The warmest inferno
Or, why I'm obsessed with Netflix's "Single's Inferno"
In the middle of a snowy, freezing weekend, it was nice to be transported for 10 hours to a beautiful sunny island off the coast of South Korea. On this island, you sleep in a tent, but on a mattress. You have to cook your meal over an open flame, but the meals are fried rice with kimchi. You don’t have your phone or contact with the outside world, but you spend every day on the beach.
I first learned about Singles Inferno while listening to Who? Weekly, where it was described as a cross between Love Island and Terrace House. I’ve never watched Love Island, not because I wouldn’t love it, but because there are so many episodes that I’m intimidated and don’t know where to start. Terrace House on the other hand, I love and miss dearly, but I know it will likely never come back. (The Japanese show was canceled, maybe permanently, in 2020 after one of its former participants, Hana Kimura, died by suicide after facing online harassment from appearing on the show.)
Singles Inferno is a Korean Netflix show, but it bears similarities to Terrace House in that it follows beautiful, polite young people (though none younger than 24) with nothing to do but hang out and cook together. The show’s intro describes it as the “hottest inferno in the world” and the show’s title, Single’s Inferno, makes it seem like it will align with the openly horny antics of Love Island or Too Hot To Handle. But despite its title, Single’s Inferno is an extremely chaste show. While the contestants talk at first about what hair/body/face they look for in a partner, it quickly becomes much more about their personalities and feelings than it is about their physical desire.
The premise of the show is that nine beautiful singles are sent to a remote island for nine days in the hopes of finding a match (four men and five women, though that changes later). There is no monetary prize on the show; the only end-goal of the show is to maybe start dating someone (and, like all reality shows, gain Instagram followers and sponsorships). The only rule is that while on the island, the contestants are not allowed to share their ages or professions. The one exception is when they go to Paradise, which is a fancy hotel where the contestants sometimes get to spend the night with a date, if they’re lucky.
Every day or so, the participants get to pick who they want to go to Paradise with, but there are limitations. Sometimes both the men and women pick a partner, but only get to go to Paradise if their choices match up. Sometimes they do races or mud wrestling to determine who goes to Paradise. Regardless of whether or not they get matched with a partner they want, everyone wants to go to Paradise because it’s an extremely luxurious resort where they can swim in a private pool and order steak and not sleep on a humid island. On the island, they have to fetch and carry their own water supply. A whole activity on the island is just walking to get ice water.
Like Terrace House, this show has a panel of commentators who react to what the participants are doing, which I love. I assume they’re all Korean celebrities of some kind, but they never say their names so I have no idea. The funniest thing the panelists say is in the first episode, when the intro to Single’s Inferno airs and they say it “looks like a Michigan dating show.”
While the singles don’t know each other’s jobs and ages, the viewers learn it when they go to Paradise. On the women’s side there’s Ji-a, a beauty vlogger who wears high heels and a designer purse while walking on the beach (she’s also embroiled in a shockingly heated controversy over wearing knock-off designer clothing). So-yeon, my favorite, is the oldest participant at 34 and owns a boxing gym. Ji-yeon, who the men love because she looks “so pure” (I don’t have the skills to unpack that) studies neuroscience at the University of Toronto. Everyone else is a model.
For the men, there’s Se-hoon, a professional chef who makes his profession obvious by taking charge of cooking meals. Jin-taek, a very hot tailor, rolls up in the first episode wearing an all-white suit like a Miami Vice character. He is also the only contestant with a beard – really just stubble – which shocks both the singles and the commentary panel (more on that later). Hyun-seung is a fuckboy with tribal tattoos and a large cross necklace, which reminds me of an American reality star.
My favorite couple is So-yeon and Jin-taek, who are both tall, beautiful, and tan (refreshing given how often contestants talk about loving pale skin, and seem more mature than the rest. Jin-Taek is instantly smitten, telling So-yeon he doesn’t want to go to Paradise with anyone else (he eventually does, but it’s not his fault). It takes a little bit for So-yeon to come around, but eventually she does. It feels like watching a sweet rom-com movie where the hunk dates the jock girl (who is also a hunk). Usually the couples in Paradise sleep in separate beds, but one night So-yeon asks Jin-taek to share her bed, and the panelists scream (me too). Another time, Jin-taek asks So-yeon to give him a kiss on the cheek, which she obliges, but only after joking that she can’t find his cheek because of his beard (it’s literally a 5 o’clock shadow).
What I love about this show is the gentle way these participants flirt with each other. I think this is partly because Korean culture is more conservative than America in that strangers don’t make out or get shitfaced on TV. I love the craven debauchery of American reality shows as much as the next person, but Singles Inferno is a different kind of satisfaction. It’s like the exciting thrill of watching two characters in a romcom get together. Nothing could ever beat the rapture of Tsubasa and Shion getting together on Terrace House, but it’s a similar excitement. The show is genius at making those nine days feel long and full, the way it does when you’re at a beach house with friends, for example, and by the time you leave the stranger’s house has started to feel like your own.