By Gia Rogers
Love Island has finally come to the U.S for its first season! America's newest dating reality TV show follows a group of people from all around the U.S on their quest to find love. Although the "Islanders" seemed happy about the outcome in their tell-all interview, only the audience can decide if it was a hit or a miss.
Love Island, the international bombshell series, has finally come to the U.S for its first season. Having been compared to the likes of Big Brother, this show finds a variety of singles from across the U.S and sends them to a beautiful beach-side villa in Fiji for the summer. There, they embark on a month long journey filled with romance, drama, challenges, and surprises throughout. Each couple faces the threat of being voted off the island, while the rest compete to find love as well as win over America in order to collect the $100,000 cash prize. Previously having been filmed in the U.K as well as Australia, this show is no stranger to success, but its debut in America wasn’t met with as much buzz as was expected of it. While the U.K version had much more success, at a high of 6.2 million viewers across all viewing devices, even breaking a personal record for the show, the USA version missed the mark at only 2.6 million viewers. This may bring trouble for CBS after they had already invested a 30 million dollar budget as well as an airing time of 5 days a week. Although it was renewed for a second season, it left many people wondering if it will become another castaway in the endless stream of dating reality shows. Despite the mixed reactions to the show, the contestants had nothing but positive things to say about their experiences. In an interview with one of the finalists, Weston Richey claimed “It was a wild ride but I found what I was looking for.” This was a reference to his girlfriend whom he met through the show. Meanwhile, two other contestants, Ray Gantt and Aissata Diallo, answered some hard hitting questions about the truth behind what was actually aired. When asked if anything was staged or if the show portrayed them accurately, they answered,
“Sometimes the producers would tell us how to phrase what we want to say, but the majority of it was real… We were portrayed correctly but they only showed 10% of what happened. A lot of things like the bonding and building our friendships were cut out.”
Although statistically this show definitely wasn't the success it was meant to be, I believe that it has undiscovered potential and was entertaining enough to keep viewers waiting for the next episode. In this case, it’s biggest downfall was it’s lack of advertising, which I believe led to their shortcomings. This is disappointing because it could easily be the next biggest summer hit.
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