The 'Love Island' 2021 Power Ranking: Week Four

After weeks of waiting for 30 minutes into an episode for Faye to make a joke just to have something to tweet about, Week Four of Love Island finally gave us the nonsense we tune in for: a bust-up between a netball girl who seems like she does horse riding, and two PE boys.

As a devotee of “mess” and “arguments on TV” (toxic), I was satisfied to see some piss finally brought to the boil during this week’s Chloe, Hugo and Toby drama (and don’t their names make them sound like a family’s set of well-bred but ultimately arthritic Labradors when you say them together like that?). With any luck, we’ll see the unravelling energy sustained throughout the next week. 

It’s easy to write off Casa Amor as a predictable “twist” thrown in every year, but it can also be a maker and breaker of fortunes – remember, without Casa Amor, we would not have had Ovie, which is a truly unimaginable fate. Before we enter that particular bikini-clad breach, here are the champions and the also-rans of Week Four. Because as a wise philosopher once said, “Winners win, losers lose.” Onwards: 

Social media is picking up on the fact that, along with Kaz, Miss Millie has emerged as the villa’s quiet fashionista and this little Josie and the Pussycats moment is A+ indeed. It’s been kind of an annoying week, to be honest, so I have to say this was my favourite thing that happened the whole time.

Friend couples are a time honoured villa tactic whereby allies keep each other on the show, despite not fancying each other, in the hope that both might “find someone” (read: “squeeze 100k more followers out of the wretched thing”).

But the friendzone is a different concept entirely; it is a place to which you are banished, your interest in a fellow Islander quashed under the wheel of their disregard (and clear unrequited love for Chloe), and it has been bloody heaving this week. A villa hinterland to which AJ and Georgia, not to mention the also dearly departed Sharon, found themselves sent by Hugo, only for the man himself to end up there as well. Even after all that white knighting! If only girls liked nice guys :( But only girls who are “naturally pretty” in the highly specific manner that Hugo has in his head, obviously.

In amongst the big Toby, Chloe and Hugo drama, this week saw Abi pull up to the villa, and extract her man within 24 hours, after saying approximately one sentence (“I like Toby”) and doing a really bad pull-up. A cat burglar! And, I’d wager, one to watch for Casa Amor.

@ UK Athletics get this girl signed up.

Critical support for this because Liberty is happy, but I do just want to say that giving someone a magnetic bracelet to ask them to be your girlfriend is very much the kind of thing you would do if you, say, were in Year 8 and were on the coach home from a school trip to the Science Museum, where you had bought said bracelet in the gift shop with the money your dad gave you to get a ruler or one of those useless big pencils. 

Was Hugo correct to question Toby’s behaviour? Yes. Did he also do his teacher voice as he did so, therefore undercutting any authority he might have had? Also yes. 

Whatever you think of Toby, his anguished accusation that Hugo was nothing but a “girl follower” was easily one of the funniest moments of the series so far, in keeping with his general Inbetweeners vibe. Obviously Toby has acted in a deeply ridiculous manner since the moment he entered the villa, largely and obviously informed by what he thinks the public think of him, but he is essentially the only agent of chaos in the villa and for that he must stay at least until the end of Casa Amor week, when his capacity for even more shithousing is at its very highest.

Now we’re around the halfway mark of season seven of the UK’s most beloved clothes advert Love Island, I think it’s fair to say that something about this year’s show feels slightly off. I’ve been trying to put my finger on exactly what it is, and I’ve come to a fairly simple conclusion: We’re a month in and I am simply struggling to care about any of the couples.  

The obvious candidates are Jake and Liberty, but they’re hard to get on with when Liberty does things like “telling her new boyfriend she loves him” and he responds by “not quietly returning the sentiment in a meaningful private moment, but instead announcing to everyone else what she has said, as if it is funny and they are in the playground”.

The other solid-feeling couple, Millie and Liam, who are very likeable, just aren’t really getting much airtime outside of their dates, where all any contestants really do is say “How do you think it’s going then?” at each other until they’ve drank all their Prosecco.

I think most viewers would agree with me, then, when I say that the relationship I’m most invested in is the friendship between Kaz and Liberty (and also the one between Faye and her brown lipstick). 

This is a problem as we approach Casa Amor. The whole point of this weird, multi-day experience where “office team-building weekend” meets “Christ-in-the-desert style temptation” (where what’s on offer isn’t like, a drink of water, but a buffet of ten Incredibly Waxed people) is that tension builds because we’re invested in the existing couples. This year, I couldn’t care less.

That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t individual Islanders who are in the process of winning the hearts of the nation, and our fondness for them should be enough to make Casa Amor interesting. Let’s just hope that the contestants aren’t too wise to the format – and too preoccupied by that £50,000 prize money – to do anything truly wild.

TFW you lose an adult sports day challenge.