‘I Kissed a Girl’ Season 2 Ups the Lesbian Drama, Downs the U-Haul Stereotypes

It’s been two long years, but we’re finally back at The Masseria™ with the release of I Kissed a Girl season 2!

I wouldn’t dare to presume, but I hope we are collectively very excited at this all-too-rare opportunity to indulge in some sapphic-centred frippery. Certainly I am. In fact I was up at 6 a.m. to watch the first batch of episodes, coming into this season with the lived experience of how long it takes to get decent screenshots of queer women tonguing under a fuckton of lens flare (plus who can sleep in this heatwave?!).

There’s always a level of comfort and anticipation when a reality show returns after its first outing; the production beats we’ve learned, the bingo card of clichés waiting to be stamped. How many couples will immediately glom on to each other? How much artificial kiss-off drama will the producers provoke? Will anyone give a shit about the random people introduced every couple of episodes?!

For me, what set the first season apart from other reality fare was a certain level of wholesomeness. This go-around we’ll definitely be seeing more drama from the get go, though I think that’s more down to the casting than any format tweaks.

This second season sadly comes with giant dollops of outrage and mourning, after news earlier this year that it would be the last of the brand that includes sibling show I Kissed a Boy.

So while our excitement may be a little bit tempered, we must remind ourselves that we’re here for a good time, not a long time. So strap in (and fire that VPN up if needed…) and let’s meet our new sapphic couples!

Faye & Elise

Faye is 24 and from Warrington. She’s a chaotic femme looking for a funny masc to be obsessed with her for once. Immediately I love her—give us that small-town rep, BBC!

Elise is also 24 and from Essex. She’s a self-described charmer looking for infatuation, with a swoopy mullet firmly on the George end of the Lady-Di-to-George-Michael spectrum.

They are both very tongue-forward during their intro kiss, going in for seconds. It’s the jorts that did it for Faye, apparently. The attraction appears mutual! Based on the initial matching success of Season 1, I begin the show with the confidence of a trainee soft butch lothario who does not yet know how hard she will crash and burn.

Lindsey & Renee

Lindsey is a 25-year-old Londoner, originally from Paris, who works as a baker and waitress. That’s straight out of a lesbian romance novel, right? She proudly identifies as a dom femme that lives for drama and seeks good teeth in a partner. She read her tarot before she came but I sense she’d have been better off bringing a magic 8 ball.

Renee, also 25, is a North-West London baddie with a gold grill. She dates a lot! She moves on a lot! She feels misunderstood but knows she’s ready for a wife.

They look nervous going in for the kiss, where Lindsay towers over Renee while holding onto her face for dear life. Unclear if this is part of a tactic to check out Renee’s teeth, as if she were a prize horse. The reason for the awkwardness is because they kind of know each other! But it’s from social media, so does that even count? Anyway, the situation prompts the immortal line from Lindsey: “the ho-etry comes back to bite!!”

Ebony & Tyra

Ebony, 22, is a parcel delivery driver from Newcastle. I fear her mullet and dimples will be a one-two punch to the heart of many unsuspecting sapphics, and she admits her smile gets her out of a lot of trouble. Despite this, she claims that she’s a hopeless romantic with a soppy side and, like every good player, claims to want nothing more than a wife.

Tyra is 24 and from a tiny town in Northeast Scotland, where no other queers exist! This is a shame, because she is a lover of cheeky banter as well as common dyke signifiers such as piercings and tattoos. She seems exceptionally sweet!

After their kiss, they claim the nerves got the better of them, so I think we can infer it was a damp squib, but they say appropriate things like wanting to leave room for a connection to grow without specifying if that connection will be with each other.

Elisha & Nikita

Welsh rep on the show! 22-year-old Elisha is gagging to embrace her raging lesbian identity—and another hot femme—after something of a journey with her sexuality and constant battles with people reading her as straight. She’s just finished a forensics degree and loves nerdy stuff!

Nikita from Leeds is a free spirit of the crystal-loving, positive vibes variety. She loves nerds and niche facts and simply wants to get some good chemistry going with someone.

Unfortunately, their first kiss seems to put them straight into friendzone territory, but maybe that’s not a bad thing with many gruelling days of masseria life ahead of them?

Ashlea & Imogen

Ashlea (ancient at 26) is a pocket butch from Bedford that self-IDs as a full-time menace. She’s a staunch boob fan, whose ideal type is a petite blonde raver. While she’s masc on the outside, she’s all diva femme on the inside.

Imogen is a 21-year-old Mancunian who does not hate it when people call her Barbie. She loves girls but has a horrible habit of picking the wrong ones, so she’s definitely in the right place!

After their kiss, Ashlea is mostly stunned by Imogen’s “massive personality” so we’ll have to see where this one ends up.

I Kissed a Girl Season 2: Episodes 1 & 2 Recap

No sooner have our couples got to know each others’ tonsils than they are sent their separate ways! Not content with fitting the entire relationship lifecycle into two weeks, are they really trying to cram it into two minutes?! As an efficiency dyke, I’m here for it.

Turns out this is just a brief gimmick to afford them the privacy to rate their snogs and afford us a window into their overthinking. When they regroup, host Dannii Minogue makes her first appearance complete with copious slow-mo and ranks them in order of chemistry. Faye and Elise top the table, with Elisha and Nikita well down at the bottom.

My brief hope that Faye and Elise could be decent contenders for U-Hauling are dashed when Elise clocks Elisha and is floored by the fair maiden from the Welsh Valleys. Elise goes into Golden Retriever mode…but like one that is a puppy in heat for the first time.

It’s very clear early on that the matchmaking has flopped bigtime! Before the cast can dwell too much on their lacklustre chemistry, they are dressing up in neon for their first party and their first opportunity to play this very open field.

Elise opens up to her initial match Faye about having the hots for Elisha, however, this somehow ends with Faye reluctantly agreeing for Elise to pursue her crush, but also them snogging? Faye, like us, is baffled as she recounts this in the video room.

For her part, Elisha is hesitant to get involved with a “messy masc” but it seems that identifying sketchy sapphic behaviour was not fully covered in her forensics course, because it doesn’t take her too long to give in to her interest in Elise. Of course, Elisha is the one to clear the air with Faye about this, because femmes get shit done.

The second major thread is Imogen ditching poor Ashlea without a second thought and making a beeline for Ebony and her dimples. This is another pair that knew each other outside the masseria via a friend, and Imogen questions whether she’s just latching onto Ebony for the familiarity. Either way, she is very much locking her down hard from the get go. I actually find Imogen’s directness refreshing; while others dance around their feelings for fear of losing options, Imogen makes it very clear who and what she wants.  Too bad Imogen’s directness also applies with trying to control what Ebony does!

In the first season, I was never that excited when newbies turned up, but this time I am desperate for it. After an entirely pointless U-Haul-themed game, the names of three newcomers are revealed. What brave queers will step into this carnage to rescue a sliver of romance?

First up, we have Blessing, a footballer (finally!) from Ireland. She’s a cool, calm and collected stud with a giddy side.

Next is Kayleigh, a high energy confident party girl looking for someone to give her a run for her money.

Finally, it’s Almayra, a poetry-loving Aquarius from Eastbourne. Upon clocking her, Faye growls “you can write me a fucking poem if you want” which honestly I found pure poetry in itself.

Lindsay is instantly drawn to Blessing, and they bond over witchy ancestry. They seem immediately at ease with each other. Could we finally have a decent match? Certainly they are open to exploring this possibility with their tongues in the bedroom.

Poor Renee realises that, despite having a heart-to-heart with Lindsay the previous evening about trying to build their connection, Lindsay was only really saying that for lack of better options, and finds herself summarily ditched.

Just as tensions are growing between our various imploding couples, it’s time for dinner so they can at least implode on a full stomach. Having gone from one extreme of terrible lack of communication, the wine-fuelled feast hurtles them to the other end of the spectrum into an all-out slanging match. While I am heartened this youthful cast is yet to learn the fine art of conflict avoidance, I feel like slagging people off around the dinner table is a widely available reality trope and would love to see how this could be better gayed up. We will deal with the aftermath in Episode 3!

I will be working through my denial of love being a lie after all these catastrophic pairings, but as individuals, I want to root for pretty much everyone here. As one of the cast says, it’s great to be surrounded by women who love women, and showcasing those moments where the group are just enjoying a gay old time is where the show’s strengths lie for me. Here’s hoping we get more of that as the rest of the episodes roll out.

I Kissed a Girl Season 2: Episodes 3 & 4 Recap

It’s the morning after the dinner party, and the grouchy mood is still hanging over the bedroom. After Lindsay storms out, there’s a nice moment where Renee pours out her feelings and posits that masculine women don’t always get the grace and compassion they need, which chimes with the other mascs. Are we all learning and growing together as a family? I hope so!

Once they roll out of bed, the priority for most people is to work out how much they want to get entangled with the newcomers. I am really glad these three have been added so early and not all as obvious bait to disrupt existing couples.

I remember in season 1 there were so many people that had big hangups about their “type,” which remains a recurring theme here. Newbie Kayleigh is pan and, astonishingly, forms her attraction based on what people are actually like! That perhaps makes her a little harder to read than some of the others but she’s definitely caught the eye of Tyra, who feels like there’s finally someone around that she wants to pay attention to.

Also in the market for a new match is Ashleigh, whose unbeatable romance tactic is to make Kayleigh cups of tea. Honestly, this is the realest thing in the whole show, and I can vouch that it’s worked on me for the past 12 years. Simple things!

Further complicating things is Ebony, who definitely thinks Kayleigh’s her type, but is navigating how to explore that without setting off an Imogen-shaped bomb. Credit to Ebony, she really could have been a player here but keeps it in her pants!

The other person courting multiple new suitors is Almayra. She’s got a little more of a sensitive side than most of the cast, whilst also not hating how much interest Nikita and Faye are showing. That’s partly because she’s genuinely gorgeous and partly because they must be realising they have to make a match pretty sharpish. In a nice heart-to-heart with Faye, Almayra opens up that she’s in her “celibate era” and has been for a “little while.” I am resisting calculation what an “era” or “little while” may constitute for a 22-year-old, but I am happy to see someone talking about what their needs are. Faye, ever the people pleaser, says she could be totally onboard with not needing sex, but you can’t help but wonder if it’s another case of her suppressing what she really wants!

Nikita on the other hand, has been systematically flirting with the whole cast, and has whittled her options down to Almayra for her #1 match. She’s definitely more forward than Faye, but will that work for or against her?

Despite Ashlea’s tentative tea-driven flirtation with Kayleigh, it doesn’t stop Renee making an audacious proposal to her. They’ve been really good mates since they entered the masseria, is it worth pursuing things to see if that friendship could turn into something more? Ashlea’s face is priceless with her initial reaction, but you get the sense she’s seriously considering it. Could we finally see some decent masc4masc action?!

It’s time for a Chemistry Test! This one is called “I Begin to Wonder” and sees the cast spin a wheel that gives them a sentence to read where they have to fill in the blanks, and appears to be calculated to cast maximum shade. One issue sure to crop up again in the future is Elise being called out for being a giant red flag for her love-bomb approach to romance with Elisha, who you can already tell is a bit apprehensive about Elise’s love declarations after four days.

At the end of it, Dannii makes the “shock” announcement that tonight will be the first Kiss-Off! Thus ensues last-ditch efforts for the unattached to find a soulmate for the night, with one person guaranteed to be left standing alone.

A reminder of the Kiss Off format: established couples stand back-to-back, and if either party wants to stay together, they must turn around. If both turn around then true love survives for one more night! If either isn’t feeling it, they remain as they are, and then must tell Dannii who they would rather be snogging that evening.

It’s a surprise to absolutely no-one when all the original pairings remain resolutely unmoved, or when well-telegraphed couples like Elise and Elisha, Lindsey and Blessing, and Ebony and Imogen confirm their intentions. The show tries to milk the two mildly doubtful pairings for what they can. Firstly, will the enigmatic Kayleigh go for Tyra? Yes she will! I’m glad, because I feel like Tyra is perhaps not enough of an attention glutton to have attracted much coverage so far.

Then we have a genuine choice for Almayra to make between lovely Faye and flirty Nikita. I am genuinely surprised that she goes for Nikita!! I am also gutted because Faye felt like she had the makings of being one of the real characters of the masseria a bit like Amy last season, and we have been robbed of her too soon!

There are many tears as Faye trots off with Dannii and some mild wallowing afterwards. The survivors’ remorse doesn’t last long though! Six newly-formed couples wake up the next morning, and this time they had some agency in the pairings so have they got it right this time? They’ve got an unspecified time before the next Kiss Off, and some of the girls don’t want to hang around and risk being the odd one out next time.

First up, Ebony’s patience is starting to run out and she’s going to check out whether there might be something between her and Kayleigh. Imogen determines that the only way she can really get Ebony interested is if someone new comes to the masseria that can stir up some jealousy.

We’re off to the next mini-game, which is called “The Tree of Desire.” My base assumption is that everyone’s desire is microplastics, because they must take it in turns to pluck a giant glittery apple from the tree. Each apple contains some kind of potentially revelatory dare, like making people snog, revealing fetishes etc. It’s mostly another shade-fest, but the final apple brings another new arrival!

Thusly, Pippa swaggers into the masseria. I had to turn the subtitles on to check whether they really just called themself a slaggy Golden Retriever? I’m going to have to go to external adjudicators here because that feels like an oxymoron to me. Or was Air Bud a player all along? Please do chime in with any tales of promiscuous retrievers you would like to share.

Pippa is non-binary, from just north of London and here to ruffle a few feathers. They get right to it! Multiple femmes start hyperventilating at the sight of a slicked back bun, and Imogen knows she’s got her jealousy bait ready to reel in Ebony even more. Of course, Ebony is verily ruffled and starts getting a bit more handsy with Imogen until they go up together to the terrace of treachery, but after a fiery fight each comes down alone.

Even after all the wife-swapping, I’m still not convinced any of the current couples will make the distance but I feel like four episodes in, I’m adapting to the chaos levels. Love might not be a lie, it might just be telling a few tall tales while it’s going through an identity crisis. We will miss Faye, but there are yet more twists and new arrivals to come!