Yeah, we get it. The moon is always full on Temptation Island.

People get crazy when the moon is full. And when wispy nighttime clouds float by it while jungle drums play? Forget it. People go nuts.

Nuts, we tell you.

Sure, the girlfriends are a little shellshocked from their harrowing fire-lit encounter with host Mark "Remember, you chose to be here" Walberg. You would be, too, if you had to tell him all your feelings.

The man actually pirouettes in the credit sequence. ("Here ... schwing! ... on Temptation Island!") He looks like a refugee from "Up With People."

"I felt horrible," says Mandy, speaking after the bonfire, from beneath the cluster of quivering turnips on her head. "If we hadn't had these guys to come back to, it would have been a complete nightmare."

The camera cuts away before her smile has time to really blossom. Mandy is what they used to call a minx, but what they now call a skank.

Actually, that's not fair. We blame the producers. These characters have no motivation. They're stuck in a weak second act with no clearly defined goals. What do they want? What's in their way? Where's the old "I don't care how many maggots are hatching in the suppurating pores on my legs, I want my million dollars" "Survivor" spirit?

It's certainly not here ... schwing! ... on "Temptation Island."

You will recall our four couples: skanky Mandy with darling bald Billy; Ytossie and the Taheed, who hate each other with a fulminating passion and have dedicated their lives to revenge; dour, unfathomable Valerie and searching, pretty-boy Kaya; cringing, emotionally abused Shannon and malevolent creepizoid Andy.

In this, our third episode, the couples are separated by gender and are still at the mercy of a dozen or so members of the opposite sex, or "fantasy singles," as they are called. We think of them more as "singles for a reason."

We begin with a shot of the four girls screaming as they jump into the pool with their glistening man-friends, who are armed and ready to provide solace in times of need. It's like a scene in a war movie, when the soldiers hit the brothel to relax after a long day of killing foreigners in the name of freedom, mom and a pastry.

"I'm in heaven right now," says Mandy as she is carried hut-ward by a hulking slab of a man. "But tomorrow I'm going to hell!"

(It's true. We've been there. She's in it.)

The next morning, Shannon takes a pensive walk down the pier to retrieve a video missive from her love-dog, Andy. Andy says he has a quick 60-second clip to give her a quick "hi."

And it is quick. He uses the other 49 seconds to tell her he had "a really fun date yesterday with a really fun gal."

On the other side of the island, Andy is watching Shannon's video, in which she asks him "not to focus on one [woman]."

"I think he's capable of really going for it," Shannon says.

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