Four Weeks into 'Love Island', the Cracks Have Started to Show

Listen, it's simple, it's not a difficult column idea: just as we Power Rank 'Love Island' at the start of the week, so we conclude our week with a sweet little recap of what has gone before.

We’re deep in the dark wad in the middle of our summer now: couples are established, cracks have begun to appear, the threat of Casa Amor looms large on the horizon. In a week where the house went meta – Maura, told that they were playing the ‘bitter tweet’ game this week, loudly declared “oh, I love this one”, before the islanders were confronted with the first outside opinions of themselves they’ve heard for weeks; the veil between our world and theirs thinner than ever, like ghosts dancing beyond us on Hallowe’en – we also saw the madness that comes with tedium, a delicious taste of the next fortnight or so we have before the final straight. Dig in:

Lucie, out of nowhere, has become one of the most intriguing presences in the villa, mainly because she has completely defied type and run against any of her expected post-Joe story arcs. When Joe left the villa last week, Lucie was meant to do one of two things: i. Be really depressed about him for a few days before deciding to leave and reunite with El Shagger De Sandwich outside the villa; ii. Immediately go on two dates with two new boys and admit that her head’s been turned by one of them on the balcony to Anna (“Really?”).

But instead, quietly, she’s done two different things instead: one, gotten into a marriage-of-convenience thing with eternal cuck Anton; and two, subtly, imperceptibly, rammed a splint-like wedge into the otherwise rock-solid foundations of Tommy/Molly-Mae. Molly-Mae, remember, is the most 20-year-old girl alive – her high spike moments have been when she’s been having meltdowns caused by the presence of other girls, and her poking at the edges of the Tommy/Lucie friendship on Wednesday was an incredibly pure example of ‘girl with an intensely massive crush on a boy simply cannot process all of her feelings!’ – but now Lucie’s back in the Tommy game, Joe a distant dot on the horizon, hazily remembered, then: then maybe things can really start to spice up around the villa. I want Lucie to shag Tommy so hard Molly-Mae’s head explodes, basically. And that’s a very realistic threat.

Four weeks in and not a single person has fired a bolt yet, which means the islanders are – all of them – absolutely brain-rattlingly insane. Think about it like this: for four weeks they have been entirely sheltered from the outside world. No friends, no family, no orgasms. They do not know what the news is doing, at all. The only contact they have is with the 14 other people around them. Idly, in quiet moments when they aren’t overtly thinking about how horny they are, they can distract themselves by distantly wondering how many Instagram followers they have now. Essentially, psychic cracks are starting to appear, and the Love Island producers know exactly how to tap hard on them with a knuckle. The kissing game? Genius. The ‘bitter tweet’ game? A precisely aimed bullet from a high-powered gun. All of these people are on edge. They can lose their shit at someone sitting on a beanbag too aggressively. Take one of them aside, whisper, exactly one person in the outside world thinks you’re a fake bitch, and watch their brains leak. We’re in the middle of the mad weeks of this Love Island run. Revel in it.

Purest moment of this week was Tommy quietly taking Curtis to the balcony to drop to one knee and say “I love you, bro, you’re my bro………… for life bro”, or whatever shit he said before they manfully hugged, and listen, cynicism aside: I love it. I love it! I love a good TV bromance, I love a healthy male friendship. I sincerely believe that watching large muscular men profess their un-sexual love for one another probably acts like a butterfly flap through the entirety of British Male Discourse, that young 19-year-old boys watching Love Island jittered-feet on the sofa with their first ever girlfriends realise the lads they’ve been friends with since the first day of school are the real loves of their lives, and adjust their love languages towards them appropriately. Curtis and Tommy love each other so hard they can teach other men to be tender. More of this on screen, por favor.

Tom, a jawline running rugged along an idiot, fucked it all up this week: he threw away an absolute tap-in shag with Maura by running his wretched mouth, and he somehow managed to bring that back from the brink then fuck it up again by telling Jordan he thought she was “OTT”. But in a villa run on the three juices of horniness, hearsay and self-perception, it was a delight to watch the gossip unfold in near-realtime: first Jordan told Anna (“don’t tell anyone, but—“), then Anna told Maura (“I didn’t tell you this, but—“), then Maura asked Jordan (“I didn’t say it, but—“) then yelled at Tom so hard his balls went in. The current rumour running electric around the villa is Lucie saying “never say never” about Tommy. Gossip: it very truly is what it is.

Score draw for the best noise made in the villa this week: it was both the thick prince Tommy Fury trying to get on a horse while sounding like a northern dad startled by the cost of a pint on holiday; and it was Curtis being too wholesomely afraid to say “bullshit” so say “bull-beep” instead. Maura saying “fuckoffyaprick!” with one elegant snap of her tongue: a close, close, stunningly close second.

@joelgolby