Over the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling to hop on a quarantine bandwagon. I’m too impatient to make a sourdough starter, Tiger King sounds creepy and buying a Nintendo Switch to play “Animal Crossing” is … expensive. Mostly, I’ve been filling the time with long showers and multiple walks around the neighborhood each day. Then, this week, it happened. Netflix released a show I could get behind. I called my friends, sent out a Netflix Party link and had the most entertaining eight hours of quarantine thus far.

Too Hot to Handle focuses on a group of people from around the world who think they’re going to be on a show about dating and hooking up in paradise. This premise drew in some characters.

Some of the best quotes from the introduction include Sharron, a women and gender studies student, saying, “What I’m most proud of is my penis,” and Chloe saying, “I’m not the brightest spark in the book,” before turning out to be very intelligent and sweet.  

On the second day of their stay, the contestants learn that there is a $100,000 prize for the winner(s) — those who make the biggest strides toward making genuine connections with the other contestants by the end of the month. The catch? No sex. Each time contestants engage in a sexual act, including kissing, heavy petting and self-gratification, money is deducted from the pot. Like, a lot of money. One short makeout session costs $3,000.

If this wasn’t ridiculous enough, this news is delivered by an AI robot named Lana. She watches the contestants’ every move to make sure none of them are breaking the rules. She also earns her spot as a character on the show who is beloved by both the audience and the other contestants.

The show only has eight episodes, but each one is action packed with ridiculous twists and turns. Maybe it’s the quarantine talking, but by the end of the season, I felt like I had a friend group of 10-12 hot, mostly reformed serial daters. Though some of them were hard to stomach in the first episode, I found myself looking up each contestant on Instagram after watching the season finale to marvel at how far they’d come since arriving at the resort and saying things like, “Sorry that we’re hot as fuck and we want to tear each other apart like a roast chicken.”

The show is eight hours of mindless entertainment that will leave you wanting more. I would highly suggest ignoring your schoolwork for a day and virtually transporting yourself to an almost celibate resort filled with drama and selfimprovement. It’s the self-care you know you need during these Unprecedented Times™.

Article Thumbnail: Scarleth White / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)