Episode 32: 

The game of Love Island is the game of Love Island is what the fourth audience (the viewers) think is the game of Love Island.

That determines who survives, who wins and also who wins in real life afterwards.

That is why you don’t need stakes on the challenges other than ‘winning.’ That is where a lot of the complexity comes from. And that means that a ‘boring’ strategy, or a strategy that does not involve much screen time or even in some cases more than a few days in the villa (see: Jaden) can be a winning one.

The public does not want to think of the players as wanting to be influencers, or as too cynically ‘playing the game.’ Every time you are visibly not maximizing your chances in the surface-level cynical game of Love Island you reinforce your 4TRR (for the right reasons) credentials, and that matters quite a lot. Every time you sell that you are a genuinely good person, that matters a lot too.

From what I can tell, the current (fourth) audience skews heavily female, is very young, largely 18-24, and has a very strong set of preferences. They have very low tolerance for the ‘wrong’ kinds of meanness or bad behaviors, often seeing someone in light of their worst individual moment or decision. They hate those who present as oppressors, and they love victims and the oppressed, and they will absolutely tear into the lives of anyone who violates their rules.

Thus, there is a lot to be said for a strategy like that of Pepe and Iris. Sure, you don’t get that much screen time and you will never be the full star. But by turning down clear opportunity, like Pepe friendzoning Andrina, and being patient, you can get remarkably strong support end exit in very strong position. Pepe’s idea for a Love Island breakfast spot afterwards is brilliant and they’re perfectly positioned for it.

The best part of that strategy is you don’t have to be a reality star to pull it off. Playing the star role takes a lot of skill, whether it’s the superstar you can’t ignore (Huda), the well-studied technical master who doesn’t hide what her game is (Cierra minus the two slurs) or the fully genuine person no one realizes is also one hell of a performer (Amaya) or even the de facto producer proxy who makes things happen (Ace).

You want a mix of the different roles to make everything work. If everyone was a superstar, yes that’s great television but you don’t give part of the audience someone they want to root for, and you need that, plus you only need to fill so much time.

I think the producers can be totally fine with whatever happens in this last vote, which I assume had to happen when it did for production reasons. If possible you still want to protect Huda, but the timing of the fight with Chris is awkward (and major error by both of them from a gameplay standpoint, this is one of those situations where everyone involved should be folding if they have to), and I don’t see any outs worth using if America decides it is her time to go.

We also have mostly full resolution of the Cierra situation, as she has given her statement in both written and video form, taking responsibility and agreeing with the decision to remove her from the show while explaining details of what happened. Reddit reaction was mostly that the video was as good as it could been, so much so that it had a bit of the PR nature, and she is once again gaining followers. People seem to mostly believe her account (with some quibbles), which means that the main non-fake culprit here is now presumed to be the screenshot of a quickly deleted prior post, combined with another post from 2015.

From the producer perspective, deleted but screenshotted posts are much harder to catch in advance than Yulissa going on podcasts. They could have and should have caught the post that was still up from 2015, but it’s not clear that would have much mattered. So this will keep happening even if producers are Good At Job. If someone is in the game for weeks, then news comes out, then they lose a lot of followers, that is strong evidence both that whatever it is seen as quite bad, and also that whatever it is was hard to find.

Meanwhile, predictions? The obvious thing that happens tonight is they cut Huda/Chris, given their fighting, but also the obvious target can get shielded, five-way votes to not be last are highly unpredictable. Presumably Nic/Olandria and Amaya/Bryan are safe, and at this point something very unexpected seems like it would be needed to stop Amaya/Bryan from winning.

Cierra has left the Villa due to a personal situation. No further explanation.

There were multiple ways to handle that. There is no winning.

Contra Bachelor Clues, I think this was an entirely honest statement. Yes, she absolutely left due to a personal situation. Does that typically mean something else? Sure, but it is still true, and the whole point of this phrasing is that you don’t highlight the details.

Nor do I think that high a percentage of the audience will go figure out what happened, nor do I think that would quiet things down. I think that most ways of going further would inflame opinions on all sides of the question, including those demanding Nic (and that previously demanded that Austin) also be ejected, but also those who are going to get upset from the other direction. It forces you to keep explaining and justifying all your decisions, and it also would have caused a lot of hateful and potentially dangerous behavior on the outside. They’ve already had to make several statements to try and protect players this season, there have been past really bad incidents after players get home, and these are real people. We have enough of that already.

So I understand this course of action.

Given that, the rest of what we did see is straightforward. We desperately needed to recouple, and we didn’t really have any time or thematic space left for anything else. Nicolandria is the only play left and they covered it well. It’s funny that some people are 100% convinced it is fake and others ship them so hard they might win the show. I definitely think it’s right to lean into that storyline as the silver lining of what happened.

And there were a bunch of really funny skits tonight, which I appreciated, and which is a great thing to encourage. I’d also note that we’ve seen that a 4TRR (for the right reasons) strategy can be very effective with this audience, even if it doesn’t create the best TV. See Jalen, now Pepe and Iris. Trying to force the action for such players is a mistake, I think you instead try to present the person you want America to see, and don’t worry so much about screen time. Of course, producers don’t have to like this, but you have enough action anyway so it’s fine to have some people in the background.

The order of the recoupling was mostly forced to setup the final three and go in increasing suspense order. I would have swapped Huda with Clarke but it is close.

I do think that they overproduced, especially when it came to Amaya’s choice. There was zero dramatic tension and I feel like they tried too hard to pretend otherwise. In general recoupling gets dragged out more than necessary, assuming we had scenes that didn’t make the cut that we could have included.

The job now is to land the plane, to build up four of these six couples for the finale. I think production should be basically fine with whatever voting outcome happens. At this point, if a couple does land in the bottom two on the vote, that means they weren’t essential to the final week. I’d try somewhat to protect Huda, but at 2M followers on Instagram it’s hard to believe she’s in any danger.

I expect Amaya and Bryan to win the 100k, and that they should be bigger favorites than they are given credit for being, but it really is still anyone’s game.

Strategic voting is hard, yo.

The producers play of six-save-one makes sense. On reflection I like it better than eight-save-two, as it forces more interesting choices and conflicts. It also potentially shields someone who they wouldn’t have wanted to risk. In particular, my guess is that the issue was Clarke would have been in danger, which in turn also endangers Taylor.

The players voting here have to balance all their different audience plays plus the impact on the result.

There are a number of obvious votes. The pure obvious ones were Clarke saving Taylor and Iris saving TJ, so they went first. Almost as obvious was Ace and Nic backing Taylor. They sandbagged that, so that viewers and potentially other islanders would not realize.

The question then is, do you engage in expressive voting, or do you engage in strategic voting, and what do you want to try and make happen or be seen as trying to do?

If you don’t want to save Taylor, you can either try to get momentum behind TJ because of Iris, or you can try to assemble a coalition to save Andrina or potentially Jayden. The original girls managed to coordinate to back Andrina, but too many others used expressive voting rather than anticipating this. From a strategic standpoint this seemed like a major error, especially by Elan. Yes he likes Jayden and it’s a 4TRR play, but there’s no path there, and the village is much better for him with Andrina surviving instead of Taylor even if he doesn’t get to explore Andrina directly.

It then came down to Cierra, who chose to back Nic up and save Taylor. This was a major error except if it was done at the behest of producers, which would make sense (they certainly have the leverage) and given the previous votes she had enough information to know this. The image of her actively backing Taylor was pretty bad for a lot of the audience, and they also don’t like that she was doing it ‘for her man,’ which seems like a pretty consistent pattern. Whereas the vote was already 4-3 without her, so she had three options: TJ to stand with Iris, Jayden or Andrina.

If she votes Andrina, we don’t know what happens next, since the producers decide. The default is the others revote, in which case without producer pressure Andrina probably survives. So they’d try to do something else.

What about the other votes? They illustrate first of all the big difference between choosing a favorite versus ranked choice voting. The bottom was based on negative polarization (and also happened to take place before the public knew about the Cierra situation, and before standing on business, which would have been big shifts). You absolutely want to run impactful votes as ‘vote for one’ rather than ranked choice, exactly because you want polarizing figures that make good TV.

I note also that I really liked making everyone guess, the same way I loved it in the suitcase challenge earlier, and I think they should use that mechanic more often.

The crashing out challenge is one of those low-key bits of fun. I don’t think the ‘pick a door’ thing worked at all conceptually, they needed to lean into it more, but it’s mostly fine that it made no sense, and this was just an excuse to be fun and positive. Sure. And in general it felt good to have a ‘breather’ episode that reset things and sets up the future, before they unload a presumed movie night on us.

So now the show has to deal with Cierra. They’ve now had enough time to have their meetings and decide what to do. I don’t know enough to say. We shall see.

Well, that worked. The question is, how and why? How did they get so many different islanders - at a minimum Ace, Austin, Zak and Chelly, and many others at minimum made major errors - to absolutely lose their minds, strategically speaking in the State Your Business challenge?

Obviously some of that was explicit egging on and demanding, but it was more than that. This looked like terrible design, yet it was instead good design. It turns out, when you combine ‘this is a challenge and you go hard in challenges no matter what’ with ‘this is a lock to give you screen time to say what you want to say’ and presumably ‘we won’t let you deliver a card that isn’t going after someone’ (which explains why Huda’s card to Chelly was worded the way it was) almost everyone forgets they are about to make themselves look absolutely awful?

And then in the moment, once you start reading the cards, oh it’s on now, everyone is watching and screen time is there for the taking, so people doubled down a lot, and there was a lot people had been holding back. And then, once that pattern was set, it just kept going, despite the fact that strategically doing this on Love Island makes no sense. Some people look like absolute toast now as a result.

So, we voted on our favorite islanders. How many should we cut?

That depends on who is on the chopping block. But the method of ‘vote for 1’ rather than ranked choice or voting up/down on everyone means that you’re actually pretty safe.

The good news is, on the girl side, there isn’t much to worry about. Huda, Amaya, Chelley and Clarke are the ones you absolutely must protect, and I presume they’re presumably all safe in this vote. Cierra is a special case right now but I’m confident she’s not vulnerable in the vote.

That leaves five potential cuts other than Cierra. A key question is what you want to do with Olandria. She’s a good player, you could try and bring in a bombshell, but she’s a slow burn and it’s getting late. Of course, if you plan to or do expel Cierra over the slur situation, you absolutely need to save Olandria, to set up or at least tease Nicolandria 2.0, although Jaden isn’t the worst backup especially if Austin goes.

I also think you’d prefer to shield Iris if you can, unless you’re about to lose TJ anyway. She’s not top level, but you need some couples especially with the Cierra situation.

Gracyn is presumably toast. That leaves Andrina and Jaden.

Given how I’d expect the islanders to choose who to save (and you have several choices on how to do that to get what you want) that means you’re safe cutting two of three and you’re probably safe cutting three of four.

For the boys, I think the only big worry is Taylor. Chris, Ace and Nic are needed but are I assume very safe.

Zak is probably toast after what he did to Amaya. Pepe really should leave if he’s this hung up on Hannah, there’s nothing to work with and let the boy go to her, but the public probably saves him in the vote. Austin is expendable.

TJ and Bryan have roles to play, but you can cut there if you have to. Elan is potentially a good player but has nothing going on.

So again, I think you can probably get away with cutting three of four, depending on the order?

As in, full red wedding, we go from 20 to 14 (or 13 depending on Cierra!), then we can bring in new bombshells. So that’s what I’d do unless the vote is surprising and you’re backed into a corner. But we shall see.

The only exception would be, if it is decided Cierra has to go, you need to talk to Nic, figure out where his head is at, and then decide if you’re pointing Nic at Olandria or if you can’t pull that off and you need to go for Jaden or Andrina (or potentially a bombshell or a newly single Iris). Of course, if Nic decides to leave with her, that’s that, but I’d presume you can convince Nic to stay.

I would absolutely 100% give Pepe the opportunity to self-eliminate to save someone, if he’s voted safe as he well might be. And I would use that, if I needed to, to allow you to save someone you felt you could not lose. That would be part of my plan, and would have been the moment I couldn’t get him to go for Andrina despite not having a spark with Grayson. Heroic sacrifice.

Episode 22 Update

They went with option two, except they didn’t differentiate between bombshells and original islanders. Everyone wrote down their choice. And then they had the saves.

Having seen it play out, the producers were clearly right not to make the distinction. And I think this was clearly the correct way to do the recoupling once you bring everyone back from Casa Amor, and you’ve already reintroduced Nic and Taylor.

I had two worries at the time.

1. You did not want desperado pairings between bombshells.
2. You wanted to tempt the OGs to switch, so you de-risk the bombshell route. In particular, you want to let the OGs cross bombshells, choose someone unexpected.
   1. Indeed, the reason I like this approach of bringing everyone back is that it creates pressure to not revert. The bombshell choice is safe, trying to reunite could get you in big trouble, and you presumably want to lean into this.

I needn’t have worried. No one dared. My guess is the producers locked everyone in early to avoid the risk that people would talk or signal, or warned them not to try anything, or at least banned any attempts at communication, which makes it prohibitively unlikely to work. You almost have to. But even without that, it either didn’t occur to anyone, or everyone chose not to look too 4TWR and desperate.

But I mean, my lord, if I’m Elan and I see how Cierra reacted to Nic, and I haven’t been explicitly told I can’t do it? I am 100% following up ‘no shot’ with standing up and saying ‘all right, anyone else want to explore a new connection?’ Just straight up. The pick just got made in front of you, it’s no shame to admit it, and they are the ones who opened the ‘show our hand to everyone’ door. Hell, for all we know he did say it, the producers said ‘don’t you dare’ and cut it out of the edit.

Never assume you know all the actual rules of the game. Certainly there were various communication bans in place throughout.

What about saving two people, which presumably was a decision made once they saw the results? The cast is a little big, but if you’re fine with that, then yes, I concur, you do want Olandria around for movie night and to see how she otherwise reacts, and you do want some singles. And I loved the way they had that choice get made, since it gives the new bombshells at least some chance.

I mostly liked the execution. There were three issues.

1. The speeches were in many cases dumb, because the answer to ‘why did you choose [X]?’ was usually ‘to stay in the game,’ but you can think of this as ‘why did you choose to pursue them in general’ and as serving several purposes: Giving everyone a chance to play and set up their couple, letting everyone tell their story, and introducing new people to everyone involved. Some of the speeches mattered, you don’t want to not give everyone a chance, so I think it is fine.
2. In general the whole thing was way too long and we could have sped it up in various places. Here I strongly agree that things are out of hand. It’s fine to linger on shots in some places, but they could have given us a lot more credit for realizing which decisions were inevitable.
3. The way it played out and was edited, there was very little uncertainty. Ace, Chelley and also Cierra and Nic all showed fully their hands. Not only did we not have the tension, they then played it like we did have it. The actual surprise prior to Taylor was TJ and Iris dared to match and they didn’t edit to make anyone care.

The big surprise was of course at the end, with Taylor choosing Clarke. The music gave it away if you pay attention, but I think this is fine, that too is the reveal. Taylor doing this is an obviously gigantic error from a gameplay and career standpoint, so hats off to Clarke, and also hats off to the producers for getting maximum value out of this by having Olandria right there the whole time and realizing they didn’t need any more time in Casa Amor. Presumably they knew Taylor was still going to be, as Huda called it, this easy to flip.

The problem is, the producers paid a predictably heavy price in public perception and trust to set up Nic and Olandria, and didn’t get much else out of the whole premise. They had various ways to milk this situation a lot more, and they did not go for them. Essentially all we have left is a movie night showing of that Soul Ties kiss?

Overall, yes, I do think you have to judge the experiment a failure. But I do think it was reasonable to try it, I do think you want to keep everyone on their toes, and I do think doing something similar with Casa Amor in the future again is not crazy if the right circumstances happen. This is a game and a sport, but as the producers you need to retain flexibility and keep the players somewhat guessing, and to have tools in your pocket if players are being too exploitative or boring in a way that is not good TV.

Episode 21 Update

So, I had considered that Nic and Olandria would be coupled, but the producers did something I hadn’t seriously considered, which was sending Nic and Olandria back into the Villa directly.

I hadn’t seriously considered it because it has several very obvious large downsides, and it seemed like the execution was pretty botched?

1. It reunites Olandria and Taylor right away. How do you expect Olandria to explore Nic, and Taylor to explore Clarke? You’re crippling both of these before they have a chance to get started.
2. Olandria being there can potentially interfere with everyone else’s explorations as well, since she is going to be loyal to the girls in terms of keeping secrets.
3. Alternatively, you could have made Taylor think Olandria was gone, and made Cierra think Nic was gone, and pushed both of those forward. Why not?
4. You’re creating an information asymmetry between Villa and Casa. You’re also creating an emotional asymmetry, as Villa is happy and Casa is still sad.
5. You’re ruining a bunch of reveals, such as Chelly dating a guy who is 6”8’.
6. You’re blowing the reveal that they are not eliminated when it won’t get maximum value.
7. You’re relieving all the narrative tension.
8. The idea of ‘choose to be a couple or go home’ is not a choice at all. Thus the honesty part is put into question, were they actually at any risk here? Tonight kind of needs to address this.

For so many reasons, I thought, no way, they wouldn’t do it like that.

They did it anyway.

And they look like they largely got away with it.

Because the producers know more than we do, and more tools than I was relying on - I was trying to produce a more hands-off version, that played more ‘fair,’ and that set up various outcomes so they all worked.

The producers instead gambled on dominoes falling, and they won.

1. The false choice to be a couple or go home is no choice at all, but it does psychologically make Nic and Olandria choose to be in a couple.
2. They got Taylor to continue exploring Clarke even with Olandria right there. It was far from obvious Taylor would be willing to play with fire like this.
3. They got Olandria to observe Taylor doing it, making her open to Nic.
4. They got Nic to really go for it, despite all the reasons not to do it, and they gambled on the chemistry actually being there or at least being credibly bluffed, and they got that too.

They essentially were playing all-or-nothing. The narrative eggs were all in the Nicolandria basket, and by putting Taylor and Olandria together the next morning they were gambling that about one day with Clarke would be enough to set this whole train in motion. And, well, wow, okay, that worked.

If it fizzles, and Taylor shuts down Clarke, which in turn makes Olandria not so willing to explore, then what?

It’s also hilarious that everyone gets so pumped for these kissing challenges with actual nothing on the line, but somehow it keeps working, so sure, why not?

Also note that Olandria played along with what the producers wanted in another way, by representing Elan as a genuine threat to Nic, which helps set all this in motion.

It sounds like tonight we are going to bring everyone together and find out what happens, although I intentionally skip all previews.

This seems like a repetition of the same major error to me. It is not enough time. If you give the story another day or two first, the chances of hell breaking loose go up substantially. You still might get it, especially if the producers are forcing it, but your chances are much better if you simply give it more time. Are they this confident? Or do they not actually want things that shaken up?

There certainly are plenty more stories left in Casa Amor. Even aside from the new main plot, about half the old cast was previously single or almost single and are with new partners and we’re essentially writing them out of the show because quickly, there’s no time. I don’t know why we need so much padding in some places and now we’re skipping over entire relationships. Are they that boring? I mean, maybe?

At this point, they could do any number of things after everyone comes back, in terms of how the recoupling will work. It all depends on where they want this to go.

The previous designs need modification, since you can’t hide Nic and Olandria, and also because you now definitely want them to be able to couple together, so they have to count as normal original islanders now. I’d be inclined to do a variant on the second design, although with lower dumping risk to the original islanders - you want to see the aftermath and everyone to get to movie night, so you want to let any originals choose again if they get rejected in stage one. There’s certainly precedent.

Alternatively, we could see a classic stick-or-twist or other similar method used, or something else entirely. They could even run the doors back (except, presumably, with the men behind the doors) and I’d be here for that, and then they can choose how many people to save and how based on what happens and who is in danger, and what they want to happen.

I can even see a strategy where they don’t dump anyone at all at the recoupling, and bombshells can match with each other as necessary, so that everyone’s backup plan is still there to challenge them, but with the understanding that popularity votes will start eating couples, so you’d be on borrowed time.

The producers are flying high. Careful, Icarus. But I am curious how you play it, and I’m much more invested in the producers at this point than I am in most of the couples.

Epsiode 25 Update

Question time. Why are there still (the same) 20 people in the Villa?

This is too many islanders. The show knows it, because it treats a lot of them as if they do not exist. The islanders know it too, and are mostly treating those people as if they don’t exist. Some of them are in presumably strong couples of which we know nothing. Others are not, but we still know nothing.

I suspect the producers have a serious problem, which is that they know the public and the islanders do not understand what makes good television, and likely wouldn’t play along, so they can’t do the kind of votes they want to trim the numbers down.

As in, at this point, you do still want Taylor and Clarke, and Huda and Chris, and you could easily get put in a bad spot with no clear way out. Huda in particular needs to be protected, and it seems unlikely the other islanders would save her. You could try to force them, but I don’t think you want to do that. So, and this is speculation, they seem like they’ve been stalling, and accepting a much bigger cast, which results in things like the heart rate challenge not getting to be shown properly.

What’s the solution? There’s no clean options, and time is running out. I think at this point they do have to hold a vote tonight for top couples, and hope it works out. I would absolutely be willing to manipulate the number of cuts and how much choice you give the islanders, to maximize the chance you get what you want after seeing how the votes fall, but you have to do it, especially so that you can have room for the last few bombshells.

I heard Dark Lord Maddux say that a big reason for doing Casa the new way was to prevent bullying and vilification during Casa. I sympathize, but I don’t think the new method works that well for this? The more we see how things played out, the more I would go back to the old methods (although I have not directly seen them, I’ve only seen this season and season 1 of USA, which had no Casa Amor).