UNSW Love Island Review

UNSW’s Love Island is back for another season with eight new singles looking to find love (or an audience for their amateur improv career). Compared to previous seasons, contestants took more ‘creative liberties’ with their answers. Many of them decided to treat it as a character-acting exercise as opposed to the dating show it was intended to be. Arguably, much like its real-life counterpart, those looking for a genuine connection were in the minority.

If you are unaware of the general format of UNSW Love Island, you can read Noise’s review of the show in its first iteration here. 

Round 1

In this round, our Bachelorette was Lily; a fine arts student with an obsession with the early 2000s crime drama, Dexter. Competing for her, we have Raven, Greg, and Shreyas. Immediately, Raven and Lily connect on the fact that they do similar degrees. They also seemed to unknowingly share a love of bold printed garments. As a contestant, Raven wore a vibrant cardigan and his heart on his sleeve. I have to applaud the courage it takes to be sincere. Shooting your shot behind closed doors is often soul-crushingly embarrassing; I can’t imagine doing it on stage in front of my peers. His kindness and love for cats won over the bachelorette, with the two of them being the first pair of the night.

Ironically, it was Raven who self-identified as a theatre kid. Instead, Shreyas and Greg are the ones who took a humour-driven approach. I feel like they were more interested in making the audience laugh than winning over Lily’s heart and failed at both tasks. If you are a funny person, jokes can be naturally injected into your responses; often, a shared sense of humour reveals romantic potential. Most of Greg’s jokes revolved around being too perfect of a man; volunteering at dog shelters, changing his pronouns to match his partner's preferences, and never ghosting anyone. The issue is that in this sarcastic facade, we learnt nothing about him as his hype men cheered in the front row. Shreyas, on the other hand, committed to brain-rot shock humour, with mentions of ‘beating meat without a meat mallet’ and ‘shitting facing each other’. 

I’d also like to flag that both Shreyas and Greg brought up their fear of finding out a girl they’re romantically pursuing has an OnlyFans account. It is understandable to have sex work be a dealbreaker in dating, however, to me, the choice to single it out is a dog whistle for Andrew Tate-esq misogyny. Women who are sex workers are such a small sect of the population yet have become a vehicle for influencers to repackage their misogyny in a new context. These influencers separate women into ‘high value’ and ‘low value’ women based on how young and sexually inexperienced they are, yet determine a man’s value by his career. This dichotomy continues to perpetuate objectifying attitudes towards women and normalises gendered violence. Contrary to what the TikTok alpha males want you to believe, all women aren't secret billionaires from their OnlyFans side hustle. 

I feel like regardless of whether their jokes landed (they did not), the bachelorette deserved three people, serious to vie for her affection. From an audience perspective, there was no dramatic tension from the competition because of this. It felt disrespectful to watch that woman be so candid about herself whilst Shreyas tried to shoehorn in another masturbation joke to shock the audience. I feel like in previous versions of UNSW Love Island this was never an issue; casting needs to go back to the drawing board.

Round 2

Rahmat was the Bachelor of the second round, with Laura, Asia and Jaida competing for him. As the Bachelor, Rahmat was soft-spoken and seemed to have trouble understanding some of the questions. Despite this, his heart of gold shone through. Personally, I feel like Rahmat was miscast as a Bachelor; his gentle personality would have been better suited for a contestant role. He might have also been able to give Raven some real competition! 

One of the standouts was Laura; a law student known for her killer style (same!). Her bubbly personality carried the round, coming across as a warm genuine person. A highlight of the night was her relaying her dislike of feet (in great detail), making us laugh whilst being authentically herself. By the end of the night, we all wanted to be friends with her. 

Asia is someone who on first appearance seemed stoic, however, is quickly revealed to be rather laid back. I feel like this Bachelor was rather miscast for her; she is looking for someone to send her memes and understand her pop cultural references. As someone who is also chronically online, I know how hard it is to communicate with people who don’t have concerningly high screen time. I hope she finds someone who matches her freak elsewhere. 

Jaida decided to play a hardcore conspiracy theorist on the hunt for lizard people. This choice turned what was meant to be a dating game into an improv show, with her continuing to find ways to respond in character. To me, this made the show awkward, having to ping-pong between three people looking for love and one girl LARPing as the average Twitter user. I will say, at the very least she committed to the bit, dawning a tinfoil hat to protect her from the 5G. Besides, she did end up being chosen by Rahmat, sealing the deal by giving him her tinfoil hat. 

Closing Thoughts

From a technical standpoint, UNSW Love Island gets better with every production. It’s clear they’ve finally ironed out the format of the show, finding the perfect sweet spot of length and set-up. I also would like to commend their efforts to make the show more respectful; the hosts made it clear that no harassment or catcalling would be tolerated. 

I feel like where this show fell flat was from a casting perspective. Half of the contestants treated it as a game of improv whilst others were looking for love. I feel like having a thorough process to make sure that cast members were serious about the prospects of love could have resulted in more even match-ups. If they need someone to volunteer to vet applications, I have made it clear that I love doing uncompensated labour! Maybe there could even be an entire round of pseudo-theatre kids all playing entertaining characters with the sole goal of making the audience laugh.  Ultimately, my issue wasn't with the fact that people didn’t take the process seriously but rather that it was awkward for everyone to not be on the same page. Then again, what is the modern dating landscape if not being on the wrong page for far too long before awkwardly parting ways?