HBO Max's FBoy Island flaunts its identity as the messy, issues-burdened lovechild of dating app culture as brightly as a neon wristband

Salon.com

"You might not be able to tell that from the advertising, which makes it look like a weird stew of every other romance reality show you've ever seen," says Melanie McFarland. "The Bachelor and its spinoff Bachelor in Paradise are its main inspirations, but it also incorporates the tongue-in-cheekiness of Love Island, (obviously) Temptation Island, (again, duh) and Too Hot to Handle. Why aspire to mimic one show when you can be all the shows, tossing in a few teaspoons of I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth with a shot of Joe Millionaire and, here's a deep cut for you, The Joe Schmo Show? Nearly everything in popular culture cycles back to something else, eventually. This is neither a penalty nor the sole point of congruity FBoy Island shares with Grindr and the general outlook of dating app consumers, or even what makes the HBO Max series extraordinary. For that, I tip my hat to another common trait shared by the app and the show: both are incredible feats of social engineering that refuse to cloak the transactional nature of electronically enabled modern matchmaking in the trappings of 'love, use of quotes intentional."

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• The biggest problem with FBoy Island is the contestants using the word "FBoy" on the show instead of "F*ckboy": "Here’s that sh*t I don’t like so much: On the show itself, every single one of the titular boys calls themselves not a F*ckboy, as they richly deserve to be called, but instead … an FBoy. Yes, on FBoy Island, they actually use the word 'Fboy,'" says Allegra Frank. "Is this to maintain consistent marketing? An attempt to be family-friendly? Or is it just all a big f*cking joke? The first time that Nakia, one of the three female contestants—whose job it is to sleuth out which of the dozens of self-proclaimed 'nice guys' competing for their affection are, in fact, f*ckboys—uses the word 'Fboy' to describe a guy in the first episode, she laughs to herself, as if to say, 'This is so f*cking stupid. It’s certainly what I was shouting out loud at my screen as I watched, and I wasn’t the one forced to say such a silly codeword on an adult reality show. Because Fboy Island is an adult show! The guys tell each other they have tiny dicks, inform the girls that they want to sleep with them two minutes into a convo, and never wear shirts. One guy gives another of the leading ladies, Sarah, a very sensual lap dance at one point. This show ain’t f*cking around—the guys are here for sex, sex, sex, and that is A-OK, because this isn’t The Bachelor, a dating game on a broadcast network...But it isn’t just an HBO show; it’s an HBO Max show. Streaming operates differently than traditional television, since those platforms are typically subscription-based services, which means there’s generally no risk of assholes who can’t deal with a little curse word or full-frontal once in awhile running into crap that offends on their precious cable boxes. With streaming, you know what you are signing up for—and often times, that content includes the Seven Deadly Words."
• Fboy Island works so well because it takes the “fboy” part seriously: "They’re there to be ogled, judged and ultimately taken down a peg — at least that’s the way it should go," says Inkoo Kang. "The 'fboys' are given real opportunities to flex their flirting skills and, later, to screw the women over, in part by convincing them that love has made them give up their bad-boy ways. The final few episodes flag from a lack of character development — the show doesn’t bother to distinguish the women from one another, and most of the men get even less definition — but it’s got a mesmerizing villain in Garrett M., who keeps revealing new layers of callousness, like a rotting onion. Like many of his fellow competitors, Garrett M. has an 'fboy' job par excellence — he’s a bitcoin investor...With her sarcastic, you-know-better world-weariness, Glaser serves as a prod to the women to exercise good judgment. But, of course, the show wouldn’t work if they did. 'I chose you because I thought we’d look good together,' says one woman at the end of the first episode — and she’s later revealed to be arguably the savviest of the three. And yet, there’s something encouraging about a show that isn’t just about whether a woman can find a man, but the right one for her."
• FBoy Island doesn’t seem to have a handle on its own format, but it does realize how bonkers it is: "It didn’t take long for FBoy Island to make me feel like my brain was leaking out my ears, drip by stupefied drip," says Caroline Framke. "Brought to HBO Max by Elan Gale of The Bachelor, the new dating reality series is some unholy combination of Bachelor in Paradise, Love Island and Too Hot to Handle. The rules seemingly change by the day, and each episode is an entirely unnecessary full 60 minutes long. But did I still watch every ridiculous minute of FBoy Island I had in a single hazy sitting? Yes, of course. At this point in the summer, as the heat thickens and the TV offerings wane, something this proudly dumb can fit the bill just fine." Framke adds: "If you’re looking for anything remotely logical or elevating, FBoy Island is not for you. Then again, FBoy Island isn’t trying to be either of those things. Should you decide to take the plunge into the show’s inane depths, you probably already know how empty it’ll be."
• FBoy Island does well to not take itself too seriously, prompting some genuine laugh-worthy moments: "It sends rejected fboys to 'limbro,' a sandy shack where they have cots for beds, and hay stuffed inside a sack for pillows," says Cheyenne Roundtree. "Meanwhile, the nice guys get escorted away in a limo to a mansion, where they sip piña coladas as they watch the fboys slum it. Host Nikki Glaser is fantastic, serving as a confidant to the women, cracking jokes throughout challenges and elimination ceremonies, and acting out skit-like scenarios while trying to teach the fboys the error of their ways. But still, for a fresh approach to the step-and-repeat one that plagues many reality dating shows, FBoy Island somehow manages to teeter between an exciting, funny concept and a half-baked idea that needs to work out its kinks."
• FBoy Island isn’t remotely up to its task: "Plenty of reality shows are already about detecting (and exposing) players and cheaters," says Alessa Dominguez. "But it's something of a novelty to have this identity explicitly called out, and to have men compete as so-called f*ckboys, as if it's something to be proud of. The conceit suggests a promising shamelessness, as if the show might examine this old pattern of male behavior in a funny, new light. But FBoy Island isn’t remotely up to the task. The show is like an anemic Bachelorette (one of the creators is a Bachelor producer), with three women trying to date 24 guys, except it stuffs that longer format into just 10 episodes. There’s not enough time to get to know anyone or for any organically compelling drama to emerge. We barely get to know the women, and the guys all play even bigger caricatures of the types favored by the typical reality show. The show tries to compensate by having host Nikki Glaser throw in some jokes, and there’s also the expected competition element (apparently any couple that ends up together gets $100,000). But anyone excited about the title and hoping the show might speak to the moment and go beyond the usual dating reality tropes — like women wondering whether men are there 'for the right reasons' — will be disappointed. In the six episodes made available to critics before the full 10 drop, the setup never coheres. Just like a f*ckboy, the show doesn’t ultimately deliver."
• FBoy Island is not trying to be anything more than a sudsy summer distraction: "And by that metric, it’s a masterpiece," says Judy Berman. "In contrast to Sexy Beasts, which never gets more entertaining than it is in the trailer, the show gets better—juicier, funnier, occasionally sexier, more original and compelling and clever—the more time you spend with it. As streaming services thirsty for cheap content pile on interchangeable reality fare, that’s worth celebrating. Two decades into the reign of reality TV, and with all due respect to Jack and Liz, it’s a pleasure to see some of the genre’s torchbearers do more than the minimum."
• FBoy Island is a work in progress, but still worth checking out: "Aside from a few dust-ups, FBoy Island is downright pleasant—fans of the genre might actually find themselves wanting more drama," says Danette Chavez, adding: "The camaraderie among the women is also refreshing: Sarah, Nakia, and CJ quickly bond, helping each other suss out the fboys and coming to each other’s aid during dates. It probably helps that they’re never really in competition with each other; to each their own fboy. But they’re all likable and clear-eyed about the choices they’re making, even when those of us watching at home might want to yell at the screen. That kind of reaction can’t be avoided in this kind of show, but unlike its namesake, FBoy Island isn’t trying to have fun at the women’s expense. Nakia, Sarah, and CJ aren’t kept in the dark for long: The rules shift, and the men’s backgrounds are gradually revealed. Doing away with most of the intrigue only heightens the tension; just because the women know which of their suitors to stay away from doesn’t mean they’ll run straight to the nice guys. Some decisions are still kind of baffling, but then, who among of us hasn’t occasionally ignored their own better judgment? It’s to the women’s credit—and to the show’s, for choosing to focus as much on their dynamic as their chemistry with the guys—that their missteps feel relatable. FBoy Island’s stumbles mostly involve the gameplay. The rules often seem arbitrary, goals shift, and the notion of an fboy remains nebulous."
• HBO Max launches FBoy Island with a recap podcast
• How Elan Gale went from The Bachelor to FBoy Island: "Working on dating shows for years and loving them, I didn’t know what was missing for me," says Gale, who created FBoy Island with Love Is Blind veteran Sam Dean. "I wanted to do something just a little bit new and different. When I talked with friends of mine, the conversations they were having about the guys they were dating tended to be around a specific thing of men who would ghost them. Obviously, it goes both ways. But it was very often men who said a lot of things, made a lot of promises and then disappeared. I heard the term 'love bombing' a lot. And I heard the word 'f*ckboy' a lot. I felt like there was a new opportunity." He adds: "I thought: Let’s go to a place called FBoy Island. This is our Jurassic Park. A place where you’ll go and have an adventure. I’m not necessarily saying it’s a great place to live — and, I don’t know if we should have opened it! But now the dinosaurs are running around and hopefully you’re able to escape unscathed with an amazing story."
• Nikki Glaser actually learned about human psychology hosting FBoy Island: "I definitely walked away from the show learning a lot about human psychology, and also, the girls actually have a better shot of determining who's a nice guy," she says. "At least they know there are nice guys. When we date out in the regular dating pool, we don't know. And it's cool to know. I mean, I know now, but it's cool to watch the show and think you know who is who, and realizing who's nice and who isn't."
• How Nikki Glaser ended up on FBoy Island: "I saw this show in an email my agents had sent me about upcoming reality projects that were slated for the next year — this was sometime during COVID — and I saw FBoy Island and I was just like, 'Oh my god, flag that one; I want that on my IMDb!' I told my agents I wanted to get involved in the reality space against what they would have predicted for me because I had been auditioning for scripted things — all things I planned to do — but I just looked at the entertainment I enjoy and was like, 'Why am I not taking a part in any of this?' As a consumer, I enjoy reality shows, so I need to be in this world. Because I care (and) I like to do work that I care about and consume myself."