A Reunion episode didn’t close out last season of Temptation Island, which means we were robbed of seeing the participants of this televised madness decked out in their mainland finery. We also didn’t get to see Mark wearing a suit while looking a wee bit nervous about having to confront a bunch of people who have spent the last several months setting Google Alerts on themselves. But last season isn’t this season! We now have a Reunion to serve as an epilogue to a season I have privately taken to calling American Psycho 2: David Sucks Even Harder Than Patrick Bateman and my only hope going in is that the alcohol budget for this event was low and the security budget was sky fucking high.
It’s fitting that the last thing David bestows upon Kate is a glob of snot on her bare shoulder, but we’ll return to David’s errant bodily fluids in just a moment. See, first we need to get back to David’s pressing need to itemize for Kate all of the very many ways he humiliated and betrayed her during the last month, and he – like every garden variety sociopath who has come before him – will claim that he is telling her this information all in the name of honesty while conveniently ignoring the fact that retrospective honesty doesn’t fucking count for anything. But because he believes he owes her the respect of telling her just how cavalierly he chose to emotionally gut her, here’s what Dave tells Kate for purposes of her own edification:
If you’re anything like me, you’re currently doing five things right now:
1. Looking forward to Kate impaling Dave with a pointy piece of firewood at the final Bonfire.
2. Quickly throwing together a betting pool so you can win some money if you happen to guess with the exact gallon of tears Casey will shed when his “sales pitch” to become Ashley’s husband doesn’t work.
3. Paging through Psychology textbooks to make sure you clearly understand the symptoms of “delusions of grandeur” because you think it’s very important to properly diagnose the people you write about in your recaps.
4. Including “Never go on a fucking reality show” in your growing list of New Year’s Resolutions. To be fair, such a creed has been on that list for well over a decade, but so has “Stop swallowing gum” and sometimes you falter a bit with that one.
5. Coming to terms with the idea that there is no way this episode will not end on a cliffhanger. Sure, we will get some satisfaction, but we will have to wait until the show’s final episode to really know what will happen with the four couples who arrived on this island together and then betrayed one another in every conceivable way possible.
I’ve come to realize that watching Temptation Island is similar in some ways to having an addiction. There are very high highs and some seriously low lows and yet I keep chasing that dragon and coming back for more, even though I could be using the time it takes me to write these recaps to catch up on all the Faulkner I intentionally skipped over the years. (That man went on for pages about shit like flora and fauna.) But the biggest reason I feel Temptation Island is similar to an addiction is because the action has become repetitive. We’re on episode nine now, and certain things probably won’t change. Ashley H. will still be amazed by some new boy’s kisses. Casey will still be crying over how poorly things have turned out for him. Gavin will continue to look stunned by Esonica’s growing confidence. Rick, who saw way too much the first week to be stunned by anything at this point, will ride out the next few days until he can finally reunite with Ashley G. and then he will sit quietly while she investigates the imaginary subtext that’s not actually flowing through whatever conversation they’ll have beside a Bonfire. And Dave? Dave will still have the gall to swear up and down that Kate is and has always been his top priority and then he will prove it by promising his future to Toneata.
When it comes to the video messages that closed last week’s episode, I think it’s rather clear that Casey would have actually preferred for the little stringy-haired girl from The Ring to come crawling out of his iPad instead of what he got, which was Ashley, her voice dripping with flagrant signs of emotional disengagement. The guy is in a rough place right now, and though I initially expected he’d drown his shock and sorrow by cavorting with a walking Very Bad Idea like Payton, I now think he will spend the rest of his time on that island weeping into coconut fronds, an image that really only makes for good TV for about fifteen minutes or so. After that, it begins to look slightly pathetic.
It all comes down to the simple question of what these people truly want. Think about it. Dave obviously wanted to have a threesome at some point in his life – and with that hair, I will not so much as even entertain the notion that he’s had a shot at one before – and being on this show allowed him to dive dick-first into some debauchery. Ashley G. (and the skilled group of editors tasked with turning her into character) allowed us to see that what she values most is constant validation. As for Casey, the guy who is currently pounding the wooden plank upon which he literally sits and is metaphorically walking, well, Casey must value snagging himself a semblance of fame. I can think of no other reason to explain why he’d talk his significant other into coming on a show with such a shit track record when it comes to couples staying together. He brought Ashley there. He thrust her into a scenario where it was at least a possibility that another guy would eventually join her in some thrusting. Whether or not Casey has behaved himself thus far on that island is not really the issue; if he wanted to prove his fidelity, he could have done that shit on the mainland. No, Casey had to be looking for something besides clarity and my guess is that “something” involved becoming pretend famous – and now here we are. The guy is momentarily famous for looking like a sap and the only thing that shocks me about any of it is that he has the nerve to appear surprised.
After the tragic denouement of last week’s episode wherein participants of this show were symbolically impaled by literal betrayal, it seems now may be a good time to regroup. So while you stretch and thank everyone in your life for never dragging you onto a reality show, I’m going to make a few predictions about what I think will happen to these people in the coming weeks:
Before anyone who partook in the sweet little threesome that closed the last episode can shift the narrative to something that seems more convenient, let’s first be clear: not a bit of that “just happened.” There was ample time for any one of those pseudo adults to decide not to hop into a bed located inside of a room they know full well is rigged out with cameras. They could have come to their scattered senses in, say, the bathroom – you know, where the guy (the one who told his girlfriend she’s his one and only) was showering with another woman – or they could have halted things in the hallway leading to the bed or they could have ceased the debauchery as they stood around musing that they weren’t accustomed to threesomes. And yes, I know alcohol clouds things and I also know that’s why there’s so much alcohol on that fucking island, but I will have far more respect if any of these desperate individuals just stands up and says, “Yup. I participated. I wanted to experiment sexually and have fun and I plan on slipping my grandparents a powerful sedative prior to this episode airing so I will not in any way be responsible for a coronary incident that could take place when they view me gyrating atop two relative strangers” than if they now choose the sheepish route on the guilt-paved highway.
Also: Tell me one more time that these Tempters came on this show to find true love. I fucking dare you.
It’s official: I’m throwing every ounce of my vicarious support at the people who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Temptation Island. I wish they’d had it in them to fight back, to not allow this soul-corroding excursion to become even a possibility (they could have tried ranting, raving, or attacking their significant other with those awful tiny pinches that don’t actually hurt but still feel like momentary death), but I can’t entirely fault them for not being able to talk someone out of a free trip to Hawaii, especially one that comes with amenities like free alcohol and faux fame.
Where last we left him, Rick was sitting beside a smoldering fire watching footage of his girlfriend of four years getting slammed by a man she’s known for four days. So what I’m saying here is that no matter how bad your week has been, Rick’s has probably been worse. But as he watches KB and Ashley writhe around under the covers, he holds it together like a champ. He does not cry. He does not scream. He does not fall to his knees to begin gathering blades of grass and small rocks and twigs that he can fashion into an Ashley voodoo doll. Instead, he informs Mark he’s not sure his relationship can recover from this, and my presumption is that any clinically normal viewer would agree with him.
