UnREAL, the Television Show About Reality TV We Didn't Know We Needed
EntertainmentWhen our children’s children undoubtably take a look back at the shows we consumed circa 2015, they’ll see UnREAL, a new television show premiering on Lifetime Monday night—perfectly timed, you’ll see, to air right after The Bachelor finishes—as a show that couldn’t have been made at any other point in television history, but one that feels like necessary viewing now.
UnREAL stars Shiri Appleby as Rachel, a television producer for a show that is essentially The Bachelor, though in this world, it’s called Everlasting. It picks up right at the beginning of the first night (you can watch the beginning below), when the contestants are taking their limos up to the house to meet their potential dream man. But this isn’t the beginning of everything for Rachel, or for her coworkers: Rachel has a complicated history working on Everlasting, and as the episodes unfold, we watch her grapple with her past and with the moral ambiguities of her job. It’s a job she’s very good at, but one that she’s not always happy she’s good at, as it requires her to manipulate people solely for the sake of good television ratings.
Noxon’s also working on another show that’s pushing the boundaries of what its network is known for: The Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce on Bravo, which has typically been known for its reality programming. Lifetime’s got an obvious history in creating soapy, campy content (stuff that it isn’t entirely shying away from), but there’s something in the television waters that’s creating a space for Noxon, Shapiro and others to make the kinds of programs that push what television can be.
“It’s interesting because in both the shows I’m doing right now, so much of the content is about sexual politics and kind of overly feminist themes and it just seems like there’s much more of an appetite for that than there was even four or five years ago, where you can say ‘I’m going to make a show about women who are pretty bossed up, in all facets, good and bad,” Noxon says. “I think I’m doing some work I couldn’t have done on television five years.”
What you’ll get from UnREAL is something that, like with Mad Men, pushes the boundaries of what the network it’s on is typically known for. “We were trying to make an FX show that just happens to be on Lifetime,” Noxon says.
They’ve succeeded: UnREAL is a true drama, or a dramedy, or perhaps it deserves a new genre characterization for the way it’s seamlessly created a television show that responds to its era while still creating classically compelling storylines. If you know anything at all about the creation of reality television, none of what the show reveals will be a shock: footage is edited to make contestants look like they did things for entirely different motivations than they did, producers put words in the mouths of contestants, they quickly pigeonhole them into types like villain or MILF, and the crew develops very close relationships with the cast. While the real Bachelor shies away from discussing its tricky history with race, UnREAL tackles it upfront, with characters frankly commenting on how long black cast members will stick around (the answer: only two have ever made it to the final four on 13 seasons Everlastng).
“Sluts. Get. Cut. Right?” Quinn, Everlasting’s hardass producer played by Constance Zimmer yells at her staff. “Nobody wants to take them home to their mommy.” Producers are assigned contestants and given bonuses when things work out for them: “nudity, 911 calls, catfights.”
“Grace, you’re one of my girls,” our protagonist Rachel is seen explaining to a contestant during one episode. “You win this thing, it’s a win for me too.”