‘Too Hot to Handle’ on Netflix: Season 3 Cast Makes History by Boning Their Way to Rock Bottom

Reality television is not a genre known for restraint. Survivor, the Real Housewives universe, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Love Is Blind — these are the TV shows that you tune into to see people exhibit extreme behavior in extreme situations. Even when a show is built around suppressing extreme behavior, it can still lead to plenty of face-palming, groan-inducing, WTF-worthy shenanigans. Reality TV was created to serve shocking moments to audience, so let’s talk about Too Hot to Handle Season 3.

If you aren’t yet familiar with the rules of Netflix’s most chaste/hedonistic reality show, the rules are simple: a whole bunch of horny hotties are sent to a tropical paradise where they win a lot of money if none of them hook up, and money is deducted from the winnings every time they do. All these dum dums have to do is not give in to sexual desire for, like, I don’t know, two weeks, and then some or all of them split a massive chunk of change. And just to make temporary celibacy more enticing, Too Hot to Handle even doubled the prize money from $100,000 to $200,000 this season. Of course, with the doubled prize money came doubled fines for rule breaking — not that any of that mattered to this cast! For the first time in the show’s history, these naughty hotties blew every single cent of their prize money on bumping and grinding.

This cast’s race to rock bottom began in record time, too. Not even 10 minutes after hearing the rules from Lana (the cone-shaped “artificial intelligence” that monitors the cast for violations and doles out deductions), Georgia (an Aussie who loves narcissists) and Izzy (a love’em and leave’em Brit) were back in the bedroom making out because they were independent women who didn’t care about the rules or something. Of course, after a few episodes of nonstop rule-breaking from her roommates, Georgia would change her tune about the rules.

But sure, a kiss here and there is to be expected. Usually the hotties learn their lesson and start focusing on emotional connections… but not this time! The very next episode, Georgia and Izzy both broke the rules again with two different people; Georgia found a bad boy in Stevan and Izzy connected with reckless flirt Truth. But Georgia and Izzy’s transgressions — and there are many across the season! — are nothing compared to Holly and Nathan.

So, Holly and Nathan. Holly and Nathan.

Her ways are so wild that her family calls her Hurricane Holly and he regularly drops dollars for international booty calls. Together they ultimately cost the group a total of $141,000. That’s 11 kisses, including one through a pair of shorts because they thought that would be a loophole (it wasn’t), as well as the two most egregious — and avoidable! — rule breaks of the season.

First Lana tested Nathan and Holly by giving them a night alone in the private suite. Mind you, Lana did this immediately after calling them on their silly “kisses don’t count if there’s gym shorts between our lips” scheme. This was clearly a test — one that they failed. The problem: Lana asked the rest of the cast to bet on whether or not Holly and Nathan could keep their hands and lips to themselves for a whole night. If they guessed correctly, she’d refill the prize fund. If they guessed incorrectly, she’d deduct another $57,000. You know how this played out.

Then, in the most frustrating test of the season, Lana went “offline” because of a “glitch,” leaving the cast with no instructions as to how to proceed. And instead of treating this like a test clearly set up by the producers who they have all definitely met and not a glitch from an artificial intelligence that is essentially just an air-freshener-shaped puppet for said producers, half the cast seemed to fully think that the rules were suspended. Izzy and newcomer Jackson (god, pun not intentional) cost the group another $6,000. Harry, an otherwise responsible tree surgeon from the UK, had a $4,000 wank in the shower. And then Holly and Nathan had sex at least twice, since Holly said they hit a “couple home runs” and Nathan “got to know the stadium.”

And that, Netflix subscribers, leads us to rock bottom.

Let’s be clear: the cast actually got off easy by just hitting $0. Considering that full-on sex cost $20,000 in previous seasons and that the fines were doubled this time around and that these two hit a “couple home runs,” Lana later confirms that these two actually cost the group $90,000 during that one night.

Add that to all of the cast’s rule breaks across the season and Lana could have charged the entire cast $54,000! But Too Hot to Handle isn’t that cruel, so they just stopped at $0. Even with double the prize money at stake, this cast could not keep their swim trunks/impractical bikinis on.

Even though Holly and Nathan cost the group nearly 3/4ths of their prize money, they weren’t the only ones at fault. Here’s how the rule breaks broke down:

• Holly – $70,500
• Nathan – $70,500
• Izzy – $18,500
• Jackson – $14,000
• Georgia – $7,500
• Stevan – $6,000
• Harry – $4,000
• Truth – $3,000
• Olga – $3,000
• Gerrie – $3,000

It really was a team effort.

But because a season of reality TV isn’t satisfying if you find out that there is no chance of anyone winning any money with two full episodes left, Nathan and Holly are given the chance to win back the $90,000 they lost while Lana was “offline” by having another night in the suite with zero sex. SPOILER ALERT — they actually succeed (barely) and the winner, as voted on by the cast, has $90,000 to take home.

And who is the winner of Too Hot to Handle Season 3? SPOILER ALERT again — it’s Beaux and Harry. And if you want the rationale behind that, you can watch Too Hot to Handle Season 3. One thing’s for sure: a couple only won $90,000 because another couple had a bunch of sex and then did not have sex. That’s reality TV for you.

Stream Too Hot to Handle on Netflix