Lifetime’s scripted satire of reality television is the sharpest, most entertaining series of the summer.
It doesn't matter if you're a fan of The Bachelor or not.
For fans of The Bachelor (or The Bachelorette, or any number of similar reality dating competition series in which one person chooses from a bevy of eager suitors), Unreal is a fascinating (albeit fictionalized) peek behind the curtain. Though being intimately acquainted with The Bachelor surely gives viewers a unique perspective, it's not necessary in order to find Unreal captivating. Simply understanding the basic conventions of reality television is enough to enjoy the show — and to feel challenged by the complicated questions it raises.
That's an important distinction to make, especially given how steeped Unreal seems to be in the world of The Bachelor. (Or Everlasting, as the show-within-the-show is known.) But Unreal is more about the characters than it is the situation: There's plenty to latch onto even if you don't particularly appreciate the specifics. And the emotional blackmail and backstage manipulation of these characters is engaging regardless of the context. You don't have to have watched the show upon which Unreal is based to appreciate what these women are being put through.
Joseph Viles / Lifetime
It's bringing back the idea of "television for women."
"Television for women" is, in many ways, an outdated concept — there's a reason Lifetime dropped that tagline in the '90s. And there's certainly no reason why men (even straight men!) can't enjoy Unreal. That having been said, there's still something significant about a series that puts so many women front and center. In contrast to The Bachelor — which, yes, features a large number of women — the female characters on Unreal resist easy characterization. As much as Everlasting would have you see them as types, they're far too complex and multifaceted to pin down. In fact, the more the producers try to contain them, the more their rich interior lives are revealed. That shouldn't be notable in 2015, but it is. While some shows can't even manage one fully realized female character, Unreal offers several — both in the contestants on Everlasting and in the women working behind the scenes. This is television by women (it was created by Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro), for women.
James Dittiger / Lifetime
It embraces a subtler and more interesting kind of moral ambiguity.
Everlasting producer Rachel (Shiri Appleby) and her boss Quinn (Constance Zimmer) are, to varying extents, deeply flawed. They embody the kind of antiheroic qualities that made protagonists like Breaking Bad's Walter White and The Sopranos' Tony Soprano such tough sells. And because they are women and morally ambiguous in a much less confronting way, they're actually far more unique as characters — and ultimately, more challenging for viewers who aren't used to this particular form of bad behavior, especially among women.
It's not news that there is a double standard for how we view male and female characters: One need only look at the vastly different perceptions of Walt and Skyler White for a sense of how skewed things are. But Unreal takes audience assumptions of female characters and confronts them head-on. Rachel and Quinn, not to mention the Everlasting contestants themselves, do seriously fucked-up things in nearly every episode, but that makes them thrilling to watch, and finding sympathy for them a consistently rewarding challenge.
James Dittiger / Lifetime
Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer are delivering star-making performances.
To the WB generation, Shiri Appleby is Liz Parker, the human love interest of alien Max Evans (Jason Behr) on the sci-fi soap Roswell. (For CW fans, she was also the star of Life Unexpected.) Constance Zimmer did memorable work on Entourage, Boston Legal, and, most recently, House of Cards. Neither actor, however, has ever been as pitch-perfect as they are on Unreal. The show allows Appleby and Zimmer to display incredible range: Both vacillate between coldly calculating and disarmingly vulnerable.
Appleby in particular has long been underestimated, likely because she came to most people's attention as Roswell's answer to Bella Swan. Every time she has done something more complicated and, well, adult — her daring stint on Girls, for example — critics and viewers alike have expressed surprise. Hopefully by now we're past the point of "discovering" Appleby's talent. There's no denying that Rachel is the actor's greatest role yet, and hopefully, Appleby continues to earn accolades befitting her performance.
Joseph Viles / Lifetime
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