‘UnREAL’ premiere review: Did you fall in love with ‘Everlasting’?

We have already written an advance review for Lifetime’s new series “UnREAL,” and if you read that (we’ll have a link at the bottom of the article), then you already know that we gave the Constance Zimmer – Shiri Appleby series an A- for being one of the most skilled dramatic satires that we’ve seen. The fact that it is taking on an institution like “The Bachelor” is really just a plus.

We want to focus more in this article on the story of the show more so than some of the technical things the show is doing right. We have a complicated female lead here in Rachel (Appleby), an employee on the TV series “Everlasting” … and has a history of things going wrong with it. She famously had a meltdown that led to her leaving the show for a stretch of time, but is now in a position where she is almost forced to earn her redemption there. The problem is that her boss Quinn (Zimmer) is for the most part a pretty terrible human being. She has no real interest in doing the right thing; instead, she mostly just wants to create good TV.

Throughout the premiere, Quinn deliberately set out to embarrass many of the women who were there to impress leading man Adam, the son of a British tycoon who is mostly just putting on a good face for the sake of having a good image in the public. Many of his decisions through the reality show reinforced that, including keeping the awkward Faith, who had been pegged as a night-one trainwreck.

While Rachel makes it through the first night of working on this new season, there are some cracks forming in the foundation already. Also, it would be somewhat hilarious if Adam ends up wanting to be with her more than anyone else.

Through the first episode, the show has succeeded in giving you a variety of interesting different characters to watch out for, and even some (such as the “villain” exiting night one) that were great for just the small dose that they were handed to us in.