Cable Series Returns With a Provocative Twist

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/arts/television/unreal-returns-on-lifetime-with-a-provocative-twist.html

Last summer brought us a pair of cable dramas about psychologically troubled antiheroes who gained access to the levers of mighty and vaguely sinister institutions: the global financial network and a hit reality show.

One of them, “Mr. Robot,” was immediately hailed as groundbreaking for its bravura visuals, its timely critique of capitalism and its unreliable-narrator protagonist, a computer hacker out to dismantle a system of debt slavery.

The other, Lifetime’s “UnREAL” — set behind the scenes of “Everlasting,” a “Bachelor”-like dating show — did not go unpraised. (It won a Peabody Award this year, along with “Mr. Robot.”) But it didn’t quite get the same instant buzz and upgrade to cultural-obsession status.

Maybe it didn’t check enough of the usual prestige-television boxes. Its aesthetics were more conventional, its narrative less of a puzzle box. And its subject matter — a feminist TV producer becomes disturbingly good at making misogynist entertainment — wasn’t in the bellicose, dudely mode of dark cable drama.

But “UnREAL” was every bit as provocative and daring, and more complex in its moral shadings. It was both a workplace power drama and a laser-focused work of media criticism. Returning for Season 2 on Monday, “UnREAL” remains one of TV’s most sharp-minded and -tongued escapes, a heart-shaped box full of chocolate and razor blades.

As we rejoin Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby), she’s ascended to “Everlasting” showrunner, replacing her mentor, Quinn King (Constance Zimmer, a virtuoso of caustic one-liners), who in turn has replaced Chet Wilton (Craig Bierko), the über-producer — and her onetime lover — who built his empire using her original idea for the series.

Like any good reality show, “UnREAL” has come back with a Surprising! New! Twist! The twist’s name is Darius Beck (B. J. Britt), a pro-football quarterback cast as the first African-American suitor on “Everlasting.” “He’s not that black,” Quinn assures a network executive. “He’s, like, football black.”

Fake reality is ahead of real reality here; “The Bachelor” has yet to cast a black star. (Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, who created “UnREAL” with Marti Noxon, was a producer on that ABC show, and “Everlasting” mirrors it right down to its unctuous human stock photo of a host.)

The first season of “UnREAL” was frank about how black women usually get ditched early on dating shows — in “Everlasting” lingo, they’re not “wifeys.” Darius’s casting complicates the racial dynamic, at least to the extent that the producers are now open to the possibility of a black wifey, or “blifey.” In the “Everlasting” kingdom, that amounts to progress.

What doesn’t change is the way the producers reduce a new crop of young women to elevator pitches: the “angry black woman” (a college activist); the “terrorist” (a woman of Pakistani heritage whom the producers pressure to wear a head scarf on camera, though she doesn’t in real life); the “hot racist” (cast because she went viral on Instagram wearing a Confederate-flag bikini).

It’s all terrible, of course. Rachel knows it. She also knows that she’s terrific at it. And Ms. Appleby is terrific at playing her as a gunslinger of manipulation, all the better at finding subjects’ psychic weak spots because of her own history of mental illness and breakdowns. She’s a toughened scar and a raw wound.



Power, on “UnREAL,” involves a kind of unprotected intimacy; you have to risk infection. During the first season, Rachel had an illicit romance with the season’s suitor, a media-savvy British royal with a P.R. problem; for each of them, the relationship was genuine and a means of control. Just as on “Everlasting,” any relationship on “UnREAL” can be sincere and calculated at the same time.

“UnREAL” achieves the ambition of a premium-cable drama using the tools of basic cable. The direction isn’t cinematic, but it’s complex, especially the scenes involving the chaos of shooting. Simultaneous dramas unfold in front of the reality-TV cameras and behind them: romances, betrayals, competition among both the cast and the producers.

Minus a few obscenities, the show’s dialogue has the military-grade precision of “Veep,” another show about coal-hearted workaholics. When the young producer Madison (Genevieve Buechner) has trouble getting a contestant to open up on camera, Rachel is unmoved: “Tell her your mother died or something,” she says. “My mom did die,” Madison answers. “There you go!” Rachel says. “Use that!”

The first season had a weakness for over-the-top twists and it drew some supporting characters broadly; Chet still seems to be on a different, more satirical show. (He’s become a men’s-rights fanatic after going on a “Paleolithic lifestyle retreat.”)

But “UnREAL” generally avoids straw men and straw bachelorettes. What might have been a self-satisfied smackdown of reality TV and its audience has become a challenging and delectably entertaining drama about power and deception, idealism and cynicism.

Is making history by casting Darius worth repeating history by setting up another cast of women to be edited into wifeys and tramps? That’s what Rachel tells herself. But we know by now how great she is at spinning fairy tales.