Finishing up the insanity that is Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle feels like emerging from an eight-episode fever dream. The first order of business post-binge? Searching for answers to your urgent questions about the show. One query you may have had but were too afraid to know the answer to: How did the producers enforce the “no masturbation” rule?
Considering that cameras couldn’t ethically be in bathrooms, viewers might be wondering how the whole self-pleasuring aspect could be monitored. Bryce Hirschberg, a contestant who joined the show midway through the season, told the Hollywood Raw podcast that cameras did lurk in the loo. “There were cameras everywhere, even in the bathroom,” he told the outlet. “But it was just for CCTV, it wasn’t for broadcast, the ones in the toilet.”
Courtesy of Netflix
But a producer told People that production was able to find a more covert way of determining whether someone was…enjoying some time with themselves. When asked if contestants could’ve cheated, Peet said, “They could have. But we had, honestly, the best spying, pervy producers we could possibly find. Just kidding!” She explained further, “So we just got them to listen—if there was anything suspicious going on in the middle of the night, they would have to be listened to by our transcribers, or our producers, who, unfortunately for them, had to start deciphering what different levels of breathing meant. I.e., was it an innocent trip to the bathroom, or something else? Best leave that to people’s imagination! We just had people watching 24/7.”
To recap: this means that there were people on payroll at Too Hot To Handle whose job description involved detecting if heavy breathing meant—work or pleasure(?!). Alas, the pandemic news cycle rages on with one insane news item after another.