At the center of UnREAL, Lifetime's debut entrant in the game of prestige original programming, is Everlasting. A fictionalized version of The Bachelor, it's an exploitative reality series in which a dozen or so women ruthlessly compete for the marriage proposal of a wealthy public figure. Behind the scenes, a (predominantly female) group of producers manipulates these "contestants" into making good TV and, often as a consequence, sacrificing their dignity in the process. It's a social experiment salaciously framed by invisible hands.
On our television sets, The Bachelor and programs like it have withstood ridicule, parody, disgust and the potential for staleness, remaining both culturally relevant and broadly popular for over a decade. There's an artificiality to them that, at this point, is irrefutable; but there's also a rawness to watching a wide range of women succumb to the various, intense pressures of such heavily-controlled environments. The production may be fake, but there remain real people intrinsic to its success.
In engaging with such an openly condemned aspect of American media, UnREAL fits into a subgenre riddled with recent misfires. In The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's whiny idealism didn't make for an effective critique of the 24-hour news cycle; the nonexistent satire target of FX's recent dud The Comedians gave way to a painfully mild depiction of cable sketch comedy. As evidenced by these shows and others, familiarity is only a starting point. More importantly, fictionalizing an aspect of our culture out of mere disdain doesn't make for good art.
But UnREAL quickly moves away from grounded, contemplative storytelling. The series adopts The Bachelor's operatically-pitched interpersonal drama as its thoroughly fascinating, often brilliant and occasionally infuriating trick. Rather than explore The Bachelor's external effects by getting at it from the inside, UnREAL situates the reality show in a dramatically engrossing game of human psychology and deception. The show itself is a social experiment, all but consumed by its insularity and volatility.
Through a 10-episode first season, UnREAL is a charged but meaty ride; its plainly soapy conflicts don't detract from the show's intellectual rigor or ethical preoccupations. In the lead roles are two women of types too rare in American television, as they boast socially alienating (and menacing) moral compasses. Rachel (Shiri Appleby), in her 30s, is a dedicated feminist with a penchant for getting Everlasting contestants to do as she pleases. (Chalk it up to a sharply intimate understanding of women.) She's pushed to embrace her black heart by Quinn (Constance Zimmer), the show's executive producer who approaches the act of degrading women formally and methodically. For Quinn, the job is the job, no less and no more; for Rachel, the job is simultaneously seductive and punishing.
The two co-conspire through a season of Everlasting, forcing a mentally unstable woman to confront her abusive ex-husband; nearly outing a closeted lesbian to her conservative and unprepared family; milking the death of a contestant's father for a "Very Special Episode"; and playing with racial politics on an offensively provocative basis. Underpinning it all is the pilot's groundwork: Rachel is introduced as recovering from a mental breakdown, having spun out of control during the last Everlasting season. Her demise embodies the series’ construction, as UnREAL's narrative engine is powered by choice, justification and personal accountability.
The drama within and without Everlasting is complimentary, as the contestants' decision-making impulses and conceptions of morality begin to mirror those of the producers in control. Rachel finds herself drawn to the "bachelor" in question, Adam (Freddie Stroma), a savvy, hunky British Royal blessed with similar gifts of manipulation. Quinn battles the show's credited creator (and her married lover), Chet (Craig Bierko), for both romantic and professional independence. (She was the show's true shepherd; she wants him to leave his wife.) Out of these intersecting stories, mixed with on-the-ground drama at Casa Everlasting, emerges a fluid and complex feminist expression. Quinn's pragmatism renders her complicit in the wild success of sexist, Everlasting-like institutions. Rachel's deep knowledge of women, not to mention her love of the thrill, aids in the dehumanization of her own gender's depiction.
Characterization is the key to UnREAL's creative success. In mood, this show is bleakly dark, exacerbating the tensions to pitch the dramatics accordingly. But within the melodrama, great actors inhabit intricately-drawn characters. Appleby and Zimmer are frequently astonishing in their parts, so natural and so assured that they single-handedly extend the show beyond its tonal trappings. They guide it into the richly psychological territory it aspires to. Among the Everlasting standouts, Breeda Wool is revelatory as the aforementioned gay contestant Faith, imbuing her with an exuberant spirit in such a way that starkly demonstrates the variety of women on-display here. She and many others get “featured” episodes in UnREAL, an incisive structural gambit that fleshes out characters while also documenting how their stories tend to be packaged – in reality TV, as well as in storytelling in general – according to audience demand.
What these actresses and characters do, essentially, is realize UnREAL's potential for resonant storytelling. The construct of the show can be a bit chilly and uninviting, and at times in its plot movements, it struggles to convince. Rather preposterously, Everlasting is broadcast as the story unfolds – more Big Brother, less Survivor – creating an interactive relationship with its audience that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. (Especially in the context of the season’s actual events.) This establishes a world of impossibly high stakes. But as with the best of reality shows, it's not the tangible believability of the circumstances that matters, but the truth revealed within them – precisely why it's vital to view UnREAL less as critique and more as experiment.
The cliffhanger to end the season's sixth episode reflects this very notion. A contestant commits suicide under the damaging influence of one of the show's producers. It's an event so drastic that to imagine Everlasting continuing business-as-usual afterwards (as it does) is, in real-world terms, quite a stretch. Even if keeping to the universe of UnREAL, it's probably a step too far. But no matter, the subsequent episode is arguably the season's best. It's totally self-contained, as opposed to the rest of the season, as production frantically works to spin the tragedy into something that will not only keep viewers around, but bring more in. The dilemmas posed are intoxicatingly brutal; the choices made, again given the circumstances, make for compelling, evocative drama. It's UnREAL at its best and worst, in other words: an exterior of hyperactive, over-the-top soap, with probing, philosophical inquiry being posed within.
This is a show that wisely avoids trying to convince on a physically authentic level. UnREAL mines truth introspectively, its degree of emotion less important than how characters shift and change. In the season finale, Quinn and Rachel commit to their uglier sides, playing ruthless games of revenge against the men who wronged them. Gone are the justifications; embraced is the shamelessness. But after masterminding yet another grand plan, all that's left by the episode's end is reflection. "We killed someone," Rachel quietly acknowledges to her mentor. This admission converges the season's events into the darkly surreal, while also asserting their immense emotional value. It's a sobering meditation on all that came before it.
You've got standard love triangles and stock archetypes in UnREAL; there's suicide and drug addiction and lots of sexiness, too. The season is glaringly imperfect and at times irritatingly obvious. But it's difficult to criticize those aspects of the show when they so directly contribute to the finished product: a boldly feminist dissection of morality and personal fulfillment, exposing the rot universal to human nature that is self-interest. As the new kind of antihero show, UnREAL makes antiheroes out of all of us.
Grade: B+