Shiri Appleby (left) plays a reality TV producer in Lifetime Television's new scripted series.
In a show all about finding true love with the most perfect of facades, The Bachelor leaves much of what goes on behind the camera to the imagination. This is where UnREAL takes over.
Created by former Bachelor producer Sarah Gertrude Shapiro and airing on Monday nights this summer on Lifetime, the scripted dark comedy/drama follows Rachel Goldberg as a producer on the saccharine reality show Everlasting, a dead ringer for the ABC program. Throughout the first four episodes of UnREAL, which are available online now, viewers witness all the behind-the-scenes moments — everything from producers orchestrating fights between contestants to how they get that pavement so damn reflective.
In the pilot, we are introduced to Rachel as she lies down (to avoid being in the shot) in a limousine with some of her contestants on the way to the Everlasting mansion. She’s wearing a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt that makes you assume she’s pretty unapologetically progressive. It also makes you wonder what a feminist is doing working on a program that parades young women around in the name of finding true love for a single dude.
We soon find out that Rachel, played by Shiri Appleby, has returned for the new season after ending the previous one with a bang. I won’t spoil the reveal, but the implications of her decisions cause legal and monetary troubles. So then why, for the love of god, did she return to the job that drove her to near insanity? Turns out that she needs money to pay back rent and legal fees, plus her boss Quinn, the executive producer of Everlasting, is essentially blackmailing her into staying.
What’s absolutely fantastic about Rachel is that she’s a disheveled heroine. She sleeps in a storage truck parked on the show lot, and her morning routine consists of a change of clothes and putting on some deodorant. She doesn’t really wear makeup and rarely bothers to comb her mousy brown mane. She struggles with who she wants to be as a person and how she wants to treat those around her. At her core, Rachel has a good heart. However, throughout the show we see her leading female contestants into oncoming-traffic levels of conflict with each other (often for monetary bonuses). She gets a strange pleasure from manipulating women on the show, but then suffers waves of soul-crushing guilt. In the pilot, we see her manipulating Britney, a woman immediately branded as “the villain.” She is ousted after Rachel influences the suitor, Adam, to choose an unlikely beauty named Faith. Using privileged information that Britney was adopted, Rachel preys on her fear of being unloved to elicit a nasty and raging exit interview. Rachel’s just doing her job.
Something else unique about Rachel is that she has no clear love interest (at least four episodes into the series). Her ex-boyfriend works as a director on the same show, but he is engaged to someone else. The suitor occasionally flirts with her, but she laughingly rebuffs his advances. Appleby’s Rachel is both cynical and rosy-cheeked, doe-eyed and verbally cutting. It’s a tough dynamic to pull off, especially for female leads who are expected to be “likable” and “relatable,” with every hair in place.
In the midst of the show’s chaos, you can barely take your eyes off the screen. It’s a slow reveal of who people appear to be and who they truly are. It has a level of accuracy, credibility and detail from its creator. Plus, it has a general bluntness of manner often missing from network reality. For instance, in a show about intimacy, connection and true love, UnREAL shows the incredibly unsexy behind-the-scenes, from Quinn’s rules/tropes (“sluts get cut”) to the contestants struggling with bad home lives, eating disorders and low self-esteem.
UnREAL showcases the darker side of reality TV to great effect. And it has some excellent one-liners and playful chemistry spliced in between all the heated drama. For a channel known for reality shows like Dance Moms and TV movies of every variety (most of them so lame they’re fantastic), I was pleasantly surprised by UnREAL. It also seems like a natural fit for Lifetime as it carries the juicy self-indulgence that is the cable channel’s signature. Best of all, it works. I want more, dammit.
