Bingeing Too Hot To Handle? SAME. The Netflix series was right up my alley – horny hot people! Money to win which means everyone becomes a selfish prick! Crying! I’ve decided to recap the episodes in a four-part series for you, in case you needed another person to bond with and all your mates refuse to watch it (rude).
Episode 1 was pretty low key. Everyone arrives and we get brief intros on them all. Sharron comes out like a shining beacon of hope amidst reality TV trash people, saying he’s in women and gender studies courses… but then he ruins it all by saying he uses it to “pick up chicks”. Ooookay then.
We meet Francesca, who is Instagram famous. Haley, who is a sorority gal from America. Chloe, who is absolutely Charlotte from Geordie Shore’s distant relative and you can’t tell me otherwise. As you can see, instead of pulling together a bunch of Brits or Cali folks, Too Hot To Handle has people from all over piling into its resort.
Someone I must point out is Jesus, real name Matthew, who arrives looking like… this:
As you can tell, he’s Mr Spiritual Guide and, while extremely sexy looking, seems also like an extremely annoying human being.
A stand out has to be Harry from Australia. When he walks in he greets the women already in the resort with “hello you naughty little quesadillas” and I was immediately obsessed with him. He is every bloody Schoolies fuckwit you fell in love with who never texted you after a hookup. He’s the guy in the club who pashes you on the d-floor and then disappears.
He’s also possibly fresh outta high school, but that doesn’t stop all these adult women from fawning over him. First, Chloe is keen – I ship these two so hard. But Harry’s only got eyes for Francesca, sadly, and before the first day is even fucking done – like I’m fairly sure the sun hadn’t even set, they’re dry humping on a bed. Chloe is devo.
Also getting frisky incredibly soon (are these people not even remotely camera shy?) are Rhonda and Sharron. David goes in first to try flirting with Rhonda, but Sharron has the real sparks with her – they are full on.
Everyone plays a game where one person is blindfolded and someone else lets them touch their tits, or makes out with them, or puts their hand on an ab. Something like that. It’s what sparks the Francesca/Harry connection that leaves Chloe devo.
Once all the initial dry humping is over, Lana – the scary robot voice who owns the resort, it seems – shocks the group with the rules – no sexual contact, including kissing AND masturbation, for the entirety of their time in the resort. This game is not about fucking each other to the top, it’s about restraint and learning to get to know folks before you head to BoneTown.
Boring!
Well, boring for THEM, not for us. Everyone looks like their eight week old puppy got run over by a ute. That level of devastation, seriously.
With that, episode 1 ends. On to episode 2! Chloe has gotten over Harry’s rejection, and moved straight on to David. She’s kinda into him, and he’s kinda into her. That’s enough for Lana, the terrifying cone robot who is everywhere and operates a truly unhinged level of surveillance on the group, to grant them a date.
They head down to the shoreline to sip champagne and eat chocolate-dipped strawberries. I mean, literally sip champagne – Chloe’s glass for some godforsaken reason has a STRAW IN IT.
They seem to be getting along all flirty, and get around the no-kiss rule by disgustingly sharing a strawberry and drooling on each other. Rank. David carries her off after the date, seems like another romance is brewing.
Meanwhile, Harry and Francesca find the rules simply too hard to follow, even though they only met 0.002 seconds ago. It is simply TOO much to ask, to refrain from kissing. So they kiss and break the rules after about three hours.
Harry is really the instigator, and then says he thinks they should have sex. Francesca’s like…. no.
She goes and tells Haley that they kissed, breaking the rules and costing the house an unknown amount of cash. Harry tells us that because he knows Francesca’s gonna blab about the kiss, he’s gotta tell the boys. So he literally tells ALL the boys they kissed – and says she instigated it.
When the group is brought together in the “palapa” (what is a palapa) and told about Harry/Francesca’s kiss, Harry blames it on Francesca. She is LIVID.
She tells everyone how Harry asked her to have sex with him after their kiss. He immediately denies ever saying it. Safe to say their two second relationship is over. Also, the group finds out they lost $3,000 due to their kiss, taking the prize pool down to $97k.
Francesca bitches to Haley about Harry, and later in the night they decide to get revenge by… kissing. This is totally Haley’s idea, because she’s attracted to Francesca.
The reasoning is that no one will suspect them of macking on? Seems insane given Lana can just… tell everyone if she wants to. Oh well! Let’s see how that goes for them, shall we?
Melissa Mason is the Managing Editor (Sydney) at Pedestrian. She’s also the co-host of the All Aussie Mystery Hour podcast, and posts shit content on Twitter & Instagram.
