I have a theory… Love Island is exactly like high school (apart from the classes and the learning and erm, the whole point of high school).
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been rushing home from work to catch up on the latest episodes (of the best show ever made) and I honestly can’t enough of those ‘geezers’ and ‘birds’ in the villa.
If you haven’t watched it – this post will give you the run down of everything you need to know.
In short, it’s trash but it’s the best kind of trash and it’s strangely addictive.
The other night when I was three episodes deep in a binge, I realised my new favourite TV show was exactly like high school.
Yep, the show basically turns a bunch of twenty-somethings into teenagers.
The whole premise of Love Island is that six women and six men are put into a villa and they have to couple up. Over the weeks some of them have been sent home and others have entered the villa, and there’s been a lot of re-coupling.
It’s kind of like school camp but with a lot more beers and bikinis.
So basically, people are ‘dating’ for very short periods of time. And that’s making them act like a bunch of gossipy 14-year-olds.
Although they may be coupled up with someone in the villa, they rarely discuss their feelings with each other – instead they run to their love interest’s friends and talk to them – then those friends pass the message onto their mate.
Sound familiar?
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They also run back to their group (strictly boys or girls) and tell them as soon as anything happens between them and their love interest – and every little drama is blown way out of proportion.
And just like in high school they spend most of their time sitting around bitching and talking about their feelings and occasionally attending a PE class (the challenges).
But probably the most high school thing about Love Island is how quickly they form attachments to each other. Within a few days they all had ‘best friends’ in the villa and they would cry when someone would leave.
Some of them have also dropped the L-bomb within weeks of meeting their Love Island love interest and when watching it you sometimes forget that you’ve had leftovers in the fridge longer than these people have known each other.
And maybe that’s what makes the show so strangely addictive. Perhaps, two million people are tuning in night after night because Love Island is a return to the giggly, immature, hassle-free life we all miss so dearly as adults.
To the outside eye, this is a trashy reality TV show about good looking people. But for it’s viewers, it’s more: it’s the perfect blend of nostalgia and escapism.