While other reality TV genres wither and die, the dating show continues to flourish. This year’s Love Island attracted an instantly obsessed audience. The Bachelor, which airs on the US network ABC, has become an institution. Amazon’s drama UnREAL exists in a world like The Bachelor’s. A world where besotted competitors are force-fed a vision of fairytale romance with a handsome prince who will scoop them up and give them the happy ending they’ve been dreaming of since infanthood.
But UnREAL also exists in another world. A world in which TV producers treat the romance-starved contestants like cattle, herding them into hot tubs and milking them for tears. UnREAL depicts the reality dating show world as a kind of Hunger Games, where the emotionally fragile fight to have their hearts broken in as humiliating a way as possible. “Be a good meat puppet and do what I say,” are the first words ice-veined reality show producer Quinn King (Constance Zimmer) sneers in the earpiece of hotel heir Adam Cromwell. Adam is the fairytale prince dangled in front of a group of desperate contestants competing on Quinn’s dating show, Everlasting, each of whom are convinced he will see them as his princess.
“Be afraid, OK? Crazy’s back,” are the first words Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby) utters as she makes her return from a nervous breakdown to the set of Everlasting. Rachel’s job is to emotionally manipulate the already fragile contestants. She’s the one that charms, goads and lies until they deliver the tears, tantrums, meltdowns and catfights that Quinn desires. UnREAL asks us to empathise with a feminist who recovers from a nervous breakdown and runs straight back to the dating show that was the main cause of her mental issues. It asks us to empathise with a producer who treats the cast and crew like the occupants of a dollhouse.
That we do end up empathising with these characters is testimony to the talent of UnREAL’s creator, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, a feminist who spent three years as a producer on The Bachelor before she experienced a nervous breakdown and quit. Although a battle-scarred TV veteran, Shapiro had no experience in running a weekly drama. US network Lifetime recruited Marti Noxon, a writer-producer whose lengthy list of credits included stints on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mad Men, to be UnREAL’s showrunner. By all accounts, the relationship between Shapiro and Noxon was as complicated as the dynamic between Quinn and Rachel. Shapiro has praised Noxon for teaching her to cope with the ravenous way a weekly drama eats up storylines, but Shapiro also felt overshadowed and undervalued by Noxon, who left early on in season two.
“There was about as much drama behind the scenes as there was on screen,” Noxon told the New Yorker. “I don’t think I’ve had as contentious and fruitful a collaboration since I worked with Matt Weiner on Mad Men.” Despite the alleged backstage shenanigans, UnREAL delivered a supremely confident first season that subtly subverted dating show tropes. After back-stabbing and blackmailing each other, a numb and exhausted Quinn and Rachel end the season reclining on deck chairs. “I love you, you know that?” says Rachel. “I love you, too, weirdo,” replies Quinn.
Everlasting’s polarising second season featured a black male suitor, American football star Darius. A step forward in terms of representation, the fact that this show, with its cynical and misanthropic soul, squirmed uncomfortably away from portraying its new star in as flawed a light as the rest of the cast was disappointing. “It’s interesting that Darius was portrayed so positively,” says pop culture writer Jeremy Helligar. “I would have preferred an un-stereotypical black success who did heinous things in the name of lust to a boring black Romeo stereotype.”
The fact that Everlasting’s season three suitor will be a white woman is a sign that the series can return to treating its subject matter with complete contempt. This is good news for UnREAL’s audience, which, it turns out, includes both cast and crew members from The Bachelor. “We keep hearing from them how accurate our portrayal of their world is,” says new showrunner Stacy Rukeyser. “And that’s scary.”
UnREAL seasons one and two can be streamed on Amazon Prime
