It Was a Runaway TV Hit Last Summer. This Year, It’s Even Hotter—and More Divisive.

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On the reality dating showLove Island USA, it’s become customary for the men to prepare breakfast for the women they’re paired with, and not once but twice this season, a contestant named Huda has found her morning meal wanting. In an episode that aired this week, Huda confronted Chris, the man she is currently “coupled up” with (in the show’s parlance), for making a better plate for another woman. “You gave her two pancakes and gave me one. You gave her a flower and gave me none,” Huda told Chris plaintively. He apologized, but she was still hurt. The incident “made me feel like a side ho,” Huda said.

It’s easy to make fun of her, and the show in general, for such absurd exchanges. Hasn’t anyone ever taught Huda that comparison is the thief of joy? But I bring up the pancake wars because, fellowLove Islandfans, I think some of us are guilty of doing the same thing Huda is—metaphorically, at least. Rather than focusing on the feast in front of us that is Season 7, many of us can’t seem to let go of thinking about how it stacks up next to previous iterations of the show, particularly last summer’s Season 6.

There’s no doubt that last season was a game changer for the U.S. version ofLove Island. Previously only a niche hit, the show’s viewership surged throughout the summer, and by season’s end,Love Island USAwas finally on its way to becoming the kind of cultural phenomenon here that the franchise has long been in its native U.K. and elsewhere. Peacock, its streaming home, was ramping up its marketing in advance of the Olympics, and a new host, Ariana Madix, had signed on, bringing alongher own audience of reality TV devotees. But more than anything, the show—which features a group of “Islanders” dating each other in an isolated villa—had luck on its side in the form of an unusually attractive and charismatic cast. By the timeits reunion special aired in August, I was already wondering how the producers could possibly top themselves.

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The legend ofLove Island USASeason 6 got around, and viewers have shown up in droves for Season 7. They’ve already watchedmore than 1 billion minutes of itsince the series returned in June, and Peacock has reported that 39 percent of those viewers are new toLove Island. Even those who have seen it before may have been playing catch-up last summer rather than watching live—one of the pleasures ofLove Islandis that it airs six days a week for several weeks, almost in real time. This has been the first summer a huge audience has been locked in since the beginning. Though we live in a fractured media environment where nothing is truly mass anymore, the show has successfully made it feel as if everyone, or at least everyone you follow on social media, is watching.Love Islandhas never been more popular.

It also, depending on whom you ask, has never been worse. That’s right: Several weeks into the villa stay, and nearly a week away from the finale, consensus seems to be that this season sucks. Where did it all go wrong? Was a decline in quality inevitable, after the runaway success of last year’s Season 6? Or is the real problem the fans who can’t stop comparing the show’s current season to its breakout one?

The first few weeks of the show were dominated by our aforementioned pancake-counting queen, Huda, and a relationship she formed with a man named Jeremiah. Beautiful yet insecure and possessive, Huda is a fairly familiar reality show type, but she nonetheless quicklyproved divisive among fans, and her coupling with Jeremiah came to a sudden end whenLove Island’s audience voted to break them up. These votes, conducted via a companion mobile app that the series heavily promotes, are a regular but sporadic feature of the viewing experience and have been a reliable source of chaos this season. Most notably, it was a combination of audience votes and on-camera cast decisions that resulted in the surprise ousting of Jeremiah and another popular contestant, Hannah, about three weeks into the season, an event that some fans still don’t seem to have fully gotten over. Then, it was time for Casa Amor, the show’s signature twist, designed to throw a wrench into the existing pairings in the villa by introducing a bunch of new romantic possibilities—only this time there were barely any strong couples to disrupt. There’s been such a dearth of real connections, in fact, that producers took notice of an online fan movement around one mostly platonic couple, Nic and Olandria, and essentially forced the two to explore a romance together rather than get eliminated. The whole thing reeked of desperation, but I don’t blame producers for trying it, because they clearly wanted to avoid our current fate, wherein the villa is overcrowded and tense and no one seems to really like each other. I’ve seen multiple calls on social media for the season to end early and for the prize money to go to charity or to a contestant named Amaya, who isn’t in a strong couple but has nonetheless emerged as a fan favorite. Has there ever been a season ofLove Islandwith so little love?

I’ve thought a lot about whether this is a “bad” season of the show. I certainly miss some of the contestants from last year—fiery Serena, dramatic Rob, queen of one-liners Leah—and the strong connections they had. A common criticism that has emerged is that the show’s explosion in popularity made this season’s batch of contestants too self-aware, too interested in growing their follower count off the island rather than being open and playing the game. Maybe so, but it’s not as if last year’s cast didn’t want to be famous—am I the only one who remembers sweet Kordell’s confession that he dreamed of doing sponsored content for Cheez-Its? (Heachieved that dream, by the way.) I miss last season too, but I think the extent to which this season has been a disaster and that production is to blame are overstated. America is still learning how to watchLove Island, its rhythms and possibilities, and the show is still becoming itself, and, not to sound too much like an elementary school teacher, maybe we need to learn that every season is unique and special in its own way. Sometimesa sexy couple who seem legitimately in lovewill win, and sometimes, well,a guy with a Napoleon complexwill use his time in the villa asan extendedTraitorsaudition. The beauty of life, and this show, is that we never know what’s going to happen or what new bombshell awaits! Or at least that’s what I’ll be telling myself when I tune in to see what happens tonight. If nothing else, I hope Huda gets all the pancakes she wants.