Love Island USA Recap: Our First Double Dumping

Love Island
Episode 14
Season 8 Episode 14
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Each season of Love Island USA is approximately 1 million episodes, and we are recapping all of them. Check back for morning-after recaps of weekday episodes and a Monday roundup of the weekend’s shenanigans. 

An episode that ends in a double dumping should probably be more thrilling than this. I’m mostly satisfied with how the Islanders voted, especially because Sol has become, pardon me, a bit of a downer. I’m not even that broken up about Gabe’s departure, since we never saw much of his personality beyond all the tonguing down. The one moment of genuine conversation between him and Jen this episode lasted about 15 seconds before dissolving, again, into tonsil hockey. (The boys, however, are clearly pissed, based on the preview for tomorrow’s episode.) 

The reason I’m feeling so meh now, I think, is that there are very few other ways this dumping could have gone. Of course, the newest bombshells were going to get the fewest votes from the public, and of course, the Islanders aren’t going to vote off an OG if they can help it. The only real surprise was that Jen, whom I often forget is even in this villa, survived. There’s no real sense of loss to the villa here, and honestly, why watch this show if not to watch tears melt the makeup off our Islanders’ faces after they’ve made an impossible decision? Not to beat a dead horse, you know, we wouldn’t have this problem if we hadn’t kept Sol and Caleb around for no reason.

But I suppose not every episode can be a banger. Sometimes a day in the villa just needs to get us from point A to point B. Point B, in this case, is the false sense of romantic security our Islanders are enjoying right now, which is necessary for a truly explosive Casa Amor. 

All the Islanders are happy

After the letters have all been read and couples re-established, the Islanders retire to their various neon-illuminated nooks to bask in the joy of reciprocated crushes. 

Sincere and Melanie’s “I missed you”s are muffled by their mic-crushing embrace, but the imperfect audio adds to the authenticity of the moment, if anything. Sincere promises Melanie that he has no more interest in “exploring” Sol (we have got to find a new word for this), and Melanie, as she is wont to do, believes him. She declares Hot Girl Summer over. It’s her “Lover Girl Summer” now. In the speakeasy, Corbin and Kenzie are equally delighted to be back together. Kenzie cops to confessing the kiss to Jen, but nothing can bother Corbin now that he’s got his girl back. Kenzie tells the beach hut she is happy to just keep watering her garden. Aniya and KC agree that the letter-writing allowed them to say what they needed to say. Because, according to KC, “The words weren’t wording” in their chats. (I still do not trust KC, but they are making out in bed, finally.) Zach, who was particularly proud of his “Who would have thought a boy from England would meet you from New Hampshire…” bit, suggests they can read the letters at his and Kayda’s wedding one day. Back in the makeup room, as all the girls wipe the concealer from their cheeks and peel off their false lashes, Trinity says she’s so glad everyone went with their gut.

It is, in fact, exactly the kind of vibe I, personally, like to see the weekend before Casa Amor. They’re like teens in a supernatural horror movie who have just broken out the Ouija board. No one is prepared for the chaos awaiting them. 

Except for Sol and Caleb

The only thing that can dampen the mood now is the new couple, Sol and Caleb, who spend the following day sulking around the villa like two sexy, wounded birds. Caleb is downright shocked that Kenzie chose Corbin over him, which I find immediately irksome. After the recoupling, Kenzie pulls Caleb aside to tell him he’s still the cutest cowboy; she just had a stronger connection to somebody else. While Caleb was gracious in front of Ariana, now he grumbles that he’s “frustrated” and feels led on. Sir, you watched her curl up on Corbin’s lap yesterday. Why are you blindsided? At least, he says philosophically, he never wasted his time cutting pancakes into hearts.

But while Caleb is more of a brooder, Sol is ready to let the whole villa have a piece of her mind. After an affirming pep-up conversation with Jen in the morning, Sol comes to her discussion with Sincere with all the “fuck offs” in her arsenal of folksy phrases. “You pissed on my leg and told me it’s raining!” she says, borrowing one of my dad’s favorite lines. I am team Sol in this interaction, but it’s hard to maintain the appropriate level of righteous rage when she’s saying things like, “You’re blowing smoke up my ass!” As things heat up, she exclaims, “Be fucking honest! That’s all the fuck I ask!” about five times. 

Sincere, who still insists he lived up to his name this entire time, is taken aback. “She kept dropping F-bombs,” he complains to Melanie later, as though this were a family show. But even Melanie thinks Sol has a point here, perhaps because she has personally delivered many similar speeches to Sincere in the short few weeks she’s known him, and will probably deliver more in the next few. Be that as it may, Sol and her frequent complaints about being “shit on” by everyone are harshing Sincere’s mellow as he and Mela make out in the kitchen in front of her. This perhaps provides a little insight into why she gets dumped. 

To her credit, Sol does attempt to entertain Caleb. “He’s an apple pie and I don’t normally like apple pies,” she says in the beach hut. “But maybe I haven’t had, like, a honey crisp apple pie?” The extended, nonsensical metaphor is so similar to some of Sincere’s best work that it almost makes me regret they didn’t work out. I mean, can you imagine the wedding vows? 

Dumping Sol and Gabe

The real excitement, of course, arrives with Ariana and her fresh bob (10/10, no notes). America has been voting. So, with collective wails, the Islanders take their places by the firepit as together we all learn if the public has been making some truly wild voting choices, such as ranking Caleb and Sol higher than the OGs. They have not. 

The public voted on their favorite couples, and the three couples with the fewest votes are on the dumping block. As predicted, the safe Islanders (Trinity and Bryce, Aniya and KC, Kayda and Zach, and Melanie and Sincere) must vote off the vulnerable Islanders: Kenzie and Corbin, Jen and Gabe, and Caleb and Sol. Following a familiar format, the Islanders are separated by gender. The boys must dump one girl, and the girls dump the boy. Now, at the start, I was pretty sure we were going to lose Jen and Caleb — especially when, during deliberations, KC said that if the group kept Sol, then he would commit to exploring (ugh) her. 

Apparently, I was wrong, and whether out of a desire to protect KC and Sincere from themselves or simply because of her weird attitude, the boys vote to dump Sol. Sincere is the one who delivers the dumping, and his only explanation is that they made their decision based on “what has happened.” Melanie, on the other hand, is long-winded in her speech before dumping Gabe. Paraphrased: the girls don’t like how eager Gabe is to make out with every new girl who comes to the villa, and believe he’ll never be satisfied. That, or they’re just tired of hearing him have sex every night. Either way, justice for Bea. 

The episode ends abruptly, just in time for us to note that the boys are not happy with the girls’ decision. I doubt the rift is enough to cause any real damage between our increasingly solid couples, but the cracks in Zach and Kayda’s bond may be beginning to show.