Many of us believe that Joey Essex has been one of the most jarring things to happen to this series of Love Island.
ITV2’s formerly popular dating show has been on a steady decline in recent years and, aside from a few good scandalous moments, this series has ultimately been bland especially compared to the golden era of the programme.
Bosses likely hoped casting a celebrity with the regular islanders would save their seriously flailing series and The Only Way Is Essex star Joey, 33, stepped up to the role, entering the villa as a bombshell on day one.
Unfortunately, with him facing a storm of backlash, it’s turned out to be more like a nightmare than a dream holiday for Joey.
From a producer standpoint, he’s obviously been ‘good’ TV in the sense that he’s stirred up the utmost drama, setting the cat among the pigeons on a regular basis. However, for many of us viewers, it just hasn’t been enjoyable to watch.
The reality TV icon has come across as arrogant and antagonistic to the point of people threatening to report him to Ofcom.
After his behaviour in the most recent episodes this week, it’s not hard to see why they feel this way.
Joey, who is currently coupled up with Leicester bombshell Jessy Potts, has been butting heads with Josh Oyinsan over the South Londoner’s messy and complicated love square involving Ayo Odukoya, Mimii Ngulube and Jess Spencer (not to be confused with Jessy).
It all kicked off after Grafties night when the villa was shown awkward footage of Mimii asking Joey to help her on a ‘secret mission’, which was to bring her former flame Ayo up to the terrace so they could have a private conversation.
In one of the most uncomfortable moments in Love Island history, Mimii was seen crawling on her knees to the discreet area only for Ayo to refuse to meet with her. Joey then had to relay the rejection to Mimii but she and Ayo later caught up on the day beds where they agreed to not reignite their spark and instead focus on their new connections with Josh and Jess.
Since then, things have been amicable in the love square with Josh even moving past Mimii’s terrace mission.
But for some reason, Joey and his equally irritating sidekick Sean Stone have been persistent in dredging up old dramas and pouring more and more salt into the wound for Josh, who so far has admirably refused to bite or react out of anger. From making sly digs in challenges and trying to goad Josh into arguments on several occasions, the tension has been bubbling for some time and finally boiled over this week.
Joey and Sean have made repeated digs in challenges but then bizarrely questioned why Josh took offence to their remarks; how Sean thought calling him a ‘dummy’ for staying with Mimii would end well is truly beyond me.
It later blew up during a game where the couples found out how the public rated them; the island’s dull double act continued to call out Josh while simultaneously trying to play victim, which viewers have called out as gaslighting at its finest.
Sean and Joey – who probably think of themselves like the loveable Chris and Kem from series three but in reality are a much less fun version – have been aggravating Josh and even Mimii the whole way and it’s become increasingly infuriating. Love Island should be light-hearted, easy viewing to keep our summer nights warm but it’s now turned into a game of spot-the-microaggression.
After all, many of us have questioned why Joey and Sean seem to have had the most vim for certain contestants when others have actually called them out harder, i.e. Ciaran. This isn’t a new issue either, it’s been going on for weeks.
We’ve seen the hyper-sexualisation of Mimii with Joey claiming she looked ‘seductive’ by simply sitting on the floor waiting for Ayo, and the repeated goading of Josh in a confrontational manner. Even dumped islander Omar Nyame fell into the firing line with Joey telling him he was ‘no competition’ during a heated row about their love interest Grace Jackson, before Sean sneakily got Omar eliminated to clear the path for his romance with Matilda Draper.
Sean’s sly move even shocked our Welsh hero Ciaran Davies, who seems to have sussed out the vibes with Sean and Joey on more than one occasion.
The most unacceptable moment for me happened during Wednesday night’s episode, when Sean and Josh were having a private conversation by the firepit to clear the air but suddenly found themselves joined by Joey who had nothing to do with this particular discussion. Standing over them, the TV veteran centred himself in yet another storyline before being joined by Ayo, who I presume could see the imbalanced situation with the troublesome two rallying against Josh on his own.
Joey may have received training before he entered the Love Island villa – with ITV ensuring contestants ‘complete video training and guidance across a range of topics to include mutually respectful behaviour in relationships, behaviour patterns associated with controlling and coercive behaviour and language around disability, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and microaggressions before they meet their fellow Islanders’ – but it feels like he’s made a misstep every step of the way so far.
And it doesn’t just extend to butting in with the love square between Josh, Mimii and co.
He’s also been extremely unpleasant to his former lover Grace, who he dumped for Jessy before Casa Amor. In one episode, he told Grace to ‘shut your mouth’ and has made every attempt to argue and talk down to her when she has clearly moved on from their situation. As far as we’ve seen, Grace – who was dumped from the villa on Wednesday – had no interest in engaging with Joey yet he continued to provoke her.
The worst part is that he didn’t seem to understand why he was often in the wrong, showing his lack of self-awareness.
Perhaps though, he’s finally getting the message as he did offer what seemed to be a sincere apology to Josh in Thursday night’s episode, without throwing in underhanded comments. This brief moment of reconciliation surprisingly seemed genuine but, for many exhausted viewers, it could be too late.
Before Love Island, Joey was known as the harmless, goofy and endearing Towie star who often needed to be educated about life’s basics, hence his show Educating Joey Essex. He’s appeared on almost every British reality show you can think of but he always managed to win hearts over. Since we first met him in 2006, there wasn’t much you could say about Joey that was truly negative.
It shows what can happen to an already-famous celebrity in an environment like Love Island, being left to their own devices for weeks on end without their team on hand for input or to do damage control. Even with all the speculation of Joey being a producer plant, there’s only so long an islander like him could pretend to be someone else.
This series of Love Island is coming to an end next week and thank goodness. It’s time it got a break from our screens but also probably time Joey took a break from reality TV.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Joey Essex’s reps for comment.
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