‘Love Island’ Recap #4: Two Men Hit Each Other, Not For Long Though

You know when you really want a sweet snack, but you don’t have a sweet snack on hand, and instead you just eat one of those flavourless muesli bars with fake chocolate in it?

And while you’re munching on it — this carob, cardboard abomination — you wonder if the disappointment that you’re feeling at that moment is even worth the fact that you made this healthy choice? Did the absence of one chocolate really make that big a difference? Has your life really been made better by consuming this cheap imitation of a thing that you actually like?

Anyway, Love Island is still on.

We’re told some drama has occurred, the kind of drama that makes your monocle pop right out of your eye socket!! Eden and Erin had to choose whether to save Justin or Jaxon, and they chose Jaxon! Justin is sent home! What a shocker, I tell ya.

Most of the house seems furious at Eden and Erin, like they nominated for Justin to be hurled directly into the sun. Maybe that’s where he’s going! I don’t know where he lives. “Two boys, one hit,” says a blonde man, sadly. (Another man was sent home too.) (Let’s call him Frankie.)

“I fear for this fucking place,” says Grant, which is the kind of thing that you say when you’re so bored that you have to create drama for no reason just for something to talk about. If you have worked in an office at any point in your life, you have probably turned to someone at the coffee machine and said, “I fear for this fucking place” at least once, while shaking your head solemnly.

Or maybe Justin was a surgeon and had Grant’s medicine, I don’t know.

Eden reckons it was the hardest decision he has ever made in his life which, wow, Eden is having an incredibly great life. Eden and Erin are paranoid that the house will turn against them and doubt their decision. They decide to explain their actions with mature discourse and a calm–

“HEY I HEARD YOU GUYS THOUGHT WHAT WE DID WAS UNFORGIVABLE,” Erin yells across the timber deck.

Tayla explains that when people are emotional, they say things in the moment that they later regret. Erin says she would never say things in the moment! She never says anything! What’s a moment! Mille comes to Tayla’s aid, and Tayla further explains that “people say shit” when they’re upset and sadly this is just a fact, this is just what people do. “I don’t say shit ever!” says Eden.

Everyone continues to yell and Tayla starts to lose steam, mostly because it is a nonsense conversation for tired meerkats.

Grant and Eden then approach each other like they are about to partake in some sort of duel. It’s ridiculous. (No shiny boys were harmed in the making of this scene, nor would even the most unethical producer allow that to happen, so don’t even worry about it.)

After the duel, everyone is upset. “I’ll back you to the fucking hills,” Grant explains to Tayla. “It’s pretty bad when you fight with one of your mates,” Eden explains to Erin. Tayla and Erin — women — quietly conference and put the incident down to “the heat of the moment” and “a misunderstanding”, I think Napoleon Bonaparte said the same thing at the Treaty of Paris.

Meanwhile, Jaxon uses the emotional night as an opportunity to make a move on Millie. “On the plus side, I have started talking to Millie,” says Jaxon, a man who thinks that nothing gets romance on people’s minds like attempted fisticuffs. Millie says that she thinks that he is too full on. “Also, I like rough, tradie guys,” she says.

“… I think I look rough,” says Jaxon, a man who is not being full on.

That night, while making out in a room full of awake strangers and countless cameras that lead to monitors in Spain and Australia, Eden and Erin say I love you for the first time. It’s so romantic.

Erin is elated! She tells Cassidy that she actually cried when Eden used the L-Word! “Jesus Christ, you cry?” Cassidy says in a monotone, savage voice, I think I like Cassidy now. Erin cried because of her ex-boyfriend, or something! “Honestly I cannot believe this has happened to me!” she says. Cassidy pretends she is happy, but lets out an audible groan. The show cuts to a ring buoy with the word ‘love’ on it.

Cassidy is having a hard time, because she is in a couple with a man named Dom and Dom does not seem to want to be a couple in a biblical sense. “I just want to kiss him and he won’t kiss me,” she explains to Erin.

Meanwhile, in the house, Dom tells Josh that he doesn’t want to push something that is not right. Then, mid conversation, he slips off his underwear, kicks it across the bathroom floor and continues talking to Josh while stepping into the shower. “I don’t want to ruin the friendship,” says Dom. “I know what you’re saying,” says Josh.

I can’t help but think that the power dynamics in a conversation are off-kilter when one person kicks off their underwear, but perhaps I’m old fashioned.

Outside, Jaxon is still trying to think of ways to win Millie’s heart. “Millie, can I ask why you’re so picky,” he says. Surprisingly, this does not immediately drive Millie into his arms. Elsewhere, some men partake in a push-up competition in which the prize is a canister of protein powder.

So, there you are.

There is a challenge this episode! The challenge involves them getting into teams and guessing what the public thinks about them. It also involves them all wearing gold swimming trunks and bikinis, as many of life’s challenges do. The contestants freak out at the prospect of knowing what Australia has been saying about them. “They’re going to show us the tweets!” one woman says in dread.

Twitter can really turn the stomach, I don’t blame them.

This competition requires these poor buggers to answer hurtful questions like “Does Australia think that Tayla can do better than Grant” and “Would Cassidy couple with anyone to stay in the game” and then they have to… pole dance?

I mean.

After an afternoon spent pole-dancing and hearing mean things about themselves, a girl called Mac and a boy named Josh have a conversation. Even though they are talking to each other, each seems to be having a conversation independent of the other person’s conversation.

Mac: “You can marry an inanimate object.”

Josh: “I want to have a kid on a boat in Antarctica, because no-one has been born in Antarctica.”

Mac: “Like romantically marrying a burrito.”

Josh: “They’d have a passport from Antarctica.”

Mac: “Haha.”

Josh: “I know, I think about weird stuff.”

So what else happened? So glad you asked! Ministry of Sound threw a ‘white party’, which coincidentally was the alternate title for this show. “Cheers to Ministry of Sound and the night of our lives!” says someone, somewhere. They take photos of each other for Love Island’s social media accounts and clink their plastic Ministry of Sound-branded champagne flutes. They dance in a cluster, as they are told.

But hark! What’s this? The Ministry of Sound DJ (oxymoron!!!) is a secret new contestant! His name is Teddy! He chooses to go on a date with Erin! But Eden loves Erin! Erin has just been telling her girlfriends that she thought she would “never fall in love again” before Eden! Erin is 23!

Cassidy makes this face!

Anyway, Teddy says he picked Erin because he already follows her on Instagram. She quite rudely tells him that she is taken. He congratulates her on finding love.

Eden is fine with it.

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Sinead Stubbins is Junkee’s former Entertainment Editor. She tweets about Drake, Gilmore Girls and cheeseburgers at @sineadstubbins.

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Catch up with last week’s Love Island recap here.