UnReal - Two & Princess - Review: "Bad Romance"

"Two": In which the most cynical people on the planet convince themselves they can have it all.

UnReal is a show that operates with a certain reliance on genre blindness. In “Two”, the crew of Everlasting prove this in a way by reconciling their job selling the illusion of “true love” with the unshakable human impulse to find actual love and happiness for themselves. Everyone knows this “true love” is a fairytale, an accepted representation of an ideal that does not exist in reality, but even the most cynical among us can find a way to kid themselves if the stakes are high enough.

After Mary’s death, Everlasting is trying to find its footing again as a series. When the show somehow gets a bump in ratings after a contestant commits suicide (?), a spin-off is quickly proposed to the network by Chet and Quinn. Everlasting is suddenly back on track, now with the goal of setting up a series called “Royal Love”, starring Adam and Grace moving to England as newlyweds. Grace is on board of course, but Adam is not feeling it at all. In fact, Adam hasn’t really felt connected to anyone on set besides Rachel, but she has her sights set on the prospect of running the spin-off, thanks to an off-the-cuff deal with Chet: if Rachel can turn Adam on to the new show, then Rachel gets to run it.

With the title “Executive Producer” dangling just out of reach, Rachel approaches this episode with newfound purpose. She manipulates the girls expertly, using Grace’s previously unknown claustrophobia to incite a melt-down in the middle of what was supposed to be a sexy spa date. She also manages to get Anna back in the game after she discovers Grace was vetted by the network for a spin-off. In a weird sort of reality TV tautology, convincing Anna that she has chance to win the show puts her in the running to actually win the show; Anna is invested again, and staking a claim on her own potential happy ending with Adam.

In many ways, Chet and Quinn deserve each other. They are both pretty terrible people, sure, but the fact that they are never quite on equal footing has always left a sour taste in my mouth. Chet is happy with Quinn, but he is painfully shallow and so can be equally happy in many other situations with many, many, other people. Quinn does seem to love him though, and in spite of all she sees in her day job, she walks into an awful romance trap set by Chet, a cheeseball candlelit dinner on the actual set of Everlasting, where everyone knows romance goes to die. Chet proposes to Quinn over skewered frog legs and she accepts, ready to move forward as an equal partner. And that is what she’s always wanted, after all, to be equal. Quinn is excellent at her job, better at it than Chet, surely, but she also lives in a world where network drone Brad won’t even respond to her until Chet has said something first. So it almost makes sense that she could see marriage as a way to gain status she feels she’s already earned.

Later, when Chet tries to offer the young PA some advice, fresh-faced Madison quips back revealing a little ambition for the TV business and a wry smile to boot. Chet looks back at her like she’s a side of meat (or a young Quinn). By the end of the episode Quinn finds them in the back of a storage truck, er, “mentoring” as it’s known in Hollywood, and the veil is lifted. Quinn’s fairytale melts away in the 20-30 seconds that blow job probably lasted and she spends the remaining minutes of the episode in a quietly terrifying rage. I truly cannot wait to see where that goes.

Jeremy and Lizzie unceremoniously broke up when they kind of simultaneously agreed Jeremy’s always had feelings for Rachel. He confronts her soon after, offering everything he has: a real relationship, a commitment, maybe even like a bed and shower! A fun new world for borderline-hobo Rachel. Of course, she’s been torn up over Jeremy ever since her pre-series breakdown, but this also means she’s spent the last 7.5 episodes building herself back up after it. Though Rachel is certainly conflicted over the work she does, she also finds it empowering to be good at it. The fact the she so doggedly pursued the “Royal Love” show and managed to spin it into “Royal Renovations”, a win for Adam, Anna, and ultimately herself by extension was a gratifying success. But Jeremy’s sudden commitment shakes the paradigm of happiness she’s constructed and everything is up in the air again.

The episode’s opening and closing scenes are Adam and Rachel in bed, though under very different circumstances. The two are more intimate in many ways than any of the contestants have been thus far with Adam. Even as the episode opened, with Adam and Rachel chatting in bed, Adam dropping hints at his affection for her, Rachel downplaying it. She spends the rest of the episode manipulating him, though not without taking his interests into account. She truly seems to want happiness for him, but their separate ideas of happiness have become increasingly aligned and the bias is apparent. It’s difficult to tell when Rachel means what she says as opposed to just doing her job; Rachel probably doesn’t always know herself. So in the final moments of the episode, when she hooks up with Adam while Jeremy waits for her to meet him at her truck, we’re all left wondering what Rachel’s fairytale looks like, and exactly who she’s kidding.


"Princess": In which nobody does anything to be nice.

The entire premise of Everlasting is a modern televised fairytale: a prince finding his princess, “true love” at its shiniest and most digestible. UnReal is an unraveling of all this, a look at how people who know the power of these stories react to life in the real world.

Waking up in bed with Adam to missed calls from Jeremy, Rachel immediately regrets the tryst. She runs off to find Jeremy and they head back to his place. Their subsequent shower sex scene is intercut with Quinn and Chet’s perfunctory couch boning, and Chet noticing (as he's trying to get her pregnant) that Quinn’s not wearing her massive engagement ring anymore.

Rachel continues to navigate the difficult situation at work. The “Royal Renovations” show is made official, but the bride hasn’t yet been determined. She is frank with Adam, breaking the whole thing off and letting him know she has committed to Jeremy. Adam refuses to take that lying down though, and when Rachel insists she just wants him to do his job (which is literally dating other women) he takes it as a challenge. Sure that Rachel isn’t meant to be with Jeremy, Adam puts all the moves on Grace and Anna, with one eye trained on Rachel at all times.

Rachel strikes back in her own way, retreating into the fantasy of a life with Jeremy. She continues to produce Everlasting effectively, grinding her teeth through the increasingly convincing displays of chemistry on camera. Adam grabs Grace’s ass on their beautifully shot horseback ride (hilariously revealed to be the work of stunt doubles, as they cut to Adam riding a fake horse), and charms Anna with the notion of an ideal future with him, using bits of a conversation he’d had with Rachel as a script. After their hot air balloon date is adorably rained out, Anna confesses she's really falling for Adam. She asks Rachel if he'd honestly choose her but gets only a partial truth in return when Rachel tells her Adam’s “only saying this stuff to [Anna].” Well, to Anna and to Rachel.

After an emotionally exhaustive day of work, Rachel heads to a crew party with Jeremy. They play beer pong and slow-dance, surrounded by other hoodie-shrouded couples. This is a fairytale in its own right, and Jeremy proposes the ultimate fantasy: that they quit the show and put down roots in Los Angeles. Rachel goes so far as to ignore a call from Chet, and the crowd literally cheers, though in my experience, beer pong never leads to good decisions.

Quinn has found new purpose in the realization that she doesn’t want to be with Chet; she wants to be him. Dropping a morning after pill like it's an aspirin, she puts on her game face and flies to LA for a meeting with Brad from the network. She takes the meeting alone, promising a real hit series if she's taken seriously and effectively throwing Chet under the bus. Though Brad hasn’t ever taken her seriously before, she pushes the right buttons and buys herself another meeting, one shot at a solo pitch.

Back on set the next day, Quinn finds time to confront and confuse little Madison. Madison folds pretty easily, and Quinn tries to spin her into a victim, into a plaintiff, really, but Madison isn’t sure how she feels, about servicing Chet or if she wants to do anything about it at all. Though she felt pressured by Chet because he’s her boss, she correctly points out that Quinn is her boss too, and dealing with lawyers and lawsuits is a daunting prospect. She later turns to Dr. Wagerstein for advice who does not disappoint, offering Madison an alternative to scorning Quinn or suing Chet.

Chet, oblivious as ever, has been working all day too, wandering around set carrying a dog for some reason, asking Quinn if she’s pregnant yet. As it turns out, Dr. Wagerstein was right in her advice to Madison; nobody there does anything to be nice, and the Doc is no exception. She goes to Chet and uses the dirt from Madison to negotiate a deal for herself, exposing Quinn's knowledge of the fling in the process.

Though they held it together for a couple of days, the other shoe must drop for Rachel and Adam. Quinn first calls Rachel into her office to offer her a new job. With as much enthusiasm as she's had about anything ever, Quinn lays out her plans, the pitch to the network, how she's finished with Chet, and that she wants Rachel to join this new company as an equal partner. It's not what Rachel wants to hear though, not after she spent that whole beer pong game taking refuge in thoughts of a quiet life with Jeremy. Quinn scoffs this off like a pro, but there isn't much she can do about it until she stumbles on some surprising footage later that night. Apparently Rachel and Adam's hook-up was caught on tape, and the two are immediately called into Quinn's office to be blackmailed.

It seems they are stuck together. Quinn demands a five-year contract with Rachel and an actual wedding from Adam, or she'll release the tape (or just turn it over to sweet, simple Jeremy). This may not seem like a great plan, considering how truly pissed off Rachel and Adam were with Quinn, but it may actually give them what they want in the long run. It's not clear, though, if Quinn has a good enough sense of these two to understand the larger ramifications of this deal or if she's just making a beeline for what she wants in the short term.

Rachel sulks in the production room, unable to resist checking the monitor from Adam's bedroom. She sees Adam with Anna in bed together, his choice for the overnight date, and grows increasingly disillusioned at the thought being stuck in this situation for another five years. She blows off Jeremy as he heads home for the night and goes out to the lake to find Adam, who has slipped out to get some air himself. Commiserating over a bottle of liquor, Adam calls her out for settling with Jeremy, revealing some insight into their relationship. He asks her to run away with him, once and for all.

So is this the ultimate romance for those two? It's probably safe to assume that they will not run off together, considering the we cut directly to the promo for next week's episode, but it's worth wondering if they really have something. All of these people are under such extreme pressure and must sift through the layers of manipulations and determine what's real and what's an illusion. It's easy to understand how one could react to this with escapist fantasy, but whether or not there is a kernel of reality at the heart of their relationship is still a mystery.

Post Script:

“At my age, 50-50 it’s a flipper baby anyway.” Haa, but yikes! Chet’s soon-to-be-ex is, like, puppy-kickingly evil.

That Chet/Rachel car scene was horrifying. I would’ve puked too.

This is probably the last we’ll see of Lizzie. She was super boring but also arguably the most functional woman UnReal has put forth. Kind of says something about why we watch TV, reality or otherwise, eh?

What in the hell was the point of keeping Shamiqua on this long without giving her anything to do? I get the nod to reality shows that leave token POC in the running just to avoid being totally whitewashed, but doing the exact same thing on a series like this without fleshing out the character or commenting on the nonevent that was her tenure on the show is not satire, and it is a missed opportunity for a relevant commentary on race in television.

Love Grace and Anna volleying shade over an oblivious Faith. I'm really going to miss Faith's earnest reactions.

Freddie Stroma riding that fake horse is everything.

Madison wondering, however briefly, if she's going to have to go down on Quinn was probably my biggest laugh of the episode.

"You may want to be Chet, but I don't want to be you, Quinn!"
"Yeah you do."
- Constance Zimmer for president

Seriously, why was Chet carrying that dog around?

About the Author - Lindsey Salazar

Lindsey is an unabashed TV, film, and book nerd who lives and works in Los Angeles. Watch this space!

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