Love Island's new arrivals Ellie and Zara reduce the existing ladies to quivering pools of mascara, resentment and self-doubt
Among ITV2’s late night viewing audience, as among the contemporaries of Aristotle, there must presumably be some who prefer their narratives with certain dramatic unities forced upon them.
Some must feel the dramatic purpose of the characters to be heightened by formulae that must be followed, and tantalised by the prospect of their being broken.
On Love Island, two unshakeable rules have been established thus far, the Mallorcan Unities, if you will, and they are a) that new female arrivals must first take pity on fully automated crimson sympathy generator Alex before b) ultimately fancying Adam.
Taken together, these two truths may cast brilliant light upon the fickle vagaries of human nature, but ultimately they have come to render the viewing experience so utterly formulaic as to have turned Love Island into a kind of Late Night Hollyoaks version of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.
Because we all know and understand what happens now. New females arrive, which for no great reason beyond his own entitled self-pity Alex has convinced both himself and everyone else in the villa that he has some ownership rights over. Said new females, having been watching the show prior to their arrival, realise there is a voting public to get onside with a bit of brief, feigned interest in the doctor.
If the interest is real not staged, we must assume that Alex’s Jupiter-like skin is more horrifying in the flesh than even the 65 full HD cameras can capture, because it is a matter of minutes if not milliseconds before they switch their interests with immediate effect to Adam, the Gateshead Zarathustra, who has now shown himself to be a pleasing if rare psychological cut-and-shut of half family dog half goldfish.
Whenever a new female walks in he instantly becomes even more excitable than a Labrador puppy greeting his returning owner after a thirty-second trip to the bins, while simultaneously forgetting absolutely everything he has done at any point beyond the last ten seconds.
Has anyone else ever attempted to live a life so utterly unburdened by past deeds or present circumstances? If Adam is carrying a tray of drinks and sees someone he wants to wave at do the pina coladas just crash immediately to the floor?
Still, on to the females. There are two new ones. Personal trainer-come-businesswoman Ellie, and Government Advisor Zara. Perhaps credit must be given to the ITV team, who, so hopelessly poleaxed by their own fatal casting of Adam, which has served only to suck all romantic intent directly into the vortex of his own ruthless self-interest, have now been faced with little choice but to send in the villa a woman who is rumoured to be his own ex-girlfriend’s best mate, presumably in the desperate hope that she, if no one else, will be prepared to cast their romantic horizons a fraction wider.
And then there’s Government Advisor Zara, for whom the simple maths of time and a leaked CV intimate has been advising the government since the age of eighteen. And who, having watched Adam’s behaviour over the last fortnight, is still nevertheless firmly of the view that Adam is the one for her. Which does beg the immediate question of the quality of advice she has been offering Her Majesty’s Government.
“Hi Zara, it’s the Secretary of State here. I’m thinking of buying some new trains. We’ve got bids in from two companies. One has a track record of delivering on time, on budget, and an impeccable record in similar networks in other countries.
The other has got neat Go Faster stripes painted up the sides but has been directly implicated in all of the most notorious train wrecks all over the world of the last twenty years. There have been hundreds of fatalities. What do you think?”
“Was that 'Go Faster Stripes' you said Minister?”
The new arrivals have reduced the existing female housemates to quivering pools of mascara, resentment and self-doubt. But their misery doubles as an entry-level economics lesson set out by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.
Not for the first time in the last fortnight, First World and Third World live side by side under one roof. In the villa, it is not food and shelter that guarantees survival, but access to members of the opposite sex. The men are living in conditions of abundance. The women must fight for scarce resources.
Should we be shocked that they have become petty, anxious and deeply insecure? They are, quite literally, insecure. They're one aborted phoney snog away from the first plane home. That’s the entire purpose of the psychological lab rat experiment we are watching and in which they are simultaneously incinerating their dignity while dreaming of being the next big thing on Instagram.
In such desperate circumstances Rosie, it is understood, has been reduced to safeguarding her own survival by providing services usually only on offer in this kind of format to pigs, quite literally at the hands of Rebecca Loos.
And while we rhapsodise briefly on a porcine theme, Wes too has been channeling his inner Animal Farm, by realising that while he is “happy” with Laura, he could, in fact, be “happier.” Her legs good. Your legs better.
It is for this reason that Samira is suddenly so terrified of Alex “getting hurt.” For “getting hurt” read “getting laid”, a course of action she knows leads directly to her next “date” taking place on a sofa with Caroline Flack in a TV studio in South London with some jobbing standup pointing at her and laughing.
Alas, there is reason to fear that moment is imminent. Why do the good guys always come last?
