Daisy Buchanan brings you your last Love Island 2018 Mid-Week Mug Off, in which Jack is whinier than a set of tiny triplets after the lie detector test...
It’s almost over. We have four hours of Love Island left – counting ad breaks but not counting the Saturday programme, the methadone addiction for true villa addicts. As I have observed before, it has been the longest shortest time. Civilisations have been built and destroyed in the time that has elapsed since Kendall wheeled her off brand Samsonite off the patio and out of our lives. Yet it seems like yesterday since Adam invited Eyal to smell his beads. (Adam is about to embark on a 61 date tour of the UK so we can bet those beads are going to get STINKY!) Anyway, the beginning of the end is nigh. It’s baby time.
Last year, the Love Island baby challenge united the nation. We watched Chris’s tear slicked face emote real feelings over the plastic infant Cash Hughes (or, as nostalgic Twitter would have it, CASHEWS!) and the country wept as one. This year, we’ve got Doctor Utterly Bloody Alex checking that the babies all have arms – I’m growing increasingly doubtful that he’s actually a doctor, and not just a PWC exec who bought an extra box of Elastoplast for his bathroom cabinet – and then hurling his child from a pushchair during a race.
Predictably, everyone swooned over every single man on the island who managed to look remotely interested in their pretend child. Each male contestant who did not eject the baby from a pushchair was praised for their exceptional parenting skills. Poor Megan was slated by the internet for looking bored throughout the challenge. Wouldn’t you be bored if you were 24 and had to play with a toy on telly – a toy that constantly makes a really irritating noise?
Before babies, we suffered the indignities of the lie detector test. In a switcheroo that bordered on abuse, it was decided that Old Laura had to ask the questions that New Laura wanted to put to New Jack – so poor Laura had to listen to her ex telling her that his new girlfriend was a better kisser, and he no longer had any feelings for her. The whole exercise simply made everyone suspicious and miserable, and watching it felt like going to a wedding and sitting on the Table of Doom, where everyone has slept with everyone else and they all now hate each other, and you just know that they are all plotting to “accidentally” poke each other in the eyes during Dancing Queen.
It seems unbelievable that at the time of writing, we have just four more episodes to go, and there is still no sign of Danny Dyer. This seems especially odd given Jack’s reaction to Dani’s questions, and the lie detector results. D Dyer Sr could have been extremely and menacingly helpful in the halting of his future son in law’s enormous tantrum. Jack stropped with the force of a thousand toddlers when the buzzer suggested that he might struggle to stay faithful to Dani on the outside. I ask, is the rehabilitated convict expected to stay faithful to their prison boyfriend when they are out on parole? And surely, according to the national mood, “Will you cheat on me when you’re doing a load of PAs at Oceana Warrington” is less of a pertinent question than “Would you be prepared to commit an act of oral intimacy with a stray dog for a bag of Wotsits, in order to stop me from starving? Because it might come to that - I sneakily Googled Brexit this morning and OH MY GOD.”
Anyway, Jack needs to raise his game and sort himself out, because Dani’s Dad is going to think he’s a FAHKIN’ MUPPET if he doesn’t retract his lower lip because a very silly game has not gone his way. It will also be interesting to see whether he really, truly had no idea about his girlfriend’s parentage, or whether he wraps his arms around Danny, sits on his lap and starts reciting lines from Run For Your Wife. Our collected breath is, as always, bated.
Biggest grafter: Old Laura, for doing the work required to fancy Paul even though it looks as though he hasn’t cracked a smile since Noel’s House Party was on telly.
Most melty: I had a bit of a weepy moment when the boys started talking about vulnerability in love, and how they struggle to talk about break ups. Take away toxic masculinity and everything gets so much better!
Pie time: We’ve just seen the back of New Laura and New Jack – and I’m struggling to find the words to describe just how unmoved I am…
