There is a spectrum of reality television consumers. And you’re on it — whether you’re passionately invested in who the most recent Bachelor was caught quarantining with, or if you think the Kardashian’s 18-season run has a negative externality on our culture and collective intellect on the same magnitude as greenhouse gases on the environment. A staunch skeptic, I find myself closer towards the latter end of that range. Beyond the glib, too liberally dispensed declarations of love, the obviously planned machinations of producers behind the screen, and incredibly dry conversation, I simply cannot get behind a premise where the people involved do not acknowledge or even remotely recognize the fundamental absurdity of their situation. I’m looking at you, The Bachelor and its affiliated franchises.
And so when Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle dropped on Friday, I had little to no intention of giving it a chance, and wouldn’t have, had I not fell victim to their very aggressive but very effective marketing strategy of autoplay. Slightly intrigued but with no patience for exposition or regard for whatever linear plotline this show was trying to develop, I picked an episode at random, only planning to watch enough to confirm its status as yet another tawdry, superficial cash grab, and then never again. Yet I stand before you, eight episodes later, corrected.
The premise seems basic enough — you take a group of conventionally attractive people, plop ‘em down half-naked in a beautiful, remote island, and let hormones and selective editing do the rest. But there’s one crucial caveat: with few exceptions, all the participants must remain celibate for the duration of the show. If they don’t, it’ll cost them. Literally. A kiss is $3,000 deducted from the final winnings the contestants are competing for; all the other bases will take you back double that and upwards. With 10 hot, dumb, and by their own admission, incredibly horny contestants, Too Hot To Handle has all the trappings of being another in a long line of reality shows that offer little more than mindless escapism and indulgent schadenfreude. And don’t get me wrong, on more than one occasion, it easily is. But ultimately, this isn’t the story — and it is a story — of a bunch of hedonists parading around a resort in search of true love as mics conspicuously hang off their bathing suits. It’s about people — guarded, arrogant, even vapid people — learning to be more honest and vulnerable versions of themselves through the relationships they make, romantic and platonic. It’s emotional redemption for those on the lowest of the emotional totem pole.
There’s a scene where a guy, who I’m convinced is just a more ripped but equally wholesome version of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, begins to cry after an exercise in non-verbal communication when one of the other female contestants leaves him feeling like he stopped seeing her body and instead, everything else that she is. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” she says.
In another episode, two men involved with the same woman have the most embarrassing, cocky showdown where one tells the other, “We’re not in the same league,” and the other warns during his talking head that he’s “underestimating the Alpha that I am.” Before you can roll your eyes, however, these men are then forced, in a surprisingly poignant workshop that at first looks like it’s ripped from the pages of Goop Magazine, to cover each other’s bodies with mud and write their deepest inhibitions on a whiteboard, sorry — a “beautiful, blank canvas.” Meanwhile, the women are speculating on what the men have been called away for: “I bet a girl’s going to walk in right now, with all the boys,” says one, referring to the Love Island-esque twist. “Hundred percent,” gasps another. “Zero percent,” chimes in the voiceover. “We’re actually trying to drum some maturity into these horndogs.” And drum they do. You’ll never believe it, but these acts of liberation and unity work on the guys. Too Hot to Handle is not of course above sexist, territorial, petty rivalries, but we soon see that it does not seem to exploit or even encourage competition as its main plot points. Built Tom Holland even has the cutest sleep-talking episode about emotional growth and progress, creepily but conveniently caught on camera for our viewing pleasure.
There are other elements that allow this show to deliver. The voiceover, for example, injects the much-needed flow of self-awareness needed to make it palatable, serving jabs like, “Sounds like they’ve blown the budget on tension music,” and, “Chloe and Nicole are talking about their favorite subject: the environment. Sorry, I mean sex.” The international, but not particularly diverse, mix offers some delightful jargon like, “proper fit,” which means super hot, but like, better, “geezer” — I still cannot tell if this is a pejorative or a term of endearment — and “shit chat.” British people are super into banter. “I’m so head over heels in love with you it’s criminal,” said an Australian contestant in a way that is maybe not as quaint as Jane Austen but certainly less shallow than the valley-girl “I’m like, really starting to feel a connection to you” drawl featured on The Bachelor. And best of all, they seem to develop friendships strong enough that even those who don’t find an emotional connection can walk away with something. Perhaps the most stunning display of character development is that by the end of it all, even the guy who started his run on the show describing his lifestyle as, “living on a boat and sleeping with a different girl every night,” comes out of this thing seeming decently bearable.
Reality TV is not inherently awful. In fact, creating art that depicts human nature and relationships organically, unrefined and as they really are is something that some of the very best filmmakers strive for. But too many of these shows waste their medium in producing something that’s easy and known for its entertainment value. Not for its humanity.
For all its flaws, Netflix’s latest stab is a step closer in the right direction.