Netflix’s New Dating Show Too Hot to Handle Is Unabashedly Trashy. It’s Also Weirdly Perfect for Right Now

Posted On May 17, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

It’s a contradiction of contemporary television culture that, as our feeling in imaginary program develops ever darker, observers increasingly turn to so-called “reality TV” for something lighter. We pin our hopes on talented uncharteds on imaginative rivalries from The Voice to Project Runway. We live vicariously through the home customers and renovators on HGTV( or its countless streaming equivalents ). And we can’t get enough of the generic, heterosexual, roses-and-diamond-rings romances–or the tawdry, superficial, drama-prone hookups–that play out on date shows.

I came to Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle, the latest dose of high-concept reality catnip from the programme that brought us Love Is Blind, expecting a frothy, easy-on-the-eyes escape from my current socially distanced actuality. What I went was, somehow, a frothy, easy-on-the-eyes allegory for the pathetic and forestalling quandary plaguing our pandemic-stricken world.

Premiering April 17, the eight-episode series begins just like any number of other reality dating depicts. Ten unfeasibly alluring young women and men arrived here a indulgence recourse that offers acres of pool, beach, sofa and prohibit space but simply one giant office full of plots where everyone has to sleep. The contestants–with the exception of self-described “deep thinker” Matthew, from Colorado, whose inflate uniforms and flowing whisker make him the moniker Jesus–make their entrance in bathing suits. Introductory interviews find the men boasting about their sex prowess and prolificacy. Musclebound Kelz, from London, boasts a tattoo of a lion wearing a crown, which he excuses is a reflection of “how I receive myself.” The brides seem hungry to description themselves as airheads. “I’m not the brightest glint in the book, ” Chloe, another Brit, cheerfully announces.

As they size one another up, what these singles don’t know is that they’re about to be banned from having sexual contact with anyone for the duration of their stay. “Nobody can keep it in their heaves these days, ” the obligatory snarky narrator, comedian Desiree Burch, deplores, “because hooking up is as easy as swiping right.”( Never judgment the ample evidence that young adults are starting to have sex last-minute and with fewer marriages than previous generations .) So Too Hot is going to teach them a task in shape “deeper, more meaningful connections” by offering a collective cash prize of up to $ 100,000 in return for their celibacy. A menu of works, from intimacy down to kissing, is forbidden–with violations ensuing in proportional subtractions from the trophy kitty. On hand to enforce the rules is an electronic schoolmarm announced Lana, who resembles a Google Home under the influence of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It is, as the creators surely proposed, a recipe for conflict. As in MTV’s Are You the One ?, players are chosen specific because they have trouble maintaining affinities. They rally one-night stands, appraising partners in capacity rather than quality. And although there’s plenty to be said about the show’s retrograde attitudes toward sexuality( do beings in their early 20 s who aren’t ready to settle down certainly need to be scared into doing so ?), Too Hot isn’t wrong to presume that the majority of its cast clashes with longing dominate. A line of New Age-y shops is apparently meant to support the show’s “process” by coaching the players to respect themselves and their peers but predominantly hands cheap physical humor. In one seminar, the chaps become something announced “heart warriors”–which entails rubbing clay into each other’s skin under the supervision of a soul who refers to women as “females.”

Alas, despite these interventions, regulates are broken swiftly and frequently. So, beyond the expected contender for preferable copulates, there are constant antagonisms about who is and isn’t minding Lana–and who does and doesn’t peculiarly need the money that abstention would win the group. One tumultuous pair, sultry Canadian influencer Francesca and super-tall Australian goofball Harry, contravene rules with a selfishness that borders on sociopathy. Kelz and Jesus, “whos been” less blessing find soulmates on the recede, become hookup police. Schisms structure. Dissensions come about. Some parties lock cheeks just to spite their fellow contestants.

In the end, though the producers use the standard arsenal of world Tv tools–new people, regulation modifies, rapid divulges) to fog this outcome–evidence of personal emergence seems insufficient. Too Hot is a completely horrific show–a social experimentation with a frail assertion that fails to either crop remarkable makes or create interesting attributes. But what its makes couldn’t have known during yield is that it’s also weirdly related in the time of coronavirus.

As they struggle a model of social distancing that will seem hilariously easy to spectators who haven’t been within six hoofs of anyone outside their household in weeks, the participants face a low-stakes version of the ethical theatre playing out across societies trying to flatten the arc. In both cases, the success of the community relies on the compliance of every individual. Just as all states members of this performatively shallow radical can’t stop their roommates from hooking up and losing them fund, those of us who are staying home whenever possible can’t stop our neighbors from endangering our lives by fit up in ballparks, throwing dinner parties and, yes, swiping through dating apps. Which isn’t to say that it’s a pleasure spending time with an part direct of parties you could imagine spending their pandemic-mandated downtime on Tinder.

Of course, neither this TV prove nor the tale coronavirus devised this particular variety of frustration. Economics majors and, probably, Good Place fans will recognize it as a variant on the tragedy of the commons–a phenomenon in which self-interested individuals deplete a shared resource, whether it be a collective moo-cow grassland or a category of fish, eventually ruining it for everyone. Climate change is, so far, playing out as an international tragedy of the commons. As Too Hot so salaciously reveals, once one person( or duet, as the case may be) has reaped the benefits of undermining the common good, others who’d initially committed to acting in the public interest start to suspect they’d be suckers not to throw themselves first. At the bottom of these slippery slopes: no fund for the seductive singles. No outcome to the coronavirus pandemic. In the affair that the fast-approaching climate crisis isn’t diverted , no long-term future for humanity.

Is this an curious, accidentally dark place to be concluded when you logged into Netflix in search of something brainless to pass the time between video chit-chats? Absolutely. But then, what could be more in sync with the current zeitgeist than curious, unexpected darkness?