Patrick Freyne on Surviving Paradise: Where did the contestants learn about emotional expression? From emojis?

Surviving Paradise, a new Netflix reality show, is a mash-up of Love Island, Big Brother and Survivor in which young people compete to win the price of a coffee at the airport ($100,000). As usual, it features wide-eyed, toothy Americans saying, word for word, the things I said at my most recent Irish Times performance review.

“I am a southern belle, but I have a little bad-bitch spice to me.”

And: “I would describe myself as positive, loyal, genuine, very much golden-retriever vibes, if you will. But hopefully my kindness isn’t taken for weakness in here.”

And (directly to the Editor): “Let’s talk about alliances. I feel like you’re the only one who’s going to keep it real with me about the whole alliance situation. I think you’re the type of guy who has the same mentality as me: if I’ve got your bag, you’ve got my bag.”

‘I have lived so long. Why am I still here?’ Simon Cowell’s beady little eyes seem to say

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The Full Irish Hidden Camera Show understands the craic must be baited, captured and solemnly clubbed to death

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Is it cake? Do not show your worst child this programme! They already suspect everything is cake

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Patrick Freyne’s favourite TV shows of 2024: An Irish national treasure, bickering hitfolk and the best actor of her generation

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And, as I was leaving: “I gotta wash my ass. There was a spider in my ass last night.”

The performance review went very well. Thanks for asking.

Anyway, the wise children who say these exact words on Surviving Paradise arrive, as is reality-show tradition, in a Wacky Races-style convoy of vehicles: yacht, helicopter, Jeep, sports car, peddle car, pogo stick, lolo ball, Segway and balloon (maybe not all of these vehicles). Eventually they are deposited at a luxury telegenic villa where they chug hooch from goblets near an infinity pool overlooking a Greek paradise, seemingly confident that this is their life now, because they have never seen a reality show before.

On hearing the bombshell news, they slap their hands to their faces; their eyes widen like anime children; their jaws detach until they resemble a state of slack-jawed awe; their mouths form the perfect circle of the “wow!” emoji. It’s exhausting

The concept of Surviving Paradise is explained by a disembodied voice in terms that will be familiar to younger readers from their lives so far. “They think they’re here for a summer of luxury and a chance to win a life-changing cash prize. They don’t know the rules of the game, and later today the good life will be ripped away from them.”

A presenter named Jessimae appears and gathers the contestants around her. She explains that they must now go live deep in the woods until a time when, based on variables unknown, some of them will get to live in the fancy house. Ah, it feels like only yesterday my father was explaining this to me.

But this is different. This is a generation who were raised in the wild by memes and learned about emotional expression directly from the source: emojis. This is a generation who watch reaction videos about reaction videos. They know how to react. On hearing the bombshell news, they slap their hands to their faces; their eyes widen like anime children; their jaws detach until they resemble a state of slack-jawed awe; their mouths form the perfect circle of the “wow!” emoji. It’s exhausting, to be honest. Their emotional range is so different from that of my generation, Generation X, who you can find, if you need us, lying face down on the floor saying “whatevs”.

I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t the contestants swiftly calculate the poor odds of winning, seize the means of production, eat the camera crew and live happily in the villa as an autonomous collective? Obviously, that’s what you or I would do in their situation. Sadly, however, they are young Americans, so instead they go to the forest, where they network and hustle and TedTalk their life stories at one another in a clearing in the trees. As I watch I wonder if perhaps we all descended from a surviving tribe of neolithic reality-show contestants.

Because they’re American they don’t try the European centrist trick of being sad about their friends’ lack of cocktails while simultaneously drinking their own cocktails

Eventually, they must vote on who to send to the villa, and they choose a woman named Lellies, who then gets to choose three other castmates to go live with her. It’s a very confusing political system. “You’re all now insiders living in paradise. Congratulations!” says Jessiemae. It’s a sentence you may have heard before, depending on which school you went to or if you’re from Cork.

By the next episode Lellies and her pals are drinking cocktails on a yacht while taunting their spartan “outsider” friends on the nearby land. Because they’re American they have no fear of redistributive comeuppance. They don’t try the European centrist trick of being sad about their friends’ lack of cocktails while simultaneously drinking their own cocktails, now garnished with delicious tears.

These cocktail-less unfortunates are soon receiving tasks to perform via texts on a communal phone, much like what happens on Love Island. It feels to me that reality shows like this are softening up a whole generation to unquestioningly obey instructions delivered by text. It’s only a matter of time before the Chinese government hijacks our phones via TikTok and then that’s it for us.

And so two volunteers head through the forest towards some sort of supply drop. Once they arrive the two tired and hungry wanderers are given a choice: they can get some delicious food that they can eat there and then, or they can get food that they can take back to their tribe but not eat themselves. They choose the latter, which is quite selfless (or possibly it’s “game-playing”, as some of their well-fed competitors assume). I think I’d probably have eaten the contents of both crates, and possibly my travelling companion, before resolving to live alone but happy inside the crates.

This, I’m certain, is what the protagonists of The Morning Show (Apple TV+) would do. The Morning Show started off as a darkly nuanced story about a predatory morning-television presenter played by Steve Carell, but three seasons in, with Carell’s storyline finished, it can’t make its mind up about what it wants to be. Is it a drama that satirises media excess or one that lionises the great liberal media?

It features the worst television journalists in the world. Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) is having a relationship with Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), a tech mogul who is buying the network and whom she is supposed to be investigating. Meanwhile, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) has illegally covered up her brother’s involvement in the January 6th riots. Look, let the journalist who doesn’t sleep with their subjects and hide the crimes of their family cast the first stone, but these melodramatic shenanigans sit uneasily alongside the same characters earnestly covering the real-world repeal of Roe vs Wade. At times I think we’re actually meant to believe that these are the smug liberal millionaires we need to guide us into the light. In reality, they just look like “insiders” in the villa, and I don’t think there’s any way to vote them out.