The first problem is the name. Just as Fox aimed below the lowest common denominator with the concept of its new reality show, then chickened out and raised it — testing the relationships of unmarried rather than married folks — it also went with a too-tame title. "Temptation Island"? That's an Aaron Spelling show from the '70s. That's an amusement park ride. "Whore Lagoon" or "Isle of the Sluts" — now there's a show I want to watch!
There are plenty of things wrong with "Temptation Island," but none of them is that the premise — four couples spend a tropical vacation, women separated from men, surrounded by hotties of the opposite sex —is immoral. Depressing, sure. But immoral? It's silly to fault Fox, as though it hypnotized otherwise devoted pairs into risking infidelity. Anyone who agrees to risk their love on a trip to some cheesy Club Med wannabe in Belize is probably not in it for the long haul.
Besides which, the premise of this show has been exploited for years on the syndicated "Change of Heart," which sends couples on dates with other people to compare notes, and somehow the watchdog groups that jumped on "Temptation" haven't seen fit to launch a crusade against that show. The fact is, "controversies" over shows like "Temptation Island" are simply cynical exercises in mutual masturbation through the media. The moralist groups get a soapbox; Fox gets days of free advertising for a show that would otherwise have been lucky to beat out "Blind Date."
Whole lot of cheating not going on
The biggest problem was that, after all the hype, Fox delivered a sluggishly paced show padded with filler (including two previews of coming episodes) and lacking salacious details, human interest and much of anything else. Not only did no one cheat on anyone last night, the "scandalous" previews of future weeks seemed mostly to consist of cheesy, mildly sexy cruise-ship-mixer games — licking booze off someone's stomach and so on — that were about as outré as a wedding-reception garter toss.
The beginning of the six-part series introduced four young couples who apparently want to use a Fox reality show as a form of couples counseling. They seemed to have been chosen from a sign-up table at Greek Week: watching their last dinner together before their separation was like your worst bed-and-breakfast communal-meal nightmare come to life. (Sample quote: "It's like taking the Pepsi Challenge, but having the ladies be the actual soft drink.") But more depressing were the Tempters/tresses, who were marched in like breeding cattle and barely introduced before going off to the resort compounds where they would waft their pheromones toward the Temptees. A sexy reality show is not working if it brings Kurt Vonnegut to mind; all I could think of were the humans locked in an alien breeding cage in "Slaughterhouse-Five."
They prefer a masseur to a muscleman
The real mistake of "Temptation" is that it's not personally absorbing enough to be dramatic, which was the secret of "Survivor." Seeing these anonymous hardbodies cavort in Belize, you don't feel their relationships are in danger, or that there's much worth saving anyway. "Survivor"'s Tribal Councils were engrossing because, strategy or not, the votes were personal. (Likewise, ABC's reality entry, "The Mole," which debuted Tuesday, is a nice enough game, but too cold and complicated to suck you in.) You'd hardly care if anyone did hook up with one of the Fox sluts, male or female....
But let's drop this pretense of gender equity, shall we? Because the other problem with "Temptation" is that for all its attempts at balance, its premise — the lure of instant sex amid acres of comely anonymous flesh — is, at risk of overgeneralizing, pretty much a male fantasy. (I'd love to know how many women were present at the pitch meeting.) And one of the few entertaining moments came when the male halves of the couples failed to get that. Allowed to banish whichever of the Mr. Sluts seemed to be the biggest threat, they decided to purge a buff guy "who looks like Sisqo."
Turns out the women were actually more excited about the resident massage therapist. Hey, free rubdowns! Which shows they recognized the real goal of "Temptation Island": to soak Fox for as many amenities as possible before having to go back home. Turns out this game may have a real winner after all.