DVR despite having done so already many times. 

YTTV's app is snappy, peppy, reliable, stable, fast, intuitive, etc.  Works anywhere including over cellular data.  No logins, no 'registering' of DVRs.  To be fair, it's all cloud-based but it still provides a stark contrast to outdated technology propped up solely by misleading advertising.

Unfortunately, in order to get CBS's participation in the channel lineup YTTV agreed to stick unskippable ads (usually 6 of them where commercial breaks are placed during live air) in recorded shows 24 hrs after live air.  A small pain but a pain nonetheless.  The legacy providers (cable/satellite), the networks and even the newfangled streaming services still don't seem to grasp the prevalence of - ahem - other means of obtaining their shows with all interruptions edited out.  For free.  In any resolution desired.  Using the same transmission medium as the streaming.

As for LIUS, they're trying their best with mixed results - no doubt with the significant input of ITV types (the UK's network for Love Island) - to replicate the formula.  But a short series run makes it tricky with Islanders coming and going so rapidly.  Poor Christen got a single bleedin' day after traveling halfway around the world and was right to have a moan.

The narrator is hopeless.  Iain Stirling was already a successful stand-up comedian in the UK (he's Scottish) and took to voiceover work like a duck to water.  He's frequently been called the secret ingredient in the success of LIUK and has no fear of, as the Brits say, taking the p*ss out of the Islanders but he manages to retain some affection for them.  The US narrator is limited to - or opting for - unfunny, catty remarks.  These people are, by and large, ridiculous, narcissistic, insecure (despite their looks), jealous etc and are crying out for mockery of their attitudes and self-importance not just a running commentary of their actions/reactions.  Stirling does a comedy routine every night.  Hoffman does an impression of the kids who gathered in the corner dorm room every weekend to bitch about everyone else.

The weather has been even more hopeless.  I checked Fiji's annual weather profile to see if they are subjected to monsoons like much of Asia and the Indian and Pacific oceans but they are not.  It's just been bad luck with heavy rain and lots of it (eg the beer pong challenge).

We need to have a tearful funeral for regional accents and phraseology.  The nationalization and homogenization of everything is featureless and boring, especially the triphammer invocation of the word 'like.'  It's now being used as all parts of speech.  'Like, I didn't know if I would, like, like him?'

Cashel looked to be the ugly duckling among the Adonis types but had a surprisingly strong game although, inevitably, playing SNAG (sensitive new age guy) didn't work out.

Yamen is riding his luck but succeeding.  Fair play.  I wouldn't buy a lease on an outhouse from him or the new bloke but the ladies like him.

Dylan cries out for thought bubble memes similar to those utilizing Keanu Reeves as Ted 'Theodore' Logan.  'What if there are no tides and the earth just sinks down into the water every night?' etc.  A dim bulb to be sure.

Ray, thankfully, has dropped the rapper-with-a-mic act and can actually have thoughtful conversations.

Eric is a toolbag who apparently cleared customs.  He's breaking the stereotype of the soft-spoken, deferential Canadian but not in a good way.  For someone who considers himself Casanova he has yet to get physical with anyone.  Kids can laugh at old photos of adults wearing ridiculous clothes, shoes, hair and mustaches but a permanent etching of an alien head on the chest is going to be tough to explain or keep when the craze subsides.

Weston?  Making the classic errors of attempting to keep everyone happy simultaneously, thinking he can get away with it, and taking on even more trouble.  Blonde buxom Kelsey would seem to be custom-made for a Texas girlfriend/wife not least her iron-fisted grip on 'her man.'  Weston is hardly as spontaneous or adventurous as he thinks but has an adolescent fascination with the Bad Girls.

Zac/Elizabeth are the Achilles heel of Love Island regardless of nation or network - a committed, stable, couple who might actually be in love or Love (TM).  But such pairings confound the producers who want bed-hopping, gossip and drama.  Good luck to 'em.

Caro - words fail.  But at least she has a character arc - interesting at first, then annoying, now comedy relief.  Interesting that Dim Dylan summed up her personality concisely and accurately.

Alexandra - on the edge of cute, on the edge of sexy.  On the edge full stop.  Classic example of a girl not quite as attractive as her friends despite (probably) having more personality.  Killer husky voice but, like, the vocabulary needs, like, improving, y'know?  She's a bag of nerves and her 'let's just be a casual couple open to getting to know other people' is as hilarious as it is patently false.  Looked like ol' Dyl was putting her through her paces under the covers the other night.  Those two seconds of footage are about as racy as the US version is going to risk airing.

And then there's Kyra - queen bee syndrome personified.  Would gladly accept an attendant walking beside her holding a full-length mirror at all times.  Wants all the boys and wants all the boys to want her.  To be fair, most of them have tried.  Kyra is a bit of a ringer, having appeared with her band on America's Got Talent and with dozens of videos on YouTube where she was an even skinnier long-legged colt.  Unfortunately, the band's music is an unlistenable shouty mishmash of hip-hop and...something.

This board and many others often point out the unreality of reality TV.  It is, therefore, a hiding to nothing to talk about 'norms' on a show involving 20 or fewer people.  By that standard one could watch a football game and state that all humans are tall hulks who wear shoulder pads and helmets.  It is decidedly abnormal in the OED sense of the word due the sample size and drawing conclusions or extrapolations is, respectfully, logically unsound.

Like many of the Islanders, CBS's fear of commitment resulting from their claimed fears of backlash from showing too much skin or young people doing what young people do on a tropical island is probably going to doom LIUS to a Star Trek-type fate in which the network makes a flawed decision using flawed ratings that do not convey accurate information about the demographic they covet most.  LIUK had a halting start too but became a cultural phenomenon.  LI Australia also had spotty ratings in its first season.  It's claimed there will be a second Australian series but it's much delayed at present.

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