CIARA O’CONNOR
Tiger, Tiger, burning miserably to its finish
IT seemed Tiger King would be the defining content of the quarantine. Tiger King-mania was impossible to disentangle from corona frenzy — they both felt inevitable in a world gone mad. Both presented so many unknowable questions, both pushed our understanding of human stupidity.
It was a bigger hit than it had any right to be, enjoying once-in-alifetime timing. But Netflix practically disappeared down that gift horse’s mouth by hurriedly commissioning a new episode, upon news of which the internet fell foaming at the mouth. It promised to update us on the cast, and answer all the questions we’ve been tweeting feverishly into the night and transposing into Dadaist memes.
It was released on Netflix last week and, in watching it, we were released from the vice-grip Tiger King had held on us. It was bad: less a documentary than a series of perfunctory work Zoom calls, edited together in Microsoft PowerPoint. It would have been a worthy transition year project by a budding Stacey Dooley.
The original series was marked by relentlessly sensational storytelling, every episode presented at least five completely bonkers twists in the Tiger King story: polygamy, murder, meth, literal Scarface gangsters, tiger maulings, amputations, sex cults.
The bonus episode talked about how many leather jackets one guy owned and “could you ever imagine anything like this [reception]?”. Netflix has accidentally put Tiger King out of its misery — and I think that’s best for all of us.
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Not that it matters, because on Friday we were given eight new hours of unprecedented reality content in the form of Netflix’s latest dating show, Too Hot to Handle.
I can only imagine the concept was created by a faction of disgruntled former Love Island producers, frustrated at the limits of their format.
What if, they must have thought, we could literally make contestants kiss whomever, wherever, whenever we wanted? What if there was no public votes to frustrate our story plans? What if we replaced Laura Whitmore with a Google Home? What if we could just kick people out who aren’t doing what we want them to do, and decide winners ourselves according to whatever we feel like?
Thus Too Hot to Handle was born. Netflix put 10 sexually incontinent young hotties from the UK, US, Australia — and Cork — into a house and told them after a day that they weren’t allowed any kissing or sexual contact whatsoever.
Breaches depleted the prize fund. To win, they’d have to display ‘personal growth’, and to this end they would attend workshops involving the kind of complex healing rituals that would make Gwyneth proud. To distance itself from Love Island mental health ugliness, it refers to itself as a ‘retreat’.
Our offering to the show is Nicole, the horniest girl in Cork, who had clearly been gearing up for Maura Higgins levels of strangely innocent Irish reality TV depravity, before the rules were made clear.
“I didn’t sign up for this at all... it’s weird.”
She turns out, naturally, to be a rock of sense. She makes Cork proud with her deadpan asides, perfectly timed eye-rolls and by spectacularly copping out of a mad assignment to ‘represent’ her ‘yoni’ by painting a unicorn.
“It’s magical,” says Nicole gamely. The American voiceover drolly notes: “It’s also a fictional creature no one’s ever seen.” Joke’s on you, voiceover. I’m saying nothing about Cork.
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Special commendation this week to Ireland’s most influential new cultural icon, the overnight sensation: Matt Damon’s SuperValu bag.
Matt Damon’s SuperValu bag has been a beacon in the storm, a spring in the desert, an apparition at a grotto for a country in ecstasies of sublime relatability.
Matt Damon’s SuperValu bag: did it contain his togs? Was it for his big shop?
It doesn’t matter. Matt Damon’s SuperValu bag, its exquisite absurdity, its majestic mundanity... Matt Damon’s SuperValu bag represents the possibility for moments of joy, national connection and the craic, amid fear and uncertainty.
Matt Damon’s SuperValu bag is the new face of a new Ireland. When things look bleak, just remember: Matt Damon and his SuperValu bag.