Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Too Hot To Handle’ Season 5 on Netflix, If This Boat’s A-Rockin’…Luna Will Be Blockin’

As in previous seasons, the fifth season of Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle places challenges ten horny contestants to abstain from sex for the chance to win money. The twist is that they all thought they signed up for a traditional dating show, this one being set on a yacht, so when they find out they won’t be allowed to have sex or physical contact of any kind, they lose their minds. Once again, the show has managed to find a group of sex-obsessed hotties who all think they might actually die without physical contact, repeating the formula that has worked so well for it in the past.

TOO HOT TO HANDLE (SEASON 5): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Sun! Sand! A yacht! “Let’s get this boat rockin’!” one contestant says. That poor guy has no idea what he’s in for.

The Gist: You know the drill by now: a group of sex-obsessed, hot-bodied young adults who think they’ve been cast on a dating show are all brought to a tropical location where they believe they’ll have the chance to find a f—k buddy or three. Then, in a twist, they’re visited by a talking, glowing cone-shaped robot named Lana who reveals that they’re actually on Too Hot To Handle, a show that challenges and rewards them if they can actually abstain from having sex. This season, the ten singles think they’re on Love Overboard, a dating show where they’ll supposedly sail around the Caribbean in a five-bedroom yacht, which means they need make a love connection and pair up with a partner to share a bed for the night. On day one, as they all flirt and try to find a sex buddy, some of them get competitive when they realize they have eyes for the same person.

By this point in the franchise (there are four previous seasons and three international versions), the show is a well-oiled machine and the formula is set, so what the show comes down to is good casting and the fact that it now leans into its own reputation for jokes. At the top of the show, narrator Desiree Burch explains sarcastically that, in past seasons when contestants learn they’re part of a sexless competition, it has “result[ed] in super mature reactions.” (Smash cut to one past contestant who moans, “Is anyone else gonna f—kin’ puke?” when she is told what she’s signed up for.)

This season, the contestants are as upset as ever when they learn they’re not allowed to have sex with the people they’ve had their eye on. At the end of the episode, when they learn what show they’re actually on, they all act as though a loved one has died. (“I think we should just unplug her,” one of them says desperately, referring to Lana.) But their reactions change when they’re told they’re competing for a whopping $200,000 if they can keep their chastity belts strapped on long enough.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’ve mentioned this in the past, but just to be clear: it is a known fact that this is a show based entirely on the Seinfeld episode “The Contest” in which the four main characters compete to see who can abstain from masturbating the longest. I kind of wish more TV series were based on single episodes of Seinfeld. A show where people are forced to meet and hang out with their bizarro versions? A holiday decorating show based entirely around Festivus? A craft competition where people sculpt celebrities out of fusilli? I’d watch them all. Alas, this is the one we’ve got for now.

Our Take: Desiree Burch’s narration is the only thing this show has to keep it from being a harbinger of our Idiocracy future. The producers know that if they let these contestants ramble on about the size of their eggplants or how perfect their tits are or their hearty sexual stamina, it’s gonna get old, so Burch’s ability to take them down a peg and be the everyman observer on our behalf is necessary to the formula. Still though, for even the sex-positive among us, there is something truly exhausting about watching them talk for an hour about how important sex is to them.

When it’s finally time for the big reveal, when Lana the cock-blocking cone arrives on the scene to tell them the true premise of the show, Burch cheekily says, “It’s time for the obligatory slo-mo,” and we watch every contestant slowly fall to their knees or wail in despair that they’re going to have to practice abstinence if they want a chance to win the jackpot at the end. “Dre is crying!” one contestant, Elys, says of a castmate. “I think everyone might cry. We all wanted to bang each other and now Lana’s here,” she pouts with a straight face and no hint of irony. Like everything else with this show, it’s funny, but it’s only funny because it’s SO ridiculous.

Sex and Skin: Everyone on the show is proudly clad in nothing more than dental floss at all times, and while there is a lot of talk of sex and how much they want to have, alas, they have to resist temptation.

Parting Shot: Though the contestants have been told they won’t be sailing around on a boat, they do still have to pair up and share a bed with a partner of the opposite sex, and three of the women, Hannah, Christine, and Megan, had all been vying for British footballer Louis to bunk with over the course of the day.

Of course, the bed-sharing ups the chances that the contestants will give in to temptation, but it also adds a level of competition: each woman still wants a chance to sleep next to Louis. When he chooses Hannah, Christine says in her confessional, “Hannah, you may have won the battle but you have not won the war. Honestly, you better watch your back, I’m coming for your man.”

Sleeper Star: I’m going to give a hat tip to the contestant from New Jersey, Isaac, who received a FaceTime from his mother immediately after telling us, “If the booty’s fat, you know where I’m at.” After having a motivational chat with her on camera, he hangs up and says, “She thinks I’m a saint!”

Most Pilot-y Line: “I’m definitely ready to raise my main sail,” contestant Dre says early on, when he thinks he’s still participating in a dating show on a boat. This is why you watch Too Hot To Handle; as sex-crazed as these contestants are, they’re as heavy-handed with the wordplay as they are with the foreplay.

Our Call: Too Hot To Handle contains multitudes. It’s a smutty dating show that’s also a parody of a smutty dating show. I do believe it’s funnier than it’s ever been, but I don’t think that its own meta-commentary about how vapid and hot its own contestants are make it worth your time. SKIP IT.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.