The 'Love Island' 2019 Power Ranking: Week Two

The Love Island 2019 contestants have been thrown together now for about 14 days, which – when you have nobody else to talk to, nothing else to think about – works out to about nine months in Villa Time.

To the rest of us, Amy getting cross with Lucie because they’re “not as close as they used to be", or Molly insisting that her and Tommy’s connection is Smith and Mapplethorpe-esque after “SIX DAYS” is very weird. But if you squint, you can see how, when you’re put in this sort of gratuitously oiled, high-stress environment, your brain might start to do these things. And that’s before you even consider what happens when you airdrop in a five foot nine Irishwoman who looks like a Victoria’s Secret model and is in the top percentile of the population for “sheer sexual potency".

Week two:

After several days of confusion, during which our MDB (most desirable male) has ricocheted between getting back tickles from Molly-Mae and getting a hard on under a blanket from Maura’s eye contact, I believe what Thomas Furious has done is fucked it.

The most obvious narrative is that Tommy has triumphed over his own horniness for Maura, a woman he’s clearly scared of because he’s only encountered her kind before in films, and gone with his heart. However, the gutted look on his face when Maura did not get dumped from the island as assumed suggests that he made the decision he felt like he should make rather than the one he actually wanted to. The moral compass on this man is bigger than his biceps, and fair play to him. But at the end of the day he’s still a straight 20-year-old who hasn’t had a wank since the 6th of June, and thus chaos will continue to reign whenever someone cracks open a box of ice lollies.

But for the time being, Tommy remains large and in charge. He’s had his pick, and perhaps this test of character will bring him and Molly-Mae closer together. At the very least he can rest easy for a few days as Maura focuses on trying to make the new lad cum in his pants instead.

For a show ostensibly about sex*, Love Island's actual format includes absolutely zero sexual energy. The sex on the show is Carry On sex (hotdogs down bikinis in the tasks, innuendo hashtags when the Islanders get a text): good clean British nudge-and-wink "we’re all cripplingly repressed!" stuff. But it rarely transcends that, largely because while the show casts traditionally hot people, being an Instagram baddie or a gym bro with a ripped bod does not necessarily a shagger make.

Casting true shaggers – people who, put simply, exude sex and chaotic sexual energy – is the one way to throw off the boring codes of courtship encouraged by the show (via the enforced "coupling up" and time-honoured Love Island practice of "going for a chat" and talking about your attraction to another person in the same deadpan way that you’d tell your doctor what’s wrong with you). The shagger transgresses these boundaries by getting in the house, immediately making someone cry, and shoving an ice lolly all the way in her mouth while making perfect, unbroken eye-contact with a 20-year-old they would like to sexually obliterate.

Like Megan Barton-Hanson before her, Maura Higgins is that shagger.

And yes fine I agree it was a bit much when she tried to snog Tommy on the sofa the other day, and some people didn’t like the ice lolly thing (I personally was hooting with joy) but to be honest we fucking needed her! Over the moon that she has survived to ask another man if he’d like to sleep in her bed within half an hour of meeting him (as the preview for Monday night’s episode suggests), and very much looking forward to the day in about two weeks when she rides the most delighted man in the world while they’re filmed by a night vision camera.

*Yes I know it’s called ‘Love’ Island but once you realise that nobody actually falls in love on this show, ever (with the exception of the great Jess’n’Dom of season 3, who I believe are divinely matched), then the whole thing does just come down to sex.

So far, Danny and Yewande are close to the top purely by virtue of being "not annoying". Danny is sound. He’s the guy mums like best because he puts white wine in pasta sauce and offers to fix the washing machine. Yewande is a scientist who has worked on finding a literal cure for cancer, but also has good craic. The bar is admittedly low this year, but Dewande has a good chance of winning the crown because they’re not creepy like Curtis and Amy, and not volatile like Joe and Lucie (who I refuse to call Jucie btw).

My most deeply held belief about the last week of nonsense is that Molly-Mae lost her entire shit when Maura entered the villa NOT because she likes Tommy more than she was letting on, but ACTUALLY because she has never not got her own way in her natural life and she is not about to start now!!!! You kind of have to respect the sheer Veruca Salt-ish Got a Car For My 17th Birthday :) vibe of the woman, cemented by the fact that when Tommy did actually choose her to recouple with – the thing she has been yelling in neon dresses about all week – she barely cracked a smile.

Tommy Fury fucking hates shapes. He meant in the context of love triangles but it's more fun to think of it more literally. Gonna fucking box a pentagon into the middle of next week. Kick a square’s head in. Class.

There are only two main personality types according to Love Island: "girl" or "boy". Outside romance, there is no possible way of establishing common ground between the two, and any attempt to cross the boundary is an act of pure deception. They are simply too different!! A girl and a boy being friends? In 2019? Sounds fake.

Long-suffering Lucie presents a problem to the social dynamics of the villa, because she gets on with "the boys" more than "the girls". It’s true that her insistence that “I just get on better with boys!!!” and “the other girls are all from the city, they don’t understand my love of hot sauce endurance tests and running about!!!” are arse-backwards results of being branded a Cool Girl her whole life. The fact remains, though, that she is literally being ostracised for not pretending to like people.

Her friendship with Tommy has been dubbed “weird” by Joe as well as flying in the face of the “girl code” – which treats women as a homogenous assortment of boobs and says they must band together regardless of whether they actually get on or not. Maura has also broken the code this week for failing to pull Molly-Mae for a chat before moving to Tommy. Oddly, Tommy – the common denominator of both these issues – hasn’t been chastised at all.

If things carry on down this road I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucie and Maura tactically couple up when they are rejected by the group for subverting expectations of gender (in the most minor way imaginable), and end up forming a polycule with Tommy as soon as Molly-Mae dumps him for someone she actually fancies.

Been a record low week for Food.

Anton "you've made your bed, lie in it" Danyluk has become more likeable as time goes on but despite going from having zero (0) romantic interests to being responsible for sending one of two girls home, it’s hard to give a shit. As Anna rightly called it: neither her or Elma are actually his type, and as far as their Triangle Situation goes everyone involved is just trying to save themselves. He’s playing it too safe to be interesting at the moment. Call me when he’s punched someone for slagging off his cooking.

Genuinely don’t think Joe will be happy unless Lucie remains at least 3 metres within his radius, or else stays put on the beanbags with "the girls". Him saying things like “Hope today is the day she wakes up and she will change" are not signs of someone asserting their boundaries, they’re signs of someone who is too insecure to be in a relationship full stop.

My dude, it’s not “strange” that Lucie wants to have a hot sauce eating competition with Tommy instead of lying motionless on the grass with Amy – who gives off the disapproving energy of a 50-year-old mum who describes things as “not very classy” and has an astroturf front lawn. I for one can’t wait for Lucie to dump Joe as soon as she’s out of there and find herself a non-monog Cornish stoner surfer with a bead necklace.

If you want more 'Love Island' chat from VICE, give the VICE Does Love Island podcast, dropping Tuesdays and Fridays, a listen.

@hiyalauren / @emmaggarland / @daisythejones