The high drama of José Carlos Montoya’s meltdown after watching his girlfriend cheat with another man is breathtaking, if ethically horrific. And it’s just raised the stakes for its entire genre
1253476689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>February 4, 2025this is CINEMA…Montoya..the tension… you don’t need to speak spanish to understand, this is insane https://t.co/2sYZA8jBSM
— 2000s (@PopCulture2000s)this is CINEMA…Montoya..the tension… you don’t need to speak spanish to understand, this is insane https://t.co/2sYZA8jBSM
— 2000s (@PopCulture2000s) February 4, 2025
It’s alarming to see just how quickly your sense of superiority can be undone. Just a few weeks ago, British viewers were quietly congratulating themselves on the high drama of The Traitors, a show where a group of inherently nice people are inconvenienced into polite little arguments. It was, we thought, the pinnacle of reality TV.
But now that has been undone by three short words: Montoya, por favor.
If you have been anywhere on the internet recently, you will have almost certainly seen a genuinely jaw-dropping clip from the Spanish reality show La Isla de las Tentaciones in which a contestant, confronted with live footage of his girlfriend having sex with another man, absolutely loses it.
The clip lasts for just over two minutes, but contains more drama than the entire run of Love Island. Shot in the Dominican Republic, contestant José Carlos Montoya stands on a beach and watches as his girlfriend Anita kisses a hunky newcomer on TV. First, he blinks in disbelief. Then, as the newcomer strips to his underwear, Montoya starts to scream at the TV. They cut the lights and Montoya tugs at his swimming trunks in anguish. Night vision footage shows them pulling the covers over their heads, and Montoya falls to his knees screaming. And then Montoya has enough. As lightning streaks across the sky, he sprints the entire length of a beach, screaming and crying, while the show’s presenter begs for him to return. The music swells. We see Anita fully having sex with the other man. And, just as Montoya reaches the villa to confront them, the clip ends. There is drama, there is high drama, and then there is Montoya por favor.
