“Every murderer is somebody’s old friend.”—Agatha Christie
“They’re all psychos deep down.”—Benedict Polizzi, FBoy Island
Call me a cynic, or a realist, or just a begrudging fan of Lifetime’s Unreal, but there are no “right reasons” to find a partner on television. There are good reasons: to develop a brand, to become famous, and, yes, to find a partner who values those same things. I suspect there are fake reasons too, like that you want to have a warm, long-term marriage like your grandparents had. I can only presume, then, that your grandmother was a TikTok influencer and your grandfather was a Crypto investor.
Motives and means have always interested me more than feelings and reasons, which is why I grew up reading Nancy Drew and why I never got into ABC’s The Bachelor and its many spin-offs. It is a franchise seemingly structured by the idea that a bunch of hot people are choosing to zipline and mack it in hot tubs for the right reasons. My friends who do watch it and, for the record, are credentialed experts, taught me that this catchphrase is, in fact, the “foundational ethos of the show,” an attempt to manufacture authenticity where there is artifice. But it can also be weaponized by contestants who feel someone else is getting more screen time. To talk about “the right reasons” is to cast suspicion on your rivals and maybe throw off the scent of your own impending betrayal.
So, what I’m hearing is: Not only do you have to get on television, but then seem like the kind of person who doesn’t particularly want to be on television? You’ve gotta hold attention without grabbing or seeking it? You have to be yourself, while somehow standing outside yourself thinking about how you present, and also it probably helps to have a friend on the inside (of the editing suite)? As someone who was born and raised female and who spent a chunk of her twenties in the heterosexual dating pool, this rings all too familiar, and to it all, I say: no thanks.
Give me real reasons over right ones. Give me stone-cold entertainment, not bleeding romance. Agatha Christie’s detective, Hercule Poirot, puts it best: “For me, it is the truth. I want always truth.”
For this reason, I raise a poisoned flute of champagne to the self-consciously theatrical, joyously nihilist FBoy Island, a show so shot through with camp and ham that it somehow becomes the “realest [of the] reality shows,” or so its host, Nikki Glaser, asserts. Glaser sets the show’s playful tone with dialogue like this:
Nikki (host): Why are you here?
Hali (contestant): Love.
Nikki: …Really?
Are any of them here for love, though, or are they just playing the game? And what is the game exactly? Three women with penchants for, let’s say, questionable men come to an island where they need to select the guy of their dreams from a pool of “nice guys” and “fboys.” They all sort of look the same (shirtless, shiny), and their sweet talk is basically indistinguishable. But pick a “nice guy,” and the woman is guaranteed a 50/50 split of the $100,000 prize money. Choose an fboy, and he has the option to either steal the whole pot or, if reformed, share the loot.
“But a person can change!” you might say. “Love can change a man.” If that’s you, please, honey, don’t go in on this show. Or do.
And, good or bad, saintly or wicked, FBoy Islanders are always game. When Katie has a fantasy about last season’s runner-up (and surprise contestant for this season) Benedict, the two literally act out her thoughts as a kind of televisual thought bubble: She smolders; he purses his lips. Previous seasons have included dance numbers and skits about “Limbro,” a re-education camp for fboys led, of course, by a snarky Glaser.
Fans agree that the show is funny, and it’s fun, but it’s not sitcom funny, and it’s not “Will you accept this rose?” fun. FBoy Island elicits the particular pleasures of a goofy, high-stakes murder mystery. “It’s up to these three ladies—and you at home—to figure out who the eff is who,” Glaser explains to virgin viewers of season three, which kicked off last month on its new home, The CW. Those who can binge one or multiple seasons might get hooked while also feeling responsible for its goings-on. Who, you might wonder, is minding the store? Who will sniff out these fboys if not for me?
The crystallization of this phenomenon—of the replacement of the marriage plot with the mystery one—comes with the finale of season two, in which lead Tamaris brands herself an fgirl and keeps all the prize money for herself. Some corners of the internet protested this twist, as, the previous season, fboy Garrett tried to steal the money from Sara, only to have the show donate his winnings to charity. (Look, the arc of history on this show bends toward justice … for cisgender women.)
“Sometimes you have to choose yourself,” Tamaris exclaims, “and that’s never a bad thing.” In her eyes, this is her triumphant, #Girlboss moment, but the montage that follows her decision tells a different story. Cut together are various moments throughout the season, in which she admits to having issues with commitment and fidelity, as well as confesses her allegiance to the almighty dollar. It is only in this sequence that we see her ability to fake-cry on cue. Switching on the waterworks, and turning them off just as fast, isn’t quite the same as a fake limp, but the parallel remains: Tamaris is the Keyser Soze of FBoy Island. Is she a villain? An anti-hero? Mostly, she’s Miss Scarlett, in the drawing room, with the lead pipe.
As with the beloved, far-more-critically acceptable Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the title FBoy Island is a ploy. The situation is always a lot more nuanced than that. Many of the “nice guys” are jerks, as with this season’s Nyk, who called Hali a “motherfucking gold-digger” when she nixed him at the elimination ceremony. If these are the nice guys, then get a load of the fboys, you might say! Well, turns out some of them are sweet, reformed, or otherwise.
That’s the thing about the best murder mysteries: No one is innocent, not even the victim, and the guilt is always a little bit shared. Everyone in this manor, on this train, on this tropical island, is culpable, has something to hide, is putting on a show. They might be here for the wrong reasons, but, as a viewer: (f)boy, it feels so right.