THAT'S THE WAY LOVE GOES

“Love Island USA” reaches its conclusion.

- BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM

The villa where the action goes down is styled like a hallucinated version of Miami.

One good way to enjoy the latest season of “Love Island USA”—the seventh, in which new episodes aired on Peacock almost every day for six weeks and just wrapped up—is to imagine that you have made the questionable choice to pursue a new relationship by appearing on the show. You're flown to Fiji—nice clime, clear water. Suddenly, you're no longer allowed to wear the usual sort of torso-obscuring shirt, unless it’s totally unbuttoned in order to display your trophy case of abs. (You wouldn't be here if you didn't spend some fascistic percentage of your waking hours in the gym.) Around your waist, you're wearing a fanny pack full of recording gadgetry; hanging from a thick cord around your neck, like the statement gem on an avant-garde necklace, is a microphone covered in fuzz. You can't hide the evidence of TV production and also be as naked as this particular production insists that you be, and so even as you walk around in your seemingly realistic way, kissing and telling and sleeping in a room full of couples squirming under the sheets, you are also a perpetual visual reminder of our growing habit of surveilling while also being surveilled. You're here to meet and consort with a harem of other hotties, all pining equally for an experience of love, and to do so—hence all the equipment—in front of an audience of millions who get to vote along the way, determining, ultimately, the winning couple.