This show. This goddamn show. It’s The Sopranos, it’s The Wire, it’s Mad Men - it’s the anti-hero with the broken moral compass and tortured soul who you can’t help but watch because they’re brilliant at something, even if that something is inherently destructive.
In Unreal, the anti-hero is Rachel, and she’s a producer on a reality show called Everlasting, a knock-off on The Bachelor. And what Rachel is talented at is using her emotional intelligence to manipulate women into debasing themselves on television. Unreal is totally saturated with saccharine roses and glitter and love triangles - but it’s also a deeply disturbing window into the soulless, misogynistic, celebrity-obsessed culture that makes a show like The Bachelor possible - and what it takes to be good at making something inherently evil.
If you think evil is too dramatic a word - trust me, it’s not. Evil is exactly the extent Rachel is driven to. It makes fucking good television.
Moment that says so much about Quinn: Quinn is the executive producer of UnREAL, and in the producers room she snaps commands at the cameras, crafting drama from the editing room with the zoom button. In the pilot, she barks out a comment that the two black contestants on the show shouldn’t go first out of the limo - because there’s no way they’re going to win. Some of her underlings gasp, and she blithely responds with: “It’s not my fault America is racist, people!” It’s a shocking moment, but it perfectly highlights Quinn’s uncompromising willingness to compromise virtues and morals for the sake of success. She’s vicious, and she’s a hypocrite. She’s my favourite character.
There was a great moment when the contestant, trapped in a limousine for hours waiting for the show to start, all ‘escape’ it into the surrounding park because they so desperately need to pee. Crouching behind trees, they’re giggling, and it seems like a moment of bonding. But then, one of them, Faye, gets humiliated when the girls start mocking her for having pubic hair. “Don’t they wax in Texas?” This scene gives so much information. First - about Faye. She starts to realise quickly that her looks don’t match - she was chosen to be the “Virgin” and total fodder for comedy. It also introduces the complexities of the relationships between the contestants. They’re competing, but still. They’re trapped in a house with each other for weeks. Some kind of community, though superficial and easily broken, is inevitable.
The pilot culminates in a brilliant ending that demonstrates exactly what Rachel is capable of. Introduced as scruffy and slouched in her “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” shirt, she seems exhausted by life, but ultimately trustworthy. But then. But then. One of the eliminated contestants is smiling into the camera, saying: “He’s a great guy, and I’ve had such a wonderful time on the show.” Then the smile drops. Her eyes go flat with ice. She says “And I’m going to keep repeating that on a loop until you let me go home.” Watching this in the control room, Quinn barks at Rachel to do something. The contestant is refusing to give the humiliating meltdown the show needs. And so Rachel does something. She enters into an act of such skilled manipulation that she might as well be working as a Cold War Spy. She pretends to give up. She yells to turn the camera off, and for somebody to bring her a fucking drink. Quickly, her and the contestant are getting into girl-talk. Rachel slyly starts dropping hints about the contestants traumatic background as a foster child, whispered to her from the show’s psychologist, asking if she’s afraid that she’ll never be loved. Bam. Meltdown. After the contestant storms off, giving the exact footage they need to edit her into a crazy, psycho bitch - Rachel is left staring up at the sky, empty and dead inside.
