Unfortunately, Harry Jowsey Is The Perfect Reality TV Star
In 2020, when the world was stuck inside, Netflix dropped the first season of the truly bonkers series, Too Hot to Handle; a reality show in which a group of single hotties from across the world were essentially tricked into participating in a celibacy experiment.
Amongst the predominantly American and European cast was Harry Jowsey, a then 22-year-old Queenslander who proved that if you were a tall, decent-looking larrikin, beautiful women would unreasonably flock to you.
Harry – who was a sloppy menace throughout the show – ended up engaged (?) to fellow contestant, Francesca Farago. Spoiler alert, it did not last.
Fast forward to 2024, and Harry is back on our screens starring in the second season of Netflix’s Perfect Match. There are no celibacy tricks, but similarly to THTH, a bunch of horny singles from the Netflix Reality Universe© are forced to couple up, undergo pointless compatibility challenges and ultimately fuck up each other’s connections in order to be voted the most compatible couple and win a cash prize. Got that?
In the four years between the two shows, Harry has amassed an impressive online following boasting over four million fans on Instagram alone. Between his YouTube channel, TikTok account, podcasts and competition tv appearances (The Amazing Race Australia, The Floor is Lava and Dancing With The Stars), the kid from Yeppoon, QLD has done pretty damn well for himself.
However, he’s done so by carving out a niche for himself as a certifiably-toxic fuck boi who uses his Aussie “charm” to absolutely disrespect women and gaslight his audience into thinking he wants to become a better man.
Unfortunately, this kind of behaviour makes for extremely compelling reality TV, and Netflix is well aware of the fact that casting him in any show is going to be good for engagement (and bad for feminism). Like a car crash, I simply cannot look away from this man, and everything he does and says makes me cringe, roll my eyes or drop my jaw in disbelief. It’s terrible and it’s great all at once.
Let’s start with Harry’s entrance on episode 1. He is the last contestant to arrive at the Mexican villa, a wonderful choice by production to build suspense. I should add, a lot of the other men on this show are hugely vile, but Harry is seemingly king pinhead.
Harry Jowsey’s portrait for Perfect Match. Image credit: Netflix
In his first interview, Harry sits and laughs. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits, and ain’t that the truth. “I didn’t watch the first season of Perfect Match because I had three ex-girlfriends on it.” Harry is of course referring to Francesca, and fellow Netflix reality-tv stars Chloe Veitch and Georgia Hassarati.
“All I know is that the perfect match wins, and on the last season, the perfect match didn’t win because she cheated on that guy with me,” he smirks. For those who didn’t watch the first season, Georgia and her match Dom (who you cannot convince me isn’t an incel) won, however as she explained on The Viall Files after the show, there was no actual overlap between her experience with Dom and her relationship with Harry. But hey, that’s just Harry painting his ex to be a cheater!
“What up, you little cream pies?” he announces walking into the villa. EW. The cast look visibly on edge as he enters, his reputation proceeding him. “Harry Jowsey walks through the door. I’m like, ‘Yo, they got me in the Harry season?’ I already know I’m about to be in for a ride I didn’t know I signed up for,” says contestant Tolu in her interview. “I have met Harry a couple of times, and he’s always been nice to me. But I’ve also met his ex-girlfriends. Harry has a reputation for not being great with women,” another contestant Dominique shares during her interview.
Unfortunately, he catches the eye of THTH season 5 winner, Elys, who seems like an intelligent young woman with terrible taste in men, and the two couple up. She is wary of his past, but she is attracted to his bullshit. The pair win the first compatibility challenge, which is of course stupid, and they seem like a solid couple.
That is until Harry is set up on a blind date in episode 3. When he and fellow bad boy Stevan (from THTH season 3) are selected to go on dates, he kisses his “love” Elys goodbye, joking that he’ll wear an ugly outfit. “I’ve been in therapy, I’ve been working on myself, I really am here because I wanna find that magical person,” Harry tells us in his interview. Hmmm, maybe he isn’t that bad after all.
“Stevan and I’ve slept with pretty much every person on a Netflix reality show, so I’m a little bit nervous that I’m going on a date with someone I’ve already spunked in,” he continues. Yep, no growth in sight. When Harry is matched with Jessica from Love is Blind season 6, he is instantly smitten. “I’m absolutely creaming in my pants,” he shares in his interview. “I thought it was gonna be a situation where I’d be with someone I hated or someone that I’ve like, dated before. Hated and Dated, that’d be a good show.” WHY DO I WANT TO WATCH THAT HYPOTHETICAL SHOW SO BADLY? Dammit, Harry.
Harry Jowsey and Jessica Vastal on Perfect Match. Image Credit: Netflix
He tells Jessica that he’s dating to marry, and when she reveals to him that she’s a single mother, he beams as he loves kids (probably because he can relate to them mentally). When Jessica asks him about his current match, Harry absolutely downplays his connection with Elys and says it’s more of a friendship. Okay. As the date ends, he tells Jessica she’s going to make a lot of the women at the house feel insecure (cool) and gushes to producers, “Like, she’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my life. Her name is Jessica, right?”
Harry and Jessica walk into the villa and he all but ignores Elys. Girlfriend is pissed. When she finally confronts him (calmly) later in the night, he tells her that he explained to her from day one that he’s here for his perfect person, uses the “dating to marry” line again and how he feels he’s been respectful of her boundaries by not trying to sleep with her. When Elys says she’s thankful they didn’t sleep together, he tells her she doesn’t have to be sassy, and claims he hasn’t made a decision yet but she’s making the decision for him if this is how she deals with conflict.
“I’m not saying it’s done, I’m just saying I would be doing you and myself a disservice by not trying to talk to someone new,” he tells her. She looks truly baffled by the interaction. “Can I give you a hug?” he asks. “No, I still don’t understand what is happening,” she replies. NEITHER. The whole thing is a mess and basically he chooses Jessica and Elys couples up with some loser named Chris and Harry looks extremely disappointed to wake up and find out that Elys hasn’t been eliminated.
The next few episodes are pretty gross. Harry becomes obsessed with Jessica, and unfortunately, she seems to be receptive to it. While she does have firm boundaries and repeatedly tells Harry she is not the one to make a fool of, she takes on somewhat of an “innocent until proven guilty” stance with him. It’s also giving mummy issues tbh. One night, one of the boys flippantly comments on Harry not being genuine, and he sobs in his room until Jessica comforts him. He’s sick of everyone using his past against him, apparently, even though he was very disingenuous to a woman about four days prior.
When THTH season 3’s Holly enters the villa, he shares in his interview that not only did he and Holly “smash”, but that “Stevan cream-pied her”, and when THTH season 2’s Melinda joins the group, he asks her, “When did they come in?” referring to her boob job.
Things get dark though in episode 8, when the couples are separated into guys’ and girls’ days. Both parties are crashed by eliminated contestants of the opposite sex, and what could possibly go wrong? On the boys’ day, the booze is flowing and the women are doing their best to tempt the men and break up any happy couples. Harry does a body shot off of Melinda, and is carrying her around supposedly because she doesn’t have proper shoes on. Suddenly, Melinda claims that Harry kissed her off-screen, and suddenly it becomes a he-says/she-says as to whether or not anything actually happened.
A gathering of fuck bois on Perfect Match. Image credit: Netflix
Harry absolutely denies it, even to Melinda’s face, but tells the boys he’s “in trouble”. He manages to then spin the whole story, and in the next two episodes, we see an absolute masterclass in gaslighting. Back home, Harry emotionally tells Jessica he didn’t represent her well at boys’ day, and she reads him like a book and asks whether he’s only telling her part of the story. The next day, when Melinda tries to tell Jessica what happened, Harry tells everyone who will listen that Melinda is chasing clout and will do anything for her fifteen minutes of fame.
Sulking like an absolute baby, Harry tells Stevan, “Poor Jess feels disappointed. There’ll always be a target on my back. Every relationship I go through, there’s someone trying to sabotage it.” Stevan tells his fellow man-child (his words), “In a situation like this, it is time to grow up. Considering the woman that she is, it is time to face whatever consequences, whether you’ve done something or not. Eat those moments so that that woman that you want to be with feels better.” I can’t decide if these are wise words or completely manipulative, because this show is so full of cursed men that it is mind-bending.
The show ends on the cliffhanger of Jessica and Harry talking, and we’re unsure if they’re going to match. The show’s final episode airs on Friday, but Harry’s absolute reign of terror will live rent free in my mind, unfortunately. While I truly resent the fact that this kid has somehow made a career out of creating chaos and being an absolute dick, I’ll be the first to admit, Harry Jowsey is reality TV.
Written by Lil Friedmann, a staunch defender of reality television and an unofficial fuck boi investigator. You can follow her at @lilfriedmann on socials.
Image credit: Netflix