Here's the thing. You just couldn't do a series like Too Hot To Handle with Asians. It would not work. We are too practical when it comes to money. The pleasure can wait. Especially if there's $100,000 at stake. Even the horniest of 22-year-olds will be able to abstain for just four weeks.
Luckily for Netflix, the 14 horny people they cast for their latest reality TV experiment are a lot more wasteful.
Stars: Desiree Burch, Carly Lawrence, Melinda Melrose
The show goes like this. A pack of self-proclaimed serial swipers have been tricked into thinking they will spend a month in paradise where they can corrupt themselves and those around them without fear of consequences. They think it's Love Island. They think it's Paradise Hotel. it's not. The problem, as it's revealed to them once they get there, is that they must refrain from any kind of sexual contact, self-inflicted or not, in order to win the $100,000 grand prize. Outsmart the rules, break them in any way, and it will cost everyone. The bigger the indiscretion, the more money you stand to lose.
This genderless twist really brings us full circle. There was a time when the rustle of the sheets on Big Brother was enough to make the news. These days, sex is so common on reality TV that abstinence is needed to make a show interesting. Or at least an abstinence attempt.
This concept, however, isn't being sold simply as a clever spin on all the other shows we've come to hate over the past two decades. Of course it isn't. Instead, the contestants are told that the reason for all of this is so they can make deeper connections and form more meaningful relationships. It's about helping them help themselves. It's the kind of sticky, woolly personal-growth gibberish that's laser-targeted at precisely this type of millennial.
As for what kind of millennial is that? Well, there's Haley, a sorority girl from Florida, who has a tattoo on her back in a language she can't identify. And then there's Chloe, from Essex, who keeps reminding us that she's not the "brightest spark in...the book?" But it's this exchange between Matthew (laid back hippie Jesus) and Kelz (built like a brick shithouse) that probably sums it up best:
Too Hot To Drive is terrible in the same way as any other reality show. It is also addictive in exactly the same way. Watching it, you will experience the five stages that everyone does with this type of content.
You start out despising the show and everyone on it. Three episodes later and you start hating yourself for still tuning in. Another episode and you start to justify it to your friends: "Listen to me," you say, "these are people too, they are just looking for love and they are looking for a loved one." By the time you get to episode six, you've fallen out with the rest of the world. What do they know anyway?
The next thing you know is the end and you are fully invested. You're yelling at Francesca for being weak. You're surprised at how much Sharron has come out of her shell. You're googling: "where are they now?" You start having Chloe. How to really get it. In fact, she was so right in episode five when she finally figures it all out. When she says, “It actually hit me, that this whole experience is so profound, man. It is as if we were in sexual rehabilitation, but with the mind”.
The problem with Too Hot To Handle is that it sets the bar too high by trying to build suspense through unfulfilled sexual tension. This disappears because the question of whether or not they will is answered very quickly. Spoiler alert: they will, and they will. Sometimes for love. Sometimes out of lust. But also out of spite.
As it becomes clear that these people are happy to drop thousands of dollars for a few brief moments of self-gratification, it also becomes increasingly apparent that the producers continued to struggle to find new ways to further push the drama forward.
It's unfortunate for the show that gamers keep sabotaging its deliciously creepy premise by simply giving in to temptation.
The one aspect of Too Hot To Handle that was both fascinating and terrifying came in the form of an all-seeing and all-hearing Alexa-adjacent smart device. This is called Lana and her job is to monitor the players. She watches all her movements. She tells them how to behave. She plays both the matchmaker and the instigator. All the while bragging, quite shamelessly, that she's collecting personal data on everyone.
Nobody really thinks twice about this. Similar to The Circle, everyone takes orders from a computer pretty quickly. We are already slaves to our technology, so this is not a huge leap.
Watch Too Hot to Handle 2022 Tv Series Trailer
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