UnReal Review: All In / Double Down (Season 4 Episodes 1 and 2)

In a shocking reveal, pulled from the scripts of Everlasting itself, UnREAL surprise dropped ALL of its fourth and final season on Hulu!

The faux-reality show binge has us gasping, and that’s before the opening credits roll.

UnREALSeason 4 Episode 1, “All In,” and UnREAL Season 4 Episode 2, “Double Down,” unveil an aggressively anti-single Rachel and a Quinn who is breaking all the UnREAL norms by being happy in a relationship outside the show.

Each of the two protagonists on the show poke and peel at the central question of the episodes, and perhaps the series: can a real woman ever be a wifey?

As that question specifically applies to our matriarchs: can a woman with a history of childhood sexual trauma and a woman who works like a man, ever get and keep wifey status?

The episodes begin to ask, and hopefully by the end of Season 4 finish asking, how can women who don’t fit into the mold of a wifey overcome misogyny, internalized and externalized, to find their happily ever after?

That is certainly a question that 2018 has brought to me as a non-wifey woman, and I am as excited to explore that question as I am to get into The Challenge-esque drama of Everlasting All-Stars. 

The House Always Quinns

Quinn King laughs. There, hunched over the toilet in the same position as when she was in the throes of her August-induced UTI, she gives out the best reaction to a double-pink line I have seen in a long while.

Quinn’s outburst of incredulous laughter is all of our reaction. Are you kidding? A pregnancy?! That is the most tired storyline in the book. It is absurd and head-shaking hilarious.

It is a plot development that not only is unneeded drama for a season that is mixing it up in a big way for the contestants, it has already been explored for her character in Season 2. Quinn being pregnant is truly unreal.

And yet, I kind of love it.

It is exactly the kind of thing Quinn and Rachel would turn from predictable and boring into ratings gold. So, let’s see what Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, Stacy Rukeyser and David Isreal (who writes three episodes and co-executive produces on the season) can do with a Quinn pregnancy. I’m all in.

This show, like Quinn and Rachel with Everlasting, never folds.

UnREAL — “All In” – Episode 401 – Quinn King (Constance Zimmer) shown. (Photo by: Bettina Strauss/Hulu)

I don’t love that Quinn is pitted against all the other women on “All In” and “Double Down.” The way Season 3 left off, Quinn had staged a successful coup to oust the patriarchy personified, Gary.

While I enjoy the construct of an absent Quinn to force Rachel to explain what’s been happening between seasons, it doesn’t need to be a thing. And Fiona’s roasting of Quinn, followed by her sending in Madison to be the network bad-guy, is disappointing.

Fiona hates Chet, but that was never the most interesting thing about her relationship with Quinn. It would be MUCH more fascinating to see a queer woman of color sitting in the producers’ box, vying with Rachel to impress Quinn. Even better, I’d love to see Fiona producing contestants.

Instead, we see Quinn punished by people whose careers she has made happen because she took a vacation.

I would like a good four or five episodes of the women leaders on the show working together to make Everlasting All-Stars great. I want to see them one-upping each other in wild ideas, not under-cutting and censoring each other.

The first two episodes feature women at odds, and it’s the weakest thing about the season.

Queen of Diamonds

Rachel is looking for a diamond to prove Jeremy, and her mother, wrong: she will NOT end up alone!

Rachel’s determination to close on a relationship gives us the creepiest version of her yet. Her blonde hair, glossy clothes, and flirty eyes are somehow nauseating.

It’s fascinating, though, to realize that Tommy is right. Rachel can get anyone to bed, but she doesn’t know what relationship looks like. Her connections with Adam, Jeremy, and Coleman were all about seduction and escape. Now, she’s trying to find something “real” and her over-eager lusting after August reveals she has no clue how to do that.

New Shrink’s words echo from Season 3—Rachel does not have any deep friendships. Friendship is really the basis for a long-lasting romance. It is the root of Chet and Quinn’s connection.

Rachel can manipulate people’s emotions, but that is far from the same thing as having them herself. Rachel is very ill-equipped for friendship, especially with men.

She is playing a game that she is bound to lose because she doesn’t have a full deck. “All In” and “Double Down” do a good job of showcasing the limitations of Rachel’s charms and just how clueless she is about relationships.

The first two episodes also do a solid job of providing women contestants who each stand for a different way Rachel is not good enough to be a wifey.

Candy Coco stands for how Rachel is too slutty.  Noelle stands for how Rachel is too gullible.  Sofia stands for how Rachel is too eager.  Maya stands for how Rachel is too damaged by her past.  Rachel is too much to be a wifey.

There is no actual wifey on the season, and I love that. It is all about exploring how women are told they aren’t good enough for a happy ending.

I am especially interested in how Candy Coco and Maya’s characters develop.

Maya was raped by Roger in Season 1. Rape stories are difficult to get right. But, I think it is very important to see how the characters work through the issue of sexual violence.

That being said, I do not care to see that go forward in a significant way if Quinn and Rachel are not on the same page. They need to be cohesive in their approach to telling Maya’s story for it to go well.

Maya is more a proxy for who Rachel is than Serena ever was. I hope that Rachel experiences healing through Maya’s story, even though her callous disregard for Maya’s emotional well-being hints that I am living in a dream world, not the UnREAL one.

Russian Roulette

Even Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman’s excellent screen presence cannot bring me to care about Jay’s coke addiction storyline.

Jay is witty, catty, romantic, loyal, and fun. There is no way that in eight episodes, on a season where Quinn is pregnant and Rachel is blonde, Jay’s drug addiction is going to get the development it would need to be good.

Already, it is pretty much the only thing of note about Jay this season, other than his vanity plates.

Quinn even says:

Have you been standing there the whole time?

It is like he is invisible.

Jay is not given anything to do so far this season. It is a shame because his dynamic with Rachel and Madison is far more compelling than his sad, but so yesterday, relationship with Alexi.

When Quinn pulls a fast one and gets Alexi to come on Everlasting All-Stars (which, why the heck didn’t Jay think of that? Wasn’t he getting Rachel’s emails too?), I would have liked to see Jay go into producer mode and push Quinn’s concepts even higher.

Jay and Candy Coco would make an excellent pair and the yacht scenes were ripe for Jay’s picking. Yet, Jay is limited to his high anxiety freaking out over Alexi.

Jay and Fiona are both pulling double duty as the only people of color and LGBTQ characters on the show. Both of them should be given storylines that are central to the episode and season. So far, their stories are in the shadows.

Ace in the Hole

I don’t mean to gush (okay, that’s a lie, all I mean to do is gush) but wow, Tommy is a fantastic addition to the show.

Francois Arnaud’s intensely sexy voice and eye smolder are rich in a way that none of the other one season characters were. Tommy’s chemistry with Rachel is off the charts and it is so fun to see them teasing each other and leaning into the producing madness with equal commitment.

Neither have scruples, both have charm. Wow, do I want them to bang or what!

Tommy is more than a love interest for Rachel though. As Arnaud is playing him, Tommy grounds Rachel and us viewers. There is something about the writing for his character and the delivery of those lines that makes the completely ridiculous seem quite normal.

I adore all the complex and wild aspects of UnREAL. But, sometimes the Jerry Springer-ness of it all can make the emotion of the scenes detached. For me, Tommy brings the show back down to earth, without spoiling any of the fun.

It is delicious to see an outsider come in and actually get a thrill from figuring out Rachel and Quinn. Crucially, he doesn’t think he is better than them. He doesn’t want to take their power. He just wants to be able to play with them.

The sexual attraction between Tommy and Rachel is very strong, but it isn’t weak between Tommy and Quinn! A non-threatening male producer in the mix (who isn’t sidelined by a B plot like Jay) is an intriguing development.

The threesome of Quinn, Rachel, and Tommy feels vintage UnREAL, and it’s my favorite thing about Season 4 so far.

Real Talk

• I live for Quinn’s zings to Graham. How great would it be if we saw some old tape from a very early season of Everlasting where Quinn and Graham hook up? The greatest. It would be the greatest.
• Dan telling Rachel he should have called and Rachel agreeing he should have is gold. Pure gold.
• Jay gets a couple of nice digs on the episodes. My favorite is: “Did the chemicals from your highlights seep into your soul?”
• Tommy suggests that Quinn let him add a little blood to the show. Tommy has no idea how much blood, menstrual and otherwise, has already been spilled on Everlasting. That ignorance makes me giddy.
• Quinn’s laugh deserves an Emmy.
• People keep saying that the million dollar prize has changed the play on the show, but I don’t see that yet. I want to be shown, not told, that the competition is more intense.
• I thought I would miss Jeremy, but I don’t miss him at all. I DO miss Snake Madison. Corporate Madison is quite the bore.

What did you think of this episode of UnREAL? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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UnREAL Season 4 is available now on Hulu.

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