HBO Max’s delightful thirst trap of a dating show, FBoy Island, has all the sex appeal a person could possibly want. Like most dating shows in 2022, the cast is replete with professional pretty people. Washboard abs, sexy tattoos, and those dangly earrings that catch the light just right in the club are all regular fixtures, and the entire series might as well be sponsored by Big Protein Powder.
None of that, however, is what really makes this breezy summer fling so refreshing. Like most hot items on the dating market, FBoy Island’s secret weapon is a killer sense of humor—especially in Season 2, which unveiled its first three episodes Thursday on HBO Max.
The game is simple: On FBoy Island, three women date their way through 26 men in a search for love. (*Cough* plus a $100K cash prize and major exposure for their brands.) The season’s leads must choose wisely. While half of the men competing for their hearts claim to be “Nice Guys,” the bros that remain are self-proclaimed “Fboys”—all of whom have the option to take the women’s prize money and run in the end.
Host Nikki Glaser, who kicks off the show’s second season by crawling out of the water on all fours covered in sand, is something of a not-so-secret weapon. A strong comedian with some roasting experience, Glaser can do it all: one minute she’s gabbing with the season leads about which men they like and who’s a good kisser, and the next she’s gently hazing the guys during a round of the show’s most popular game, “Douche Tank.” That light-hearted humor sets the tone for a show that knows never to take itself too seriously.
And speaking of douches—the men this season are as unfathomable as ever. There’s a guy named “Mikey D” who quickly develops an identity crisis and insists the show’s cast call him “Michael” instead. There’s a fitness influencer who, I swear to God, looks just like Handsome Squidward. And there’s a guy whose flirting game apparently involves getting in the pool and repeatedly yelling his desired woman’s name into the night sky while she talks to someone else. It’s all enough to make this girl recall a little mantra from her grandmother: “It’s better to be single than in bad company.”
Everyone involved in this season is as conventionally attractive and thin and straight as ever. (Seriously, is there a body fat percentage check at the entry point to this island?) Then again, FBoy Island—a show that puts the “sir” in “surreality”—isn’t exactly making a huge effort to masquerade as an honest reflection of real life. In fact, the series loves to remind us just how mediated everything we’re watching really is; at one point, we skip over footage from a group date in favor of a title card informing viewers that the date was a dud. We then cut to 10 seconds of abs running along the beach instead.
But who will be judging those abs at the end of the day? Our leads this season are Tamaris, a pink-haired sales director who was born in the Bronx and now resides in Miami; Mia, a bubbly dental student from Tampa, Florida; and Louise, a professional model from Onekama, Michigan. Like last season, the women collaborate and share information to determine who’s for real and which of their men might be putting on airs—a fun twist on these shows’ usual power dynamics, which often leave leads somewhat oblivious to what goes on behind their backs.
While some dating shows lean heavily on the melodrama and deliberately put their casts in stressful social situations, Fboy Island feels, somehow, a little more human. (I mean, to a point.) Mia, Tamaris, and Louise are not here to find their husbands—just some guys to date and split some money with. The women provide a reality check for one another, which allows all three to proceed through the show with more confidence. As a result, we see fewer emotional breakdowns on FBoy Island than, say, during a season of The Bachelor.
Instead, it’s the dudes of FBoy Island who bring most of the emotional intensity—often in the most hilarious, embarrassing ways. One contestant this cycle, for instance, self-eliminates on night one when it becomes clear Mia’s about to send him packing. (It’s all a big “You can’t dump me; only I can dump me!” scenario.) Later on, we see another would-be player lock himself in a bathroom yelling, “I’ve changed!” over and over again.
As with The Bachelorette, a recurring theme appears to be that some of the men who’ve ostensibly shown up to compete for women’s affection turn out to be deeply offended by the idea of having to actually compete for a woman’s affection. The player who self-eliminated after a hissy fit, for instance, said he refused to “beg” for a woman’s love before rattling off his qualifications as an eligible bachelor to a producer. And who could forget last season’s Casey implosion, when the bold contestant told a bewildered CJ that he wanted an “equal partnership” with the woman he was auditioning to date?
Time after time, these men make gorgeous, effortless work of humiliating themselves—and that might be the chief wisdom of FBoy Island. With men this good at making fools of themselves, why manufacture drama by stressing out the women stuck trying to date them?
