The new season of Lifetime’s caustic reality-TV satire “UnREAL” (premiering June 6 at 10 p.m.) kicks everything — and everyone — up a notch. Rachel (Shiri Appleby) is the new Quinn (Constance Zimmer). Quinn is the new Chet (Craig Bierko). Madison (Genevieve Buckner), conflicted but getting better at her job, seems to be the new Rachel.
A look at the first two episodes of the show’s second season finds creators Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro homing in on two central issues: race and masculinity — both filtered through the central relationship between Quinn and Rachel.
The second season of show-within-a-show, “Everlasting,” is gearing up to start shooting, and the two women — who’ve celebrated their promotions by getting matching “Money. Dick. Power.” tattoos — are congratulating themselves on making history by casting the industry’s first black bachelor. Darius (B.J. Britt) is a football player who, like the first season’s leading man, needs to rehab his image.
This is, unbelievably, a true thing.
ABC’s “The Bachelor,” despite having 20 seasons under its belt, has yet to cast a black man in its leading role. And despite what must have been a tempting attraction to make the second season about a bachelorette instead of a bachelor, the “UnREAL” creators ultimately decided this plot was the timely way to go. As Shapiro told the Hollywood Reporter, “What was really screaming at me was having a black bachelor. There’s no repressing conversation in the nation right now. I thought it was an interesting thing to explore in terms of black masculinity but also really scary to do as a white woman.”
No kidding. Unsurprisingly, the season’s first episodes don’t shy away from the most cynical perspective on the badge of “first black bachelor,” including selecting one white female contestant who wears a Confederate flag bikini in her audition tape and a black one with ties to the “Black Lives Matter” movement — convincing the latter to drop out of college to make her statement heard on national TV (empty promises are, of course, made that she’ll be one of the final two) and working hard to make sure these two women are poised to have an onscreen showdown.
That “UnREAL” beat “The Bachelor” to the punch on having a black bachelor is a pretty major triumph. Shapiro has said she was present during discussions about race during her time on “The Bachelor.” “If anything we’ve all been privy to those conversations, because being in television, you have to be a pragmatist,” she said. “I’ve heard in those day jobs really appalling things about race all the time.”
Meanwhile, in a hilariously awful development, Chet returns sober and slimmed down from a paleo-themed men’s retreat, determined to infuse the show’s new season with a caveman mentality and restore “the natural order of things.” A skewering of this kind of retrograde, misogynist thinking never felt so perfectly timed, what with our presumptive Republican candidate— not to mention, of course, the ongoing troll war against women online.
Chet sabotages the show by making demands (again, so evocative of a certain orange-hued wannabe politician) that the girls wear bikinis instead of gowns in the first episode. Soon, they’re shooting two rival versions of the show, with the wild-eyed Chet’s team — including the bitter Jeremy (Josh Kelly) — attempting a “Girls Gone Wild” overhaul, while Rachel and the increasingly involved Quinn struggle to maintain the status quo.
Shapiro also has the show delving into the psychology behind Quinn and Rachel’s move up the ladder this season. “They are at war with manhood. They are on top, obsessed with power and money, dancing on the tables, doing coke and having a great time,” she said. “Rachel and Quinn are going to behave and battle like men. Our whole season is really about gender roles, and it’s about Quinn and Rachel trying to step into these male gender roles… [and] worrying about what the effect is on women when they try and battle that way.”
Rachel has a particularly Quinn-like moment as she directs Madison, who’s interviewing a contestant, to probe the young woman about her dead fiance. “Ask her if she killed him,” she pushes, via the producer’s earpiece, despite Madison looking like she’s going to burst into tears any second. The way this scene plays out is emblematic of the show’s appeal. Just when you think someone might be having a genuinely emotional moment, there’s a follow-up beat that underscores the level of cynicism required to work on this crew — and the adrenaline rush that kicks in when key on-camera moments have been shot, no matter what the cost.
All that said, I have to admit my own reaction to this show has always been lukewarm. While theoretically on board with its take down of reality TV, I’ve been genuinely surprised by the strength of viewers’ reactions to what seems to be a sort of no-brainer: That the reality behind reality shows isn’t the fairy tale they’d have you believe. The writing is clever and the humor is dark, dark, dark — but at the end of the day, I find its supposed revelations a little obvious. Perhaps it’s more stinging if you’re actually watching the real-deal shows as companion pieces? In any case, I think venturing into uncharted waters with Darius , actually going one better than the real thing, may propel this show into more interesting territory in its second season.
