On the surface, there wasn’t anything particularly different about this season of Love Island USA.
It’s another hot idiot parade. The villa is the same, overly lit and filled with dumb neon signs, looking like it was exclusively decorated by Target (the contestants are still obliged to call it beautiful as they enter, leaving audiences wondering if they are told by producers to do so). There is the same introduction of personalities that at first seem complex and different, only for everyone to fall into a high school trance once they start vying to be chosen. There is the same suspension of any kind of reality for the most part, in which the contestants rarely discuss the real-world implications of their lives, such as their jobs and living situations.