Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Too Hot to Handle’ on Netflix, Possibly the Trashiest Reality Show Ever

Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle is a new trashy reality series that surely aims to be everyone’s quarantine guilty pleasure. With an irony-rich premise and a group of scantily-clad participants who likely don’t know what irony even is, it might be the most dumpster-juiciest show since Temptation Island inspired us to clutch our pearls and/or declare it a sign of humanity’s downfall. The world didn’t end, but for 10 serial horndogs dropped in a steamy-hot setting and asked not to touch each other in a quest to win $100,000, they may feel the apocalypse is now.

TOO HOT TO HANDLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A postcard-worthy shot of a lounge chair — big enough for two of course — on a blissful tropical beach.

The Gist: Thongs. Iguanas. Abs. Wherever we are — and it’s never really made clear — it’s very warm and conventionally beautiful, and so are the people. Five men and five women, hailing from international locales ranging from the U.S. to the U.K. to Australia and Ireland, don their skimpiest bathing suits and prepare for a month of doinking the bejeezus out of each other, or so they think. They’re all “commitment-phobic swipesters” with more notches on their bedposts than most. They mingle for the first time; they bat their lashes, they flex, they waggle their bums, they rub sunscreen on each other. Here, we watch the mating habits of contemporary vain humans, who will engage in shameless acts of quasi-courtship, he said in his best David Attenborough voice.

These 10 folks — who all adhere to types, e.g. The Sensitive Thinker, The Ditz, The British Gentleman, etc. — are about to be blindsided. They’ll sleep five to a room, women in one, men in the other. The drawers are full of condoms, proving the producers of this show are cruel — or maybe the participants are all twits and dingdongs who deserve to be effed with? We’ll see! We’re secretly introduced to Lana, the Alexa-like unit who speaks with a British woman’s voice and will monitor their every move. They don’t know about her yet, and she’s about to blindside them.

But prior to the big surprise announcement, the contestants get gussied up for a game where one person wears a blindfold and another kisses and/or fondles the blindfoldee, who has to guess who the kisser-fondler is. Blood already is rushing to their erogenous zones like a flash flood when Lana summons them together and gets all judgy: “You’ve all been having meaningless flings over genuine relationships.” Then she explains the scenario: no one is to kiss, engage in heavy petting or have sex with each other for the whole month. Already naturally slack jaws drop. Oh, and by the way, Lana coolly interjects, there will be no “self-gratification” either. CRESTFALLEN, they are. Any sexual activity means money will be taken out of the $100k prize pot. And maybe they’ll learn to fall in love with each other’s MINDS and PERSONALITIES instead of each other’s butts.

Somewhere, an iguana laughs with a tone of cruel schadenfreude, then contorts its body so it can lick itself.

Our Take: Too Hot to Handle is a mashup of Temptation Island, Love Island, “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld, and The Peter Griffin Sideboob Hour. To call it tawdry is to engage in nuclear understatement. The participants, as framed by this relentlessly canned manipulation-fest, are models and influencers who are as deep as ice cube trays. The show is engineered so you’ll love to hate them. They’re nincompoops, and watching them hit on each other is so embarrassing, you might shove your head in the oven so you won’t witness their shameless displays.

One woman wants the money for a nose job; one chronic metaphor-mixer says she’s a “baby cheetah” who wants to “pull (men) into her web.” An African-American man brags that his schlong is the size of an aerosol can, and is a self-proclaimed feminist who believes his gender-studies major gives him the insight to score with the ladies. I searched for redeeming qualities among this group and found it to be a frustrating endeavor, like an archaeologist at a dig with a teensy little chisel and brush, delicately whisking away crumbs of dirt to find naught but old Twizzlers wrappers.

Per the assignment, I’ve only watched the pilot episode. I therefore surmise the simplest, most logical path to victory: All participants will put on their sloppiest sweatpants and oversized T-shirts, not shower or shave anything ever and drink themselves into oblivion, pouring the ice from their cocktails directly into their underwear. Will these vain twits dare to be unsexy? THAT might be great television. But alas, the preview clips just show how a bunch of these dips keep violating the rules with each other as the money tally ticks down.

I have questions. How much will each infraction cost? Is a kiss like $10 or $1,000? Is there a sliding scale from first to third base? I assume hugging is OK? What about a hug that brushes up against any forbidden body parts, accidentally or otherwise? Will the narrator ever run out of punny double-entendres? This all will be answered during the next seven episodes, no doubt. Part of me wants to keep watching to see how Lana monitors every move every person makes for a month. Will there be no privacy in the shower or toilet? Part of me is ashamed to admit that part of me wants to keep watching. Part of me just realized that part of me is confessing publicly that part of me is ashamed to admit that part of me wants to keep watching. That’s how Netflix gets ya, I guess.

Sex and Skin: Cheesecake, beefcake, tongue kissing, underboob, sideboob, underbutt, sidebutt, full butt, a fleeting glimpse of a pubic hairline, talk of licking each other and whatnot, pre-competitive semi-clothed dry-humping. I might have missed some.

Parting Shot: A shot of Lana, the amoral privacy invader. If she had a face, she’d be smirking.

Sleeper Star: Cutaway establishing shots frequently feature scampering and lounging iguanas, which (Attenborough voice) live in humid climes and engage in active social behavior during mating season. Males are known to bob their heads, inflate their jowls and even change colors during courtship; they sometimes guard their females after copulation, fighting off their genetic competition. Iguanas are truly more complex creatures than they seem!

Most Pilot-y Line: One of the narrator’s countless asinine puns: “These guys are screwed — just not in the way they want to be!”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Too Hot to Handle is awful, some of the dreckiest dreck every drecked, he said, wondering if he might secretly watch it anyway just to see these dunderheads (who probably aren’t as dunderheaded in real life, and probably just play dunderheads on TV) suffer. But those of you out there who relish the escapism of sleazy junk like this may appreciate it for its too-hot-for-network-TV moments, and possibly for its scintillating iguana content.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Too Hot to Handle on Netflix