UnREAL, currently in its third season on Lifetime is as sharp, funny and perceptive as ever. I see it as an oasis, where women can still be dark, complex, funny, sexy, corrupt. It is anchored by two brilliant leads – Constance Zimmer as Quinn and Shiri Appleby as Rachel. Two better female performers in any television you will not see. I am technically on hiatus but I wanted to pop in here and tell you all how great it is, if you didn’t already know.
UnREAL is a satirical take on a “reality” show – and keeps the tension high with two women who have trouble finding love producing a show about finding love. Somehow, even though they deal in dirty deeds, you end up rooting for the women. For me, it’s their pure honesty I appreciate, something I am finding less and less of in movies.
It deserves every award it has coming, and I hope it has many coming. Watching the show for myself rather than reading reviews was a reminder of how full of shit critics can be. The ones I saw with absurd headlines like “UnREAL has to decide what it wants to be.” No, it doesn’t. It’s a great show. They’re doing everything right.
Season Three is about the woman contestant – a bachelorette – played by Caitlin Fitzgerald, last seen as the uptight freaked out wife on Masters of Sex. As usual, she is adept at playing the layers of a character – wanting to be what she can’t, exhibiting annoying traits like arrogance, then shattering when it all goes wrong.
Zimmer mostly steals the show, as always, but the whole thing is brilliant as a commentary at how stupid we can collectively be when it comes to love – not just love, but believing in fake love ABC pumps out. Having just witnessed, however reluctantly, the hideous fake ending of the Bachelor designed for ratings where the contestants seemed to either really be going through a “break up” or pretending to really well. America needed someone to hate and ABC gave it them. This is all explained, analyzed and lampooned in UnREAL which honestly doesn’t even need the show it satirizes to be great. It’s really about the actors and the writing, all the way.