Ben Watches Television : The I-Land (2019)
Plot:
Ten people wake up on a deserted tropical island with no memory of who they previously were. Each have a different, seemingly unrelated object buried next to them. Before they even figure out what the fuck they’re going there, our friendly castaways violently turn on each other.
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There’s a good chance you haven’t seen The I-Land. There’s an even greater chance that you’ve never heard of it. It’s because the series was quietly dumped on Netflix without any fanfare in September, hoping no one would notice. But, you can’t drop the worst television show on Earth to a streaming service and think you’ll get away with it. Oh, no sir. Not on ol’ Benny’s watch. To be fair, I stumbled upon The I-Land by accident while hastefully downloading Netflix content to watch at my in-laws’ cabin, but I’m so fucking glad I did and you should too. It’s only 7 episodes long.
I don’t want to call say it’s like The Room because there’s no proof the people who made The I-Land are mentally ill, but it sure as shit is in the same ball park.
Ten morons on an island
Anybody can come up with the ten-people-wake-up-on-a-desert-island-with-no-memory-of-their-past premise. It’s the most basic idea anyone who’s never written anything can have. Ask your mom what you should write about and she’ll probably come up with a variant of that idea. It’s easy to drum up a mystery. What is difficult is unraveling it: deconstructing the questions it asks and especially casting characters who are up for this task. The characters of The I-Land is baffingly terrible at this. Here are their highlights with as little spoiler as possible:
Chase (Natalie Martinez): Bravely scrambling away from a rape attempt… without ever using the knife she stole from another castaway in the first fucking scene. Not even to threaten her attacker. She prefers running back to a group of shady people who don’t know her and accuse him of rape. Didn’t work well.
K.C (Kate Bosworth): Telling Hayden that she hates women, but that she has no idea why. She doesn’t lift a finger to help someone until the sixth episode.
Cooper (Ronald Peet): Perhaps the most useful character on the show. Offers Chase to explore the island with her and instinctively distrusts Brody.
Blair (Sibylla Deen): Spends the great majority of the show nursing a guy who got eaten by a shark on episode one. That guy has no incidence whatsoever on the storyline.
Donovan (Anthony Lee Medina): Aforementioned guy who got eaten by a shark. Would’ve logically disappeared on episode 1. No fucking clue why they kept him around. Spends most of his time propped on a tree, sleeping it off.
Mason (Gilles Geary): Telling his fellow castaways to disregard this sign because it was obviously not meant for them and completely unrelated to their predicament although it’s the only fucking thing on the beach:
He also finds the number 39. Because any Lost ripoff has to have numbers, right? 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42…
Moses (Kyle Schmid): Barely get any airtime until it’s time to reveal why he’s on the island.
Taylor (Kota Eberhardt): She makes nice hats and gets her fingers eaten by a cannibal. OK, that was a spoiler. But it doesn’t matter because she doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Also, the cannibal cut her fingers off while she was sleeping. Isn’t that shit supposed to hurt?
Hayden (Michelle Veintimilla): Stabbing someone with an imaginary knife.
Brody (Alex Pettyfer): My favorite. That dude disarmed two people only to throw their weapon on the ground and walk away like a hormonal teen. He’s the lamest power hungry predator I’ve ever seen.
There’s a huge twist on episode 3. One that pretty much invalidates everything about the show’s premise and every character, except for Chase. It’s a cheap cop out, but it somehow makes The I-Land more zany and unpredictable than prior. That’s because none of these characters are actually interesting. They’re not willing to cooperate with one another and remain in a brooding stalemate on the beach. They don’t remember who they are, but it’s clear that they’re assholes. The show offers us a justification for that, but it doesn’t make them interesting assholes nonetheless.
Three morons in a writing room
I have a difficult time believing that only three people contributed to the creative vision of The I-Land. When a show has so many contradictions and non sequitur, you can be sure power hungry suits are involved. Here’s a list of stuff that doesn’t make sense in The I-Land:
- Mason discovers that there are exactly 39 steps between the spots where the castaways woke up on the island. Although there’s a reason for it, that information is completely useless to the characters. The reason behind the use of 39 is revealed in the last fucking episode.
- I’m not going to reveal the reason why, but the island mystery is not an island mystery. Someone keeps changing the rules of the game and there’s zero chance the characters will ever solve it. It is solved FOR Chase on episode 3, but she never tells anyone because it’s too stupid.
- Chase has a knife, a hatchet and a gun and never uses them.
- Donovan gets bitten by a shark, but survives, washes up ashore and does absolutely nothing for the rest of the show.
- Hayden murders someone, but it’s not explained how and with what.
- Two new characters are introduced on episode and it’s never clear how they ended up there and what it is exactly they want.
- Chase wakes up with a conch shell in her hands and inexplicably carries that big fucking thing with her because at some point she needs to alert the others that Donovan has washed ashore and at another point she needs to break it to find a key. It’s a big, fucking cumbersome shell. It’s an even bigger and more cumbersome MacGuffin.
I’m going to stop here because the rest involve spoiling the plot twist in episode three. Although it’s the worst television show I’ve ever seen in my life, I would strongly suggest that you watch The I-Land. There’s a perverse pleasure to watch this show write itself in a corner and trying to fight its way out with lame idea over lame idea. If you’re writer, it’s a great example of what not to do. If you’re not a writer, it’ll help you better appreciate fine writing in the future. It’s daytime soap meets Tommy Wiseau bad
The only mystery of The I-Land is how were they given 14 million dollars by Netflix to produce it. They are more capable writers and directors that will never even get within sniffing distance of this kind of money. Don’t tell me you only need talent and drive to make it in Hollywood. Shows like The I-Land are the proof that kissing the right asses will get you far. I mean, it’s not even insultingly bad. It’s even worse than that. It’s baffling that it even exists. That’s why I think it needs the Wiseau treatment.
1.1/10
