Letter #97: Single's Inferno 3

Good morning, Erin.

While I’m sure this has thrown you into a panic, I want to assure you that there is no need to worry: this letter was not written out of sequence. 

Because, while it appears directly after my 93rd letter to you, it was, in fact, written 97th, just as the title suggests—it’s just that the Daryl who has written this letter to you is from about a week and a half in the future. That’s right, as the Daryl you know is frantically trying to make his way through his letter about The Matchmakers spoiler alert: it’s f***ing rad, he received a message from me (the Daryl from a week and a half in the future) containing this very letter, which I wanted him to post as quickly after he watched the Single’s Inferno 3 finale as possible—because, though I couldn’t justify skipping this one ahead of the three shows I finished before it, I knew you were desperate for me to get to this one. So, I invented time travel. (Like, very limited time travel. It’s basically just enough to get this one message through before the machine vaporizes itself.) And sending this back is the best and most important use of this remarkable, world-shaking technological coup. 

At least, I can’t think of a better use for it. 

But you don’t care about the implicit existential crisis I’ve created by utterly undercutting the second law of thermodynamics—you want to talk about Single’s Inferno 3! So, let’s do just that. 

1.

1A. Yes, that’s my summary thoughts on the season: a trainwreck brought about by the supposed “main character” of the story. Gwan-hee irretrievably ruined the season for me, literally from the moment he stepped on screen. He is one of the (if not the) worst contestants I have ever borne witness to on any of these dating shows I’ve watched over the past year. Like, probably the worst guy from Pink Lie is the only one in the same orbit—he’s just that awful. There’s a lot that didn’t land about Season 3, but this guy was the obvious, glaring, indisputably biggest contributing factor to the (I’ll be generous) dip in quality for the season. The whole thing wasn’t a dumpster fire, I admit—but only because he wasn’t on screen for literally every minute of the show. (Despite their best efforts.)

1B. And don't think I don’t hate that this pile of garbage is all anyone could talk about and that he HAS TO BE the first thing that’s addressed, but this was what they gave us: a season of Gwan-hee. And basically nothing else. Which just…ugh. What a mistake this guy was. Sucked all the fun out of it for me.

1C. Now, I know the general retort from the internet is that the season would have been boring without him, but I don’t agree—because I found it mostly boring with him. I didn’t care about anything he did or wanted to do, especially not after his phony-as-f*** intro package. He came in wanting to meta-game the show so that it was all about him, and I was absolutely not having it. I know people on these shows (and particularly Single’s Inferno) are mostly just there to promote themselves in some way, but they at least have the decency to pretend they’re there for the possibility of love. 

1D. And then there’s the fawning over his weepy-eyed finale, where he supposedly had an epiphany that he’d been a dirty, rotten scoundrel the whole time and would change his ways. Yes, he teared up a bit, and the internet cried out in one voice that we had borne witness to Saul being struck from his horse on the road to Damascus! To which I say, “F*** you, you goldfish-brained ninnies.” Because…look, I really hope this was a moment of clarity for this walking red flag. I do. But I sat through him being disgusting and horrible for almost 15 hours of television. A seeming realization 30 minutes before the end that he’s maybe been less cool than he thought because suddenly his mojo seems not to be working on the ladies anymore doesn’t erase any of that, no matter how much the hosts clap.

2. Which is actually a really good segue into talking about how much I liked the hosts, this season. I don’t know that it necessarily started with (surprisingly enjoyable) new addition Jin-young being unversed in how the celebrities are supposed to express their thoughts, but his default disinterest in sugarcoating certainly contributed to the overall movement towards unfiltered opinion-giving. It was nice to see them genuinely react to what they were watching rather than temper their thoughts in support of the story playing out on screen. And, of course, this is made especially enjoyable by their willingness to voice their frustration with Gwan-hee. That made me smile and feel a little less alone as I shouted at the TV. 

3. Also: #DaheeBestGirl. For being the paragon of the above. Like, at one point, all she did was scoff, and it sent me into a fit of rapturous laughter. She’d been quiet for a while, but then Gwan-hee finally did something that she couldn’t let herself stew over in silence—and that was it for the season. Her comments were unabashed, cutting, and (importantly) dead-accurate…and when you’ve lost the classiest of the hosts, you know you’ve crossed the Rubicon. She was my favorite part of the show, hands down. 

4. I really, really enjoyed the changes to the format we got out of the first two episodes. I found it exciting insofar as it was surprising, and I liked that the producers were deliberately throwing the cast for a loop by not sticking to the formula of the first two seasons. (I think half my notes about the first episode are just “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!” and laughy-face emoticon doodles.) And, of course, that Lost-esque twist about there being another group of singles was incredible. 

5. …but it was ultimately a bad idea, in my opinion, and messed with the dynamics of the cast, both in terms of their chemistry with each other AND their impression with the audience. Having a bigger group immediately and watching them interact as they awkwardly try to cook or explore the island gives everyone time to gain interest in one another as well as gives us time to get to know them as characters on the show. I don’t think the payoffs from the twists to the format were quite as engaging in the long run as they seemed on paper nor even as engaging as they seemed at the end of the first episode.

5A. That said, I do wonder if the bigger issue is not that they made expectation-subverting changes but that they made too many of them. I wonder if the accelerated paradise date choices combined with the two separate islands should not have been done in the same go-round. Because I think there’s something brilliant about the wrinkles each brings to the show, but taken at the same time they seem like they overcomplicate each set of wrinkles. In hindsight, they probably should have done a normal-sized cast with the accelerated paradise dates, this year, then done the normal pace but with the twist of two separate islands in Season 4. Because I feel like combining the two twists—both of which are essentially ways of isolating the cast into much smaller groups—really bottlenecked everyone’s options. Which sucks. 

5B. Overall, it didn’t really feel recognizably like Single’s Inferno to me until probably the squat competition. Which was halfway through Episode 4. Which, though it snapped me right back into the “I love this show!” frame of mind, was objectively too far into the season to make the early twists ultimately seem like successful choices. 

5C. That said, I don’t know how much saving this cast there would be, no matter the format. Because they didn’t really seem to spark, as a group, the way either of the previous casts did. (Assuming their chemistry wasn’t wholesale edited out of the show in favor of…other things. (And we are going to talk about the possibility of that. Trust me.))

6. For the record: you always guess the girl is 25. Always. Which, yes, works out to be especially useful in this season because basically all the girls actually are 25 (born in 1998), but, that bizarre coincidence aside, it’s just the smartest age to guess for a girl on a show like this. (And it’ll be an especially good guess next season, because you can always fall back on “hey, all the girls were 25 last season” as the explanation for your guess, if it turns out you’re wrong.)

7. But I know your biggest concern is what I thought of the cast—and which girl would have won my heart (or at least been the one I was obligated to cast a vote for, since that’s the point of the show). And also what nicknames Theresa and I had to use for everyone because this was her first time being exposed to Korean names. 

7A. We’ll start with the boys, of course, to give you as much time as possible to decide which of the girls would be my pick:

• Min-woo - For the one dude who started the show making some pretty direct moves (sitting right next to Gyu-ri, asking Min-young for her name as soon as she sat down), Min-woo faded pretty quickly into the background, as far as I was concerned, and never recovered—yes, even as he gained story traction with his whole Si-eun/Gyu-ri thing. I was entirely indifferent to him and 99% of his time on screen. We called him Flameless Candle, because he had trouble starting a fire in the first episode and seemed destined not to set anyone’s heart ablaze. 

• Jin-seok - While I initially thought he came across as a kind of aloof “bad boy” archetype, Ji-seok quickly won me over with both his adorable first paradise trip and then with his delightful wit for the entire rest of the show. Charming, funny, and a seemingly all-around solid dude. I thought he was #BestBoy for sure. (We’ll get into the whole Min-young/Min-ji storyline later on.) Very much my favorite guy, and close to being my favorite cast member overall. We called him Cake Bro, because looked like a gym bro and made cakes. 

• Gwan-hee - With the exception of Mr. Handsome from Pink Lie, he is the single worst cast member on a Korean dating show I have ever, ever seen. Immediately unlikeable, with his arrogance and meta-gaming intentions, and somehow only able to make me like him less and less and less with every minute he was on screen. A disgusting, phony, utterly insensitive golem shaped from a pile of red flags. He may as well have walked onto the show trying to hit every item on a cliche “men suck” checklist, and my life is worse for having had to bear witness to his antics. We called him This-and-That because of his whole “this one, this one, that one” routine at the candies campfire.(Though my mom referred to him as “Basketball Jerkface” when I’d update her every week.)

• Min-kyu - I mean, this dude’s the Korean Captain America, isn’t he? I assumed he’d be the one all the ladies would fight over because he seemed to hit every possible checkbox and, once we got to speak to him a bit, seemed to be an absolute sweetheart. So, I don’t know what happened that he only ever got screen time when one of the girls needed a friend to complain to about her problems with one of the other guys. I guess his feelings for Gyu-ri after returning from his Day 2 trip to paradise with her were really, really obvious, and the ladies considered him as off-the-table as Jin-seok. Which, in terms of TV, is a real shame—particularly given the alternative option for where the attention would focus. But I digress. We called him Uncool Ranch, because his torso was shaped like a Dorito and none of the girls were approaching him (which they absolutely would if he were a Cool Ranch Dorito, because those are the best ones). 

• Won-ik - This guy was my dark horse pick for the season. Though this never really materialized (apart from the competitions), it seems pretty obvious that he was at least in the mix for backup for a couple of the girls, which isn’t nothing. And his surprising athletic abilities put him in the mix to either spoil or play foil for some other storylines—but not enough so that we ever got to see anything much of him. What we did see, of course, didn’t much excite the audience (or the girls), but I was really hoping for him to carve out a lane with Hye-seon. We called him Squat Monster, for obvious reasons.

• Ha-bin - …I’m sure there’s some kind of explanation for his whole, um, everything, but goodness me did he not come off well. Not objectionable, just…inscrutable. I was kind of hoping he’d play spoiler with Ha-jeong, but that was…well, quickly put to rest, let’s say. I don’t think it was his idea to be on this show, honestly. And, if it weren’t for Ha-jeong and the candies scene, he'd have gotten even less screen time than Se-jeong in S2. We called him The Regrettable Five, because he got a candy from all five of the girls, and they all seemed to immediately regret it.

7B. And now the girls, in order of appearance:

• Gyu-ri - Her somewhat generic “hot girl” appearance was an immediate turnoff for me, but I started to come around on her as we got to see more of her personality. Then she both frightened and impressed me with the hat-snatching game. Then she impressed me with how sharp she seemed to be at analyzing the other participants. And then she made that big mess in her final talk with Min-woo…and, though I did not take away from this that she was either a psychopath or a bully (like the internet did), that didn’t exactly endear her to me—not because her hurt or anger or embarrassment turned immediately to an arctic-cold kind of rage (nor because she told Si-eun she couldn’t interrupt the conversation (I thought that was hilarious)), but because she seemed more intense of a person that I’d have cared to deal with. Still, we didn’t get much of her outside of her “scary” moments, so it’s not like we have a lot to go on. We called her No-tagonist, because she seemed like she was supposed to be the protagonist but…no.

• Hye-seon - Ah, the internet’s girlfriend. I shifted a bit on her, over the course of the show, going from finding her pretty okay, then kind of indifferent, and then—through basically no fault of her own—being totally out on her as a character: I just can’t stand the (and I hate to use the term, but…) simping and “yaaaaasss queen!!!” buzz from her shippers. But, apart from that, I just wasn’t that into her. She was pretty and poised and upbeat and knew how to handle that trashbag of a man she was after (which…liking him is a strike, guys, come on), but she still seemed like off-brand Nadine, to me, and I wasn’t sold on her. We called her Booty Bae, because production made sure we knew about her noteworthy posterior and was obviously going to be the audience’s favorite girl. 

• Min-young - Probably the best all-around girl—at least, at first. She wasn’t the prettiest nor the sharpest, but there was something endearing and approachable about her. She seemed fun and upbeat and easy to talk to, and all of it in reasonable measure. The situation she finds herself in doesn’t lead to the edit being especially kind to her, as things progress, but it also isn’t lying to us about her missteps. I wasn’t ever out on her, and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her concerns over being “boxed in” because of Jin-seok—but she clearly didn’t handle that whole thing very well, and it was hard to keep up the enthusiasm for her coupling up with Jin-seok after how she basically told him to stay put while she tried to play the field—especially after she saw Min-ji and went full-on “wife” mode to make sure that never went anywhere. Still, she ended as my #2, overall, because I think her positives safely outweigh her negatives. We called her Floaties, because her biggest moment in the show was her pool date…and because the show took great care in making sure we all knew that she was particularly busty. 

• Ha-jeong - The moment she stepped onto the beach, I thought the season was over. “Good game, ladies,” I wrote in my notes—that’s how sure I was that she was going to be the one all the boys went gaga over. I thought she was gorgeous and absolutely the type I would find myself being drawn to, regardless of how many warning bells went off in my head (and so very many warning bells went off in my head)...and then she started speaking, and I was ALLLLLLLLL the way out on her. Wow, what a sharp turn. I could not have been more turned off by her personality. She was arrogant and phony and just, like, waaaaaaaaay too much. I didn’t want any part of her (definitely totally natural and not at all staged) rivalry with Si-eun, and I didn’t need to watch another participant actively trying to become the main character of the show. And then we hit the middle of the show, when she lost the energy to keep up all her performative nonsense, and suddenly I was like, “Oh…now this girl is interesting.” I thought she was charming, witty, intelligent, and…okay, still a little bit of a dick, sometimes, but overall a much, much, much easier person to enjoy as a participant of the show. At the end of the day, I still don’t like her, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want late-season Ha-jeong on screen pretty much all the time. There’s some silly rumor going around that she’ll be the special guest host for Season 4—and I hope that’s true. She’d rock the socks off that gig. We called her Carrot, because she helped Min-kyu with carrots on their first day, so one of the hosts referred to her as such, which I quite liked. 

• Si-eun - I don’t think I’ve ever been this neutral on a dating show participant before. I wasn’t particularly drawn to her looks, and she didn’t seem to have much personality outside of vague niceness or being incapable of hiding her feelings about anything. She came in with that haughty attitude about her (definitely totally natural and not at all staged) rivalry with Ha-jeong, but she was also clearly the less interesting half of that whole (definitely totally natural and not at all staged) deal. As such, it’s somewhat ironic that she had such a critical opinion of Won-ik, since he seemed to reflect her in so many ways. I guess the uncertainty of her relationship with Min-woo was kind of cute, but I didn’t care if they did or did not become a thing. We called her Water, because she helped Min-kyu with water on their first day, so one of the hosts referred to her as such, which I quite liked. 

• Min-ji - She’s fun, flirty, cute, hot, and I found her news anchor intro video unexpectedly impressive. Minus the giant red flag of going all-in on Gwan-hee, she was far and away my favorite girl of the season. I’d have been immediately wide-eyed at seeing her, utterly ensnared by her deliberately coquettish manner. I thought her game was smooth as silk, and, even if I’d clocked that she was playing things up a bit, I wouldn’t have cared, because every single one of her little tricks works for me. I think things would have been better for her had Min-young not put the kibosh on her pursuit of Jin-seok—but I also don’t know if Min-young was an excuse or legitimately more work to go against than she wanted to deal with. We called her Adoratubby, because she was adorable and Ha-bin said she looked like a Teletubby. 

7C. Now, I am morally, philosophically, and legally required to take a moment to state, unequivocally, that I believe Min-ji not only did nothing wrong, but that the hate for her is 100% Hye-seon shipper nonsense—and we are definitely going to talk about that, just you wait.

8. Y’know, as I was thinking about the girls on this season and how I’d describe them, I learned a little something about myself: it turns out that, though I find cleverness (by which I mean a shrewd kind of intelligence) a very impressive trait, I think it’s ultimately a turnoff for me in a potential romantic partner. I love a smart girl, don’t get me wrong, but I’m wary of anyone who’s too sharp, in my mind. I particularly noticed this when thinking about Hye-seon and how she handled Gwan-hee: at first, I thought she was too naive for his tricks to work on her, but I later realized that she was too smart for his tricks to work, and that she was so unaffected by his nonsense because she could see it for what it was—which is why she eventually described him as pathetic. She thought it was cute that he thought he could put the whammy on her, and she maneuvered him adroitly in response. And it was that which clicked in my head: I don’t like being manipulated. I mean, obviously I knew I—like everyone else—didn’t like being manipulated, but it hadn’t been so clear to me, until that moment, that this kind of cleverness was the specific thing I was so bothered by when it came to some of my former relationships. There was always a time when one of them would let slip that she had a trick for controlling me or garnering some kind of response that she wanted by taking advantage of some trait of mine that she’d noticed. And we’re not talking something like “Oo, you bought pizza—what do you want?” kind of everyday wheel-greasing. I mean that she’d pull some move to get a response, and that this move was entirely disingenuous and manipulative, in the same way Gwan-hee’s negging and “what if” questions were. Which…maybe I haven’t explained all that very well—but trust me: this was a big moment for me. 

9. One of my favorite notes from this season was me hoping there would turn out to be a third island that Gwan-hee and Ha-jeong could be sent to so that we’d never have to deal with them ever again. 

10. Inferno II was shaped like, um, a common bit of crude graffiti. If you somehow missed that. 

11. Of all the things in the new shipwreck aesthetic they brought on for this season, I think the shipping container bedrooms amused me the most. 

12. When watching the first episode, it took me a while to decide that I liked Min-young the best out of the three. Despite Hye-seon being the one I thought was the prettiest, she was not the first hurdle I had to get past for my decision. Rather, I was torn between Min-young and Gyu-ri—because the intro video for one showed her doing a flowy-sleeves dance and the intro video for the other showed her doing the rhythmic gymnastics-style ribbon…and those are two of my favorite things ever. 

13. This cast was painfully aware of where all the cameras were at all times. Like, there are times when production can’t even edit out the moments of them looking directly at the cameras. Take that to mean whatever you like. 

14. Speaking of things this cast did that previous seasons didn’t: the girls (especially in Episode 1) are waaaaaaaaaaay more touch-y than they had been in the past. Like, I think the most intimate thing we got last season was So-e putting a hand on Se-jun’s arm as a way to indicate she thought something was funny. And, okay, So-yeon in S1 gave Jin-taek a peck on the cheek...and also mounted him to give him a massage but whatever the girls were just way more touch-y this season. 

15. And continuing to speak of things the cast did that previous seasons didn’t: talk about not being shy about your bikinis! Hye-seon and Min-young came out swinging. 

15A. Also: don’t think I didn’t notice what you did, show. You spent a lot of time lingering on Hye-seon’s bottom in that swimsuit—but you cut away every time we were about to see Min-young's butt. Now, why would that be, hmmmm??? Was there too much exposed? Or did you mathematically calculate how much time looking at her bosom would be lost if you lingered on her backside? YOU CAN’T FOOL ME. I’m the world’s greatest detective! 

16. The soundtrack for Season 3 was noticeably better than in previous seasons—at least insofar as I recognized that there even was one, this time around. Which is maybe something more about me than previous soundtracks. But the only thing about this that matters is that they used “Feelin’ Like Yeah Yeah Yeah,” which I know (and love) from Transit Love 2. 

17. On the helicopter ride to Inferno II after the first night in paradise, Ha-jeong and Gwan-hee are being irritatingly over-playful with each other, while third-wheel Min-young just pretends to sleep next to them so she doesn’t have to deal with their shenanigans. (Or just sleeps because she’s tired or hates flying or whatever—point is, she’s asleep.) I found this really funny, of course, but that’s not what struck me the most about that moment. Rather, what I found most interesting is that Min-young, because of how she was sitting, appeared not to be wearing pants of any kind…and I was the only one in the world who cared. Because everyone else was all gaga over Ha-jeong and Gwan-hee. 

18. Apart from Da-hee roasting Gwan-hee for being a scummy f***bag, the best thing on Season 3 was the hilarious Jin-seok/Ha-jeong buddy-buddy time, and I want sooooo much more of that. They’re both witty and strike a nice balance in personality. I feel like this maybe developed later in the season, which is why we didn’t see it very much…but I’m equally as skeptical about this, because I would not be at all shocked to discover that the show hid a ton of gold from us for “story” reasons. The absolute jerks. 

18A. I’ve seen the online conspiracy theory that Jin-seok started to fall for Ha-jeong around the middle part of the show, which is why he suddenly seemed to cool on both Min-young and Min-ji. And, in retrospect, I want this to have been true. I’d have gone full-in on that ship, if it had been a real possibility—ALTHOUGH…YouTube skuttlebutt has just told me that there seem to be signs that the two of them actually are seeing each other, right now. So, hey, maybe it’s not a conspiracy theory at all! Or maybe it’s just even more wishcasting! Either way…I wish we’d gotten more of them on the show.

18B. Wait, didn’t Ha-jeong come to Jin-seok’s aid a couple of different times when Min-young was doing her “playful nagging” routine at him? Do we think that was about her liking (in any sense) Jin-seok or more about her simply not liking Min-young?

19. I love Si-eun’s little rabbit doll she’s always cuddling. It’s so girly a cutesy. Very fitting. 

20. When they got to the moment when Gwan-hee had to make his paradise pick after he won the (totally legit and not specifically designed for him to win it) running race, my natural assumption was that they were going to cliffhanger us about the decision. But then I noticed that there were, like, seven minutes left in the episode, so they couldn’t possibly do that, right? Well, that’s when they started trotting out all these flashbacks, and I rolled my eyes so frikkin’ hard. Sure, show. Whatever. 

21. Okay, before we get into the infamous helicopter scene, I want to say one thing about it: the only truly important moment during all this was Ha-jeong waving to the cameras from the window. It legit cracked me up for five minutes. I had to pause and everything. I was dying. 

22. …but, okay, let’s get into this: #MinjiDidNothingWrong

22A. I am never going to understand how people blew up over Min-ji trying to get Gwan-hee’s attention in the helicopter. Everyone pushes this “she’s being disrespectful” argument, and it’s not only completely unserious as an accusation but based entirely on observing the helicopter moment absent any context at all, both before and after the scene.

22B. Before the helicopter, Gwan-hee and Min-ji have a talk, during which HE TELLS HER THAT SHE’S THE ONLY ONE HE WANTS TO GO TO PARADISE WITH. The conversation ends, though, with a disagreement about whom she should pick for her date, because Gwan-hee is the only one she wants to go with but will not be available to her: he says Jin-seok, and she says Min-kyu—with the disagreement being mostly because Gwan-hee is wildly insecure about Min-kyu, but also partly because Jin-seok is more forthcoming with information than Min-kyu is. But, despite his demands, she’s goes with the pick that makes the most sense to her (Min-kyu) because there’s nothing to worry about with him on a romantic front. Which—importantly—Min-kyu immediately acknowledges when he meets up with her to leave.

22C. On the helicopter, Min-ji notices that Gwan-hee isn’t acknowledging her (and presumably has not acknowledged her since he saw she was with Min-kyu) at all, and she wants to see if this is because he’s actually mad at her or not. So she taps him on the shoulder to get his attention for a moment—not to flirt in the face of both of their dates, but just to check in, to see if they’re still okay. Gwan-hee then refuses to look at her and physically shrugs her off, giving her the coldest of cold shoulders. She gets upset over this and cries. (She also cried at the chicken fight. I assume she’s very sensitive.)

22D. While still on the helicopter, Min-kyu (the date she’s supposedly disrespecting), sees all of this and indicates that he totally understands what’s up and cannot believe Gwan-hee is acting this way—which he then verbalizes when we see them together in paradise. He even agrees to help wingman her so that Gwan-hee understands that he hurt her feelings and that she really likes him. 

22E. After another (if slightly different) helicopter cold shoulder, and after Min-kyu tells Gwan-hee that he made Min-ji cry because he’s a total pile of dicks (...my interpretation), Gwan-hee explicitly tells Min-ji that he only treated her that way on the helicopter because he was mad at her. Which is…lemme just check my notes…oh, EXACTLY THE KIND OF THING ONE MIGHT TAP SOMEONE SHE LIKES (WHO CLAIMS HE LIKES HER) ON THE SHOULDER TO CHECK ON.

22F. Which leads me to the biggest element of this whole charade: this has nothing to do with Min-ji but absolutely EVERYTHING to do with “yaaaaasss queen!!!” Hye-seon. Shippers hated that she was a threat to Hye-seon snagging Gwan-hee, so literally anything she did was the worst thing imaginable. Because trust me—if the situation were reversed and Hye-seon had given Gwan-hee a poke while he was on a paradise trip with Min-ji, everyone would be posting TikToks of that moment with little heart-eyes emojis. “EVEN WITH OTHER PEOPLE ALL THEY THINK ABOUT IS EACH OTHER OMG!!!” Don’t lie to me, internet. You don’t like Min-ji? Cool. You don’t have to. But don’t lie to me about this having anything to do with showing respect.

22G. SIDEBAR: Did everyone forget that Si-eun spent her entire paradise date with Min-kyu talking about her feelings for Min-woo? Was she being disrespectful to her date? Do we retroactively hate Si-eun? Where are the dating etiquette strict-constructionists burying Ms. Water for her egregious paradise date faux pas? 

23. I love that Min-young’s reaction to the hat-grabbing game is that she thinks it’s just going to result in people getting mad at each other and going way too hard, proving she remembers last year’s fight pit. 

24. I also love that Min-young’s reaction to the hat-grabbing game is that she thinks most of the girls are wimpy little stick-people. 

25. Of course, I don’t love either of those moments more than I do Jin-seok’s immortal “Not anymore” response to Min-ji wondering if his ideal girl was back on inferno. 

26. Ha-jeong taking an absolute blowtorch to Gwan-hee over his “this one, this one, that one” comment is one of the high points of the season…and I was 100% sure she was just going to crawl back to him and ruin it for me.

27. Ha-jeong apologizing to Gwan-hee is one of the lowest points of the season, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh my patoot off at how he basically dumps her when she does. Because absolutely f*** those two clowns. 

28. Again, Jin-seok doing impressions of Ha-jeong is top-tier content, and I’m furious this wasn’t the whole show. 

29. I’m still confused about how any of the boys managed to do one squat while carrying a girl, let alone the bottom-rung guy managing to do more than 40. 

29A. That is, bottom-rung apart from Min-woo, who I absolutely knew would draw the “you’re sitting out of this one” ball from the box.

30. I don’t know who decided the girls would have regulation cutoff shorts, this season, but…well done. 

31. Hye-seon roasting Gwan-hee about his inability to decide which girl he likes was one of the high points of the season…and I was 100% sure she was just going to crawl back to him and ruin it for me. To her credit, she doesn’t crawl back to him—but I don’t think the distinction matters much, since he slinks over to her, and she takes him back. 

32. Relatedly, I love that when Hye-seon does her own version of negging and tells everyone at the final night bonfire that none of the boys managed to make her heart flutter, Min-kyu turns to her like, “That’s…a lie, but okay.”

33. Also relatedly: I CANNOT BELIEVE THE GWAN-HEE CRYING MOMENT WAS JUST BECAUSE F***ING HYE-SEON CRIED AT THE BONFIRE WHAT AN ABSOLUTE SWINDLE.  

34. Speaking of: the previews for Episodes 10 and 11 promised us crying Ha-jeong, and it never happened. So…what the heck happened there. 

35. Whatever else anyone thinks of Min-ji, can we at least agree that we are all pro-purple pyjamas? 

36. Gwan-hee’s final decision taking up 15 minutes of runtime was a f***ing war crime. 

36A. No, I’m serious: I woke up at 3AM on the morning of the finale so that I could watch the whole thing before going in to work and avoid being spoiled, and that is what I sacrificed my sleep for. Unforgivable. 

36B. See? Here’s a photo of my note-taking for Ep 10. If you zoom in, you can see I wrote that I started it at 3:15AM. (You can also see my neato Statue of Liberty paperweight!)

 

37. There’s a great moment when Hye-seon tries to encourage Min-ji not to give a crap about any of the stuff from before the islands were merged (specifically referring to the Jin-seok/Min-young situation), and Min-ji’s like, “Oh, you mean like with you and Gwan-hee! Cool!” And Hye-seon’s like, “Um, y-yeah, exactly like…like that.”

38. I don’t know if Won-ik getting Gyu-ri to take a picture of Min-woo and Si-eun was a burn or an attempt to cause a ruckus or just production whispering in his ear, but…I laughed. 

39. Another high point of the season was that sweet Si-eun dramatic door opening rope-a-dope moment the edit pulled on us. (Where we think she’s charging off to interrupt Min-woo and Gyu-ri, but really she’s just going to sit with Min-young and Jin-seok in his shipping crate.) That over-dramatic music had me bought in hook, line, and sinker. A fantastic gag. 

40. Speaking of musical choices, the music choice for Ha-bin’s meandering explanation about his struggles with talking to people is hilarious: dopey comical music as he flailed about, then an immediate drop into sexytime music once he came around to his point. 

41. And speaking of Ha-bin: I agree with Da-hee that he should totally have told Ha-jeong that the reason he wasn’t talking to her was because she all but literally told him that she doesn’t want to talk to him. Much like with when they were left alone together in the cafeteria and her immediate response was to say that her head hurt and then lay down, I don’t see why he would have seen fit to put in any effort at all when she’s being like that.

42. …and yet, as dull and uncomfortable as the He-jeong/Ha-bin date was, the moment we skipped over to yet another scene of Gwan-hee, I instantly missed it. 

43. When they’re in paradise together, Min-ji gets Gwan-hee to act like—and I am stunned to admit this—not just a human being, but a doting boyfriend. (I assume by the invoking of black magic, which was later edited out of the episode.) He does what she says, doesn’t make snide comments. Even the hosts are like, “H-How is she doing this?!” It’s a moment that, in isolation, would seem to be the start of a turnaround arc…until Min-ji absolutely burns the edit by telling the girls back on inferno that Gwan-hee was doing his regular s***head Gwan-hee stuff until she told him to knock it off—all of which had been conveniently left out. 

44. Towards the end of Episode 10, we get some splashy-splashy beach time, at long last—but it’s mostly just the boys in the water while the girls leer at them from the beach under parasols. And it’s very funny. 

45. The setup for final picks was…interesting, I guess, but I was so uninterested in the picks themselves that I didn’t have too much more of an opinion about the new way of doing it (other than to say it was probably the most dramatic way they could have done it, apart from maybe having the guys line up and the girls walk over to the guys, in a reversal of the previous two seasons…but I digress). Instead, I want to mention how flippin’ hilarious it was watching them do individual shots of everyone waiting in their seats…only to cut to a slow pan up to Min-ji’s face from her breasts when it was her turn. Sure, you can say that it was really a shot of her nervously clutching her hands and then the pan up to her face, but we all know what was really going on, there. 

45A. And then they do it again during the you-didn’t-get-picked outro!

And that’s the end of that. Thank God.

What a disaster. Season 4 better not be more of this kind of thing. I don’t think I could survive it. I’ve had to dive back into my Heart Signal 4 podcast just to calm myself down. Just…no, Single’s Inferno. Just no. 

I was going to send this to you as a physical letter, like I did last season, but, alas, I could only send digital information back. But know that I wholeheartedly wished I could do otherwise. (And ignore that I was relieved to save the postage on this 11 page missive.)

More soon, Erin. Or…more already done? I dunno. This timey-wimey stuff is new to me.

—Daryl