Commentary

Nothing Is Sacred As 'UnREAL' Returns For Its Second Season

The Lifetime series “UnREAL” loses none of its punch in its second season, and actually succeeds in upping the ante.

In the show -- which returns for Season 2 on Monday night (June 6) – the show within the show is also returning for another season, with twists and turns that are intended to improve on last season’s version. 

Don’t be confused -- it’s really rather simple. “UnREAL” is an over-the-top scripted satire of an unscripted reality TV show inspired by real shows such as “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” It’s not a satire in the comedic sense. It is a deadly serious but exaggerated take on the way some TV shows are made. And like any effective satire, within its exaggerations lies the truth.

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In “UnREAL,” the reality-relationship show is called “Everlasting.” As you might expect, “Everlasting” features a group of young women from various diverse backgrounds all living in a mansion where they are supposed to be competing for the love of one man, called “the suitor” on the show.

As the second season of “UnREAL” begins, the new season of “Everlasting” is also taking shape. This season’s gimmick is the casting of the show’s first-ever African-American suitor. He also happens to be a well-known professional quarterback (not a real one) who recently got in hot water when he was videotaped calling a white female sportscaster a “bitch” while she interviewed him on-camera.

The producers of “Everlasting” persuaded him to do their show because they said it would help rehabilitate his public image -- a benefit they themselves don’t believe will ever actually occur. Or at the very least, they’re not designing their show with this outcome in mind.

Instead, they have cast the show with only one goal -- creating as much conflict in the mansion as they can. “We’re not camp counselors. We don’t solve problems. We create them, and then point cameras at them,” says the showrunner, Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby), when bawling out a young, green producer in need of toughening up.

In Season 1, Goldberg was a producer on the way up. In Season 2, she is in charge of the show, but still reporting to her same boss, Quinn King (Constance Zimmer), who formerly ran the show but has now been promoted.

Quinn seems to be the mastermind behind the casting of a black suitor, about which her network overseers have doubts. But Quinn wins them over by convincing them they will reap riches from the cast of characters on this year’s show, with all of its racial overtones. 

“The minute he lays black hands on a white ass, Twitter will melt down!” she promises in a phone call to one antsy network exec. “And the girls,” she continues. “We have a hot racist [pictured above wearing a Confederate “stars and bars” bikini], an even hotter black activist power person, a clergy and we have a terrorist. They will be at each other’s throats from Night 1! It will be a ratings bonanza.”

“Or,” she says, knowing that she’s about to win this argument, “I can just get you another small-dicked white boy from Missouri with a bunch of horny kindergarten teachers.”

Offensive? Yes, definitely -- but at least you can say that no one -- and no group -- goes unscathed in “UnREAL,” especially those toiling in the TV business. The show depicts an industry that has become so splintered and competitive that standards and taboos once held sacred have been shattered and, as a result, completely removed from the equation.

Is that last statement satire or reality? “UnREAL” has you asking that question from the very first minute.  

Season 2 of “UnREAL” starts Monday (June 6) at 10 p.m. Eastern on Lifetime.

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