Wonderful! - Roze Buddiez: UnReal

Episode Date: July 5, 2016

There wasn't a new episode of The Bachelorette last night, which is REAL COOL, ABC. COOL STUFF. Not like our whole enterprise depends on you creating and publishing new content, or anything. Anyways, we're talking about the next best thing on today's episode: The television show UnReal, one of our favorite franchises on the Lifetime network. MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Maybe you should go and do some contemplating. Right reasons, right reasons, being with your girl for all the right reasons. Right reasons, right reasons, being with your girl for all the right reasons. I'm the best rep and I'm rapping to your poolside. Here to find true love. Can we get started? Yeah, do it. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy.

Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Rose Buddies. Today, we will not go quietly into that. Good night. We will stand strong with Randy Quaid in our airplanes. And we're going to just beat these aliens' butts. Because it's Independence Day. Today, we celebrate our independence from a new episode of The Bachelorette.

Because they apparently, they didn't let us know this. And this is the problem with doing a pop culture based podcast, which is what I'm calling it now. A podcast? A popcast based on the culture of pop. They just don't let you know.

Like, hey Griffin, hey Rachel, it's me, Elon Musk. That's not the guy's name, but you know who I'm talking about. Hey, just wanted to give you guys a heads up.

I know you do a podcast, pop cast about our uh television program we're not gonna have one for you this week turns out the people at abc are really concerned that there's a lot of crossover between fireworks viewers and fireworks viewers on reality television now you said fireworks there as though you were doing some if you were using illusion or something like that. There's also literal ass fireworks on every I know. That's why I was saying Oh, I see what you're saying. There's contractually

obligated explosions in the sky. Why would you go to a large field that would be crowded and full of people to watch fireworks when you could just sit at home and watch them on television and watch jojo fletcher and watch two people who aren't in love miss each other while everybody's favorite band tony tony tony plays a special song now oh i'm sorry guys i know

but one of them changed their name to tony tony so they kept the original um so what what what the fuck are we listening to you guys for you say to us first of all calm down i'm not we're gonna stop the show if you're gonna come at us with that kind of yeah please don't swear we we at least i try very hard not to swear on this show when you do it's so good though um we're gonna talk about a thing that we've kind of danced around for a long time that we're going to dive into. And I estimate this is going to be like maybe a 15 minute episode. We just like there's so many weeks where we don't put anything up or we were super late last week. I know. Yeah. About it. Anyway, we're going to talk about an old television show on the Lifetime

Network. And I know you're wondering which one? Which one of the amazing television programs on the Lifetime? Can you think, gun to your head, million dollar briefcase in front of you? Could you name even one? No. Could not. Couldn't name? They did all the Flowers in the Attic movies with Heather Graham.

How do you know this? Because we saw a commercial for, apparently they made four of these fucking things. I mean, they make tons of original movies. Original television is a pretty new thing for them. How did they get it in one? I feel like them and AMC did some mystic shit where it's just like, we're going to just do one show and it's going to be legit. Well, AMC has a couple.

AMC has a couple now, but when they broke off Breaking Bad, it was just whoa what's it on and mad men mad men yeah anyway we're talking about unreal unreal and this show is it's unreal that's that should be the tagline unreal and then underneath that it really is you think they ever thought about calling it Everlasting? That would be a better name for it, I think. I had wondered about that. Because Unreal, that could be about anything. Because it is a show that is a fictional account of the creation of a, not even Bachelor-like, the fucking Bachelor. It's the Bachelor and bachelorette many of the writers on the show are former writers for reality dating shows which we assume they were on what were they on uh uh

they were on please marry my boy take me out take me out there please marry my boy flavor love paradise hotel 2 but not paradise hotel 1. No. The lost season. The forbidden season of Paradise Hotel. None of the writers from that are still alive. That's true. There was a hurricane wiped Paradise Hotel right off the map. Sunk it like Atlantis. We're going to have to Google and make sure that that's a funny joke and not true. Not true.

Unreal is about a fictional reality dating show called Everlasting. That is, note for note, it is The Bachelor and Bachelorette. Yes. And it's about the creation of that show specifically it is about uh the the main character is uh well in the first season kind of an associate producer named rachel that's fun because that's your name that is my name do you ever think about that like when they because there's like mad rachel's out there and on television.

I mean, friends. You had a friend named after you, babe. I know. There was never like a, hi, I'm Griffin. I just moved in next door. Has there ever been a Griffin on television? I mean, the whole fucking family guy. Just the whole family guy. Oh, well, it's the last name, though.

It's enough to be in college. Yeah, that's awful. Like Stewie Griffin? That's pretty awful. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's it. You got it. You got it. But there's like stewie griffin that's pretty awful i'm sorry yeah that's it you got it you got it um but there's like bunches of rachel's out there and when like sometimes when you watch friends are you just like what was that what'd you say

oh dang it it was chandler again why do you say his name that way i don't know doing it he called me out earlier this weekend for it and i was like yeah that is weird and then i just it's not an affectation it's just how i say the name chandler bianc um well i love your american chandler bianc rachel has been a popular name my whole life so it's yes i i could handle it we're talking about shiri Appleby. What's her story? I know that our friend Bristol is very much into Shiri Appleby. Oh, she was on, shoot, like a really popular teen show.

A show with teens on it. Degrassi? No. It's like a CW or WB. Degrassi the Next Generation. One Tree Hill. Is that right? Or are you just guessing?

I'm guessing. I know that One tree hill is like one of them uh roswell roswell that explains why bristol likes it yes um shiri appleby plays rachel uh an associate producer on the television show everlasting which is uh run by uh quinn a powerful woman played by constant zimmer who i have loved in like everything she's done uh she was fantastic she had a fantastic turn in the newsroom um she was also in shit but yeah so what the first season of unreal which we did not watch in real time but watched once it was available for purchase uh and i believe it was on hulu for a while though i'm not

sure that it still is um She was also on Boston Legal. She was in House of Cards. Remember she played the one journalist in House of Cards that doesn't go to jail or get killed? Yeah. Yeah, she's been in a lot of stuff. And I'm glad she has a thing that's like, I think qualifies as a breakout role for her. I've been a fan of hers for a while. She's fantastic.

out role of for her i've been a fan of hers for a while she's fantastic uh so yeah she is in charge of the show along with a guy named chet who's my least favorite thing about the television show but we can dig into that later um and it is a fictional account they they the creators of the show have been really wise in that um they've talked about how this is not a parody it's not a send up of the bachelor and bachelorette yeah they don't say it's a direct one-to-one comparison they say they take a lot of influences from various reality shows what i've read the the way they phrase it is that the they've borrowed the wallpaper that is like the set dressing and and the sort of universe it takes place in uh is the bachelor is the bachelor but everything that happens in that universe is like complete fantasy make-believe the the similarities are i mean there's there's a

bachelor there's a mansion there are women competing for the bachelor and then there's a lot of producer manipulation yeah of the contestants and the structure of the fictional show is the structure of the bachelor bachelorette of The Bachelor or Bachelorette. There are one-on-ones, there are group dates, there are... They don't give out roses, though. No, they give out little bracelets. Yeah. But those are the elimination ceremonies,

and then it gets down to a proposal and then potentially a wedding. Let's talk about some things that the show gets right in terms of aping The Bachelor and Bachelorette. Before we dive into, like, what the story of the show is. Okay. Um, let's talk about, like, what, what stuff works and what stuff doesn't. Because, um, I think there's equal amounts of each.

Um, I think there's plenty of reading material about this, by the way, from people who have been, like, on The Bachelor and Bachelorette talking about, like, what is true and what is not. Let's talk about the categorization of the contestants so i feel like unreal gave us a lot of vocabulary to talk about the bachelor and bachelorette that we hadn't previously used nasty nasty vocabulary because the the vocabulary that rachel's talking about is the creators and producers and manipulators of the show talking about the women contestants because we're on the second season now but it's not the bachelorette it is just another season of the bachelor so it's just a big group of women contestants but they categorize them in these you

know different categories like the wifey or you know the the woman that's going to start a bunch or some less-than-PC terminology for minorities. Yeah. And as cruel as the fictional world of Unreal can be, the similarities, at least in the first season, the second season's a whole other kettle of fish, because the second season features a black black bachelor which is obviously never happened in in real life um but but they deal with the fact that like uh women of color don't make it very far yeah they address that head on men of color also do not do that and and those those

characters in the show are like fully cognizant of that, and it fucking sucks, and they're really, you know, they're upset by that fact, and fully cognizant, like, there is no, they talk about, like, oh, well, on this show, people of color don't make it very far. Yep, that's true. That is how it happens. things they i think they get really correct they they really get the sense of of winning across that a lot of times the contestants and the bachelor are not falling in love they recognize that there is a dramatic element to the show and everybody's just trying to get further in their career or their personal ambitions sure yeah i think that's i think that is on point i don't know that that aspect in reality is quite as crass as the show yeah it's definitely elevated on the show because in the show both of the

bachelors both the bachelor for season one and the bachelor for season two have been like there for to use bachelor's parlance completely the wrong reasons absolutely the wrong reasons basically like pr image repair um what unreal gets right is the categorization of contestants for narrative building that's legit like everything i've read i've read a couple like interviews with uh people producers and contestants on the show who've requested anonymity and that that narrative building exists because that that is the show like that is undeniable there are wifeys there are yeah husbandos or whatever the way the way unreal sets it up is that every contestant has a folder with kind of all of their deepest darkest secrets in it and they choose at different

points in the season when to exploit so that now we're getting it but that's something else i'm talking about the categorization of like the labels right oh yeah because we could do we shit on both seasons of this show that we've done this podcast for we've done that episode one yeah like oh jordan rogers yeah he's gonna win lauren b oh my gosh lauren was the clearest one i've seen in a long time yeah absolutely luke like sexy make out heartthrob bro probably not for sure chad not a husband chad villain gonna build definitely yeah like those those labels they do talk a lot about the villains on unreal those labels exist in real life and they i think inform in in some small degree how things shake out maybe not 100 of the time because you look at ben flujanik's season villain

won that one and there have been other seasons where that has also been true so it's not like the producers say okay this woman's going to win the show or this guy's going to win the show um and then that's how it shakes out because sometimes it doesn't shake out like that but that categorization has to exist the amount of producer manipulation in unreal is clown town. Yeah. Like, in the first season... Let's put it like kind of a broad

spoiler. There's one thing that happens in the first season that's like bonkers and if you haven't seen the show... Well, I can talk about it generally. Yes. I'm not gonna reveal the big climax. Okay. I'm just going to say, for example, there's a contestant on the first season who we find out is on medication for some mental health issues.

She is bipolar. And there are scenes where the producer is deliberately withholding medication so that she'll be more volatile. Not only that, sneaking into her room and then popping open her pill capsules and then taking the powder contents out and replacing them with... Like, that's batshit. Like, no Unreal. Yeah. That's the point where, like,

I feel like Unreal almost got that silly to further distinguish itself as a completely fictional product. The very same contestant who on the show they brought back her abusive ex-husband. Yeah, that contestant goes through a lot. So that's another thing about Unreal that you need to sort of confront up front. And that is that the show is comprised entirely of garbage people. Yeah. To an extent where like, boy howdy.

In the first season, at least there was a bit of, not moral ambiguity. The things they were doing were decidedly horrible. But they felt bad about doing them. Season two is just a no holds barred, just fest yeah and it's hard to watch if you're somebody and i think griffin and i are similar at least i think so where it's difficult to watch shows where the characters are completely unlikable yeah it's it's it's tough right and it's got to be good it has to if you're doing a show where every character is despicable, like Breaking Bad, it's one of my favorite shows ever. Walter White, pretty shitty dude.

Like, when you look at the grand palette of things he's done. Yeah, they have to make some badass moves, right? They have to make some badass moves, and they have to be at least a little bit sympathetic. You have to be rooting for them. Yeah. Rachel as a character, for example, I had a really hard time with and continue to have a hard time with. Because not only does she consistently make the wrong choice, she makes the worst choice. The worst possible choice at any juncture.

She's also an incredible manipulator of contestants. And you see her, when she's backed up against the wall, make these moves that just show that she's just like a brilliant strategist. So the whole show is that but it is also the thing that is more fascinating to me is the relationship between her and quinn yeah who was in her shoes that's constant zimmer's character um who has this like um they have like a mother-daughter sort of relationship i think it like it's certainly a teacher pupil relationship as she is like bringing her back for redemption uh before the first season of unreal uh in in the narrative of the show rachel has this like breakdown during the finale

of the previous season and was like hugely publicly embarrassed but gets brought back in by quinn um to do some do some good work um and the really the the show is all about their relationship and there's some like genuinely amazing moments the end of the first season like the last line of the first season was so like the it's all about their relationship was so like powerful and and there were a lot of things that i was expecting this show to be and like emotionally gripping was not one of them but the show got me there just and that's weird to say because throughout that first season those two character those two characters did some horrible shit like really rotten stuff yeah yeah i think so what's interesting about rachel's character is that we we're set up to believe you know that she in college she was a feminist she went to i believe

vassar yeah uh and had these kind of grand ambitions of being like a documentarian and has a lot of personal conflict over being on this show that can be really degrading for women. So in the first season, especially, you kind of watch her wrestle with, this is work that I'm good at, and I know how to do, and I can do well, but it also makes me a terrible person. The second season, she is kind of the one that spearheads this initiative to have a black bachelor, which in the fiction of Unreal, it's also the first time that that has happened. And so her whole thing is, you know, having like this positive black role model on television.

Although, like, by this point, you have to know that her motives are not like altruistic probably at all at this point um yeah she thinks that she's gonna get to take over the show that that when the second season starts her and quinn have really taken ownership of the show yes and that she r, is going to be in the driver's seat. We haven't talked about this. It's a good show. It's a surprisingly good show. We are now in the second season of the show, and I don't think it is as good as it once was. Or at least I am not finding it as entertaining. I think if you watch The Bachelor and you watch The Bachelorette, watch the first season of Unreal.

Lifetime has an app on the uh apple tv and the first season of unreal did used to be on hulu i don't know if it's i don't know if it's still there um but if you've watched those shows it's worth watching because it's like there is no other television show like it in the sense that there is no um i mean you have stuff like the hot lives of orlando and burning love which we should also do an episode on because we should rachel and i discovered and watched all three seasons of burning love in maybe a five-day span it is fucking hysterical so funny but this this this show is unlike any other show in that it is a like more accurate less jokey although it is it sometimes like pretty funny uh uh show about another real life television show that is still currently about it there there are shows that

griffin and i have really liked at least at various points in their longevity and i think for example west wing and newsroom they're kind of procedural shows in that you know you know that something needs to happen and we're going to show you all the steps it takes to get there unreal has that quality yeah where it's like we know we have to put an episode out let's figure out how to do it and tell an exciting story and you get to watch that happen a lot in the first season that's the weird that's the weird thing and it's it's not weird it's it is the show and it's genius and it works really well we talked about like what it takes for you to root for a character who is doing bad things is the way unreal does that is you want them to make a good-ass television show yeah and

that's like what's interesting about that is that is the motivation of the characters in the show as well is that they want to just like make the best season of everlasting that's ever been made um so when they can you know when rachel can manipulate somebody to say like the one thing that you as a bachelor bachelor reviewer know would be on every promo for that season. But in doing so, like, brings a contestant to tears. Yeah. Another example is on the first season, there's a contestant whose father is in the hospital. Yes. And they withhold that information because she's a wifey and they

want her to stay on the show yeah and then when they do tell her he's already passed away yeah that's what that's a good example rachel of like the depths of depravity that we are talking yeah um it's like really really horrible stuff and the characters are irredeemably, almost at times comically evil. Especially in this second season. And it's one of the reasons why The Shine is coming a little bit off the apple for me. I still really enjoy watching it. But the things they are doing now, the ratio of the amount that they benefit the show to the amount that they ruin another person's life has gotten like this will be like a good three seconds of video in this

one episode but it's going to like destroy this person let's do it anyway isn't this fun the second season is more about Quinn and Rachel and Chet's kind of personal ambition yeah

and and all of a sudden this show that that at least rachel seemed to be kind of conflicted about is now something that she's just hungry for and everybody is is fighting to own this show yeah there's more about the behind the scenes of the behind the scenes show unreal whereas the first season is very much just about the behind the scenes show unreal i'm gonna let how about a special guest spot from cecil who just fucking hates all these fireworks gang cecil what do you think about unreal come on in um so i wanted to share around this time last year chris harrison did an interview with Variety magazine. Oh, no. And he was asked how he felt about Unreal.

And he gives the least diplomatic response I've ever heard Chris Harrison give. Anytime Chris Harrison is asked a question, he always sits right on that fence. But this time, he says, it's complete fiction. As much as they would love to jump on our coattails, they were begging for us to talk about it and for people to write about it. At the end of the day, no one is watching. I mean, absolutely no one is watching that show. Damn, Chris. Why? It is terrible. It is really terrible.

Now, I can get why you'd be salty, right? Because it is a show that makes the creators of the show Bachelorette, the fictional Bachelorette, seem like they are the devil. Well, he talks about he has really nice things to say about, for example, when they do little parodies on Saturday Night Live or even he he says nice stuff about burning love, too. But he he says as far as as the parody that is unreal, he says, you only do that when you're part of the vernacular because if not, you can't make a joke. It's a sign of respect. The way that Unreal took it, it wasn't a sign of respect. They were trying to take it in another

direction, but it doesn't work that way. Unreal is just a really bad attempt, and they got what they deserved, and that is no one is watching this show. Chris, they got a second season, bud. It's got like a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, bud. I know. You know what I think it is? So the other thing that Unreal gets wrong, at least from our perspective...

In a major way. Oh, man. They make the host on their Everlasting show seem like such a tool. Like, totally brainless puppet that brings no value to the show like just cheesy like really cheesy charisma yeah like a really cheesy like radio dj like that level of charisma uh which is like no sense of humor no sense of like what is good television or interesting yeah i think i think the fictional creators of the bachelor bachelorette and in the world of unreal like don't get a very good portrayal um which like i get imagine like you do a very very specific job and somebody makes

a movie or a tv show about that job that makes you have to look like an asshole i get why you'd be salty about it i think chris harrison's fictional counterpart maybe cast the worst light on him than anybody else um yeah and unlike burning love or center live where it seems like comedians who actually kind of love the television show unreal isn't isn't making a show to make like a fan tribute to the franchise. They're making a dark complex show. Yeah everybody on Burning Love. And there's so many funny people on it. Like you can tell like. Most if not all of them like watch.

The show and like. Or at least did before they made Burning Love. Whereas Unreal is just like. That is not the case. Which is like. I think that's pretty sick. Like, I think that's awesome that they have made a show like that. And I get why the actual creators of The Bachelor or Bachelorette would be like bummed out about it.

But like, is there another show like that that exists where it is like another kind of behind the scenes take on how another show gets made that doesn't make it out to seem like beautiful challenging glorious satisfying art there was studio 60 on the sunset strip is what i was thinking of but even that is just like that is that whole very short-lived series before it got like before they tried to crush like five seasons worth of story into like one half of a season um that series was aaron sorkin building a shrine to saturday night live that was aaron sorkin like right talking about like and it was good i i liked studio 60 i think a lot more than most people did but it made it like i've talked about this before and this is gonna sound like maybe I shouldn't talk about it on the podcast but I have literal dreams sometimes that I'm a writer for SNL

and I have it a lot and I feel like that comes from a lifetime of like growing up like idolizing comedy stuff and I think that show is very much a byproduct of that where it's just like just a bunch of like really good really funny friends just scrapping it out week by week

to make a really funny show despite the fact that the fictional saturday night live on studio 16 the sunset strip was like never funny yeah that was weird wasn't it not even a little bit funny like antagonistically unfunny that's a real clear indicator that aaron sorkin's sense of humor isn't as good as we maybe think it is the The show was great. The show within a show was miserable. But regardless, that show, like canonized Saturday Night Live and the process that goes into making Saturday Night Live. It was a friction free, like, biography, if you want to call it that, where like, the characters would, you know, there's like some weird drug subplot maybe there was you know a few things here and there a few points of friction but it wasn't like the writers

completely exploiting the actors or each other or like and unreal is just like unreal takes it in a direction that is so far in the opposite direction where it uh is so wildly negative a portrayal of what goes into making this show that it is actually even less accurate i think because while they definitely like split the uprights on on some of the um like some of the little like notes that do go into making a bachelor a bachelorette show like the comedically like mustache twirlingly evil shit that some of the people do on this show is is is um just just so goofy sometimes but it's good yeah it's one of those shows i don't know that i'd 100 recommend it to anybody and everybody um but it's definitely worth talking about because it if you start to really love not just the bachelor and bachelorette for kind of the

the guilty pleasure of it but but thinking about the real workings of how this show gets made yeah then you will probably like unreal as a woman yes do you find it empowering or do you find it gross because i could see it going either way because you do have the two like super strong characters of quinn and maybe to a slightly lesser extent rachel but then you have like 20 women contestants on the show who are, I mean, some of them make some big moves. There's some actually really, really, they're not treated as, like, dumb extras. There are some, like, characters in the first season

that are relatable and get, like, a lot of screen time and are really interesting. There is a lesbian character in the first season of Unreal, which was, like, my favorite subplot. And the episode about the episode about her is like, that's just fucking amazing television. But like a lot of the women are treated really horribly. Well,

even if, okay. So even if we just talk about Quinn and Rachel, who are clearly supposed to be kind of the boss women on the show. The second season opens up with them getting tattoos that say money, dick, power. Yeah, they get them on their wrists. It's fucking incredible. Can I get one of those?

I think so. All right. Here's the problem that I always have when they have a strong female character. I can tell that I'm supposed to be empowered as a feminist because here's this character who knows what she wants, does whatever it takes to get it, and doesn't get discouraged or feel burdened by femininity. And if anything, uses femininity as a tool for manipulation. Here's the problem I have over and over again. And I can only think of maybe one or two female characters that go against this. But these like, for example, Quinn and Rachel, it's like you can't have a strong lady character in a show who also has her shit together.

And the only characters I can think of that don't kind of fit that mold, for example, are like CJ Craig on The West Wing. Like, she gets emotional and she gets upset, but because she's human, not because she's like a woman who, you know, has some kind of disturbed outlook. outlook yeah no i think it's rare that you have a character who is a woman who is when men are empowered in television shows which is to say i'll love them um they don't also have some fatal flaw some like major some major character flaw that makes them uh i i mean here's the thing sometimes they do and that's a good character um but i know i recognize that characters have to be complicated and they have to have obstacles or else they're not interesting but it's just there's this female character out there now who is is getting labeled as a feminist character and so i know i'm supposed to be excited and part of me is because it is nice

to see a woman who's just not only talking about you know getting her romantic interest you know or worried that she's not married to that extent quinn is like the most hard ass i i love the way i think that the way that they handle quinn's romantic relationship in the first season is kind of goofy the way that they handle her kind of just not giving a shit about it after it falls through is like balling like the amount the show is there's a line in this most recent episode actually there's an episode tonight that we did not watch the episode that aired on july 4th um but uh they're having a fight Quinn and Rachel are having a fight and Rachel's like do you want to talk about stuff like not work stuff and Quinn's like what else

is there other than work yeah and that's like so like for for Quinn's character like that's so there is nothing else except for being the most like powerful person in charge of the like one of the most I'm worried we're speaking too soon though right because we're only halfway through the second season it's very possible that she may have some kind of breakdown where she reveals that she is severely hurt by everything that has happened to her yeah and very desperately is lonely and and wants wants a husband and a you know yeah sure child that would be a bummer I kind of just I kind of just want them to be best friends, just like ruling shit. Yeah, and that's another problem.

That's another problem with Rachel is this keeps happening to her on the show. And I get that it's a problem for a lot of women and it's just realistic to show it. But she consistently tries to seduce or sleep with men to get what she wants. There have been, and sometimes you see, like, I was reminded of that. Did you watch any Homeland? Yeah. The, the. We watched it together. The part where Claire Dane's character is, like, she's just done something terrible.

And she tries to seduce Mandy Patinkin's character in, like, the first season. And it's the most, like, cringeworthy, awful shit. I feel like Rachel's done that a few times in the show. Yeah, I mean, I have no problem, obviously, with a woman sleeping with a guy for the fun of sleeping with a guy. Yeah, sure. But when it comes from a real place of insecurity that like this is how i'm

gonna get what i want it always makes me feel a little uncomfortable yeah sure um so so yeah so anyway so that's that's kind of my complicated feelings about the show but that said those kind of complicated feelings never stop me from watching something. Yeah, and we're also talking about, I would argue that it is more empowering than, obviously I have no place to speak of here, but I feel like it's more empowering than the average show. Oh, for sure. Where there are no characters who, there's no characters who even come fucking close to passing the Bechdel test, like not even a little bit. For sure, yeah. fucking close to passing the bechdel test like not even a little bit um for sure yeah unreal what what is fun about unreal and you kind of mentioned earlier with this season is that they kind of point the finger directly at a lot of our concerns about the bachelor bachelorette franchise and they

try and kind of play with well what would it look like you know what would it look like if we had a cast that was more diverse or we had a contestant who was honest about their sexuality you know like what would happen um and so it's interesting to kind of see their thoughts on that the only place i think it slips up is while addressing those concerns it's also like and then what if all of them got poisoned like what what if an alien crashed there what if elf crashed bed? No, don't crash Alf into their bed. What if we release a shark into the swimming pool? No, don't do that, Unreal. That ain't how I have...

What if a train hits three of them? We got really nervous. And I'm still nervous, honestly, about this second season. Because it seems like they're still trying to figure out... I mean, I don't know. I think the show's thoughtful enough that maybe they're more strategic than we realize but the first couple episodes of the second season you're just like wait wait a minute it doesn't it does the bad thing that second seasons of television shows do

hi friday night lights that like completely unspools the like hard work and the tv shows are unique in that characters move up and down like things like power rankings and shit like that and then season one was all about the the ascent of these two characters and the like rapid descent of another one and then the first episode of the season two they're like fuck all that throw all that out the window we're just doing yeah can i do kind of a season two spoiler yeah sure uh and i won't be terribly specific but we had mentioned earlier part of it with the second season is that we think quinn is going to have more control over the show whereas chet was kind of the big decision maker the first season chet was just a like coked out um just fuck up uh he was like his character was like this what was his title on the show like he was like co-executive producer or something like

that but he was he was this just misogynistic like he's kind of the businessman and that he would go out and have the meetings and get the money and and so he had authority in the sense that he had brought in a lot of the attention and in the second season his like his misogyny like the second season is not as subtle as the first season is and the first season wasn't that subtle but the second season is like this misogynist dude coming back and like marking his territory all over the place and then like being like we need a bikini pool party i'm like oh oh, God. Well, here's what I was just like,

this can't be sustainable, is that Quinn's trying to write her show in this unique, new, refreshing way that she's always wanted to do her show. And all of a sudden, Chet comes back and Chet says, no, the problem with this franchise is that men have been too emasculated and the public really wants to just see you know

girls bouncing up and down just a bunch of babes just a bunch of yeah and so the compromise they make is that they will both film their shows at the same time so chet has a cameraman running around he's filming the angles he wants to film and quinn's running around i'm just like is this really how they're going to do this season and this this culminates with both of them getting in trouble because they've made two bad shows um yeah so like it's supposed to be bad but it is also like fucking completely unbelievable it's like the it's the why that's the that's the stuff i'm talking about it would never happen some stuff happens in the first season that is, like, it would never ever in a million years happen

in the creation of a real television show, but it's good television to watch. This was, like, I couldn't even enjoy it because they were on some, like, Brady Bunch shit. Like, some, like, it was a farce. Yeah, exactly. All of a sudden, and, like, oh, I couldn't hang with that as much.

Yeah, but luckily that kind of resolves itself more or less um anything else we should talk about i think we've i think we've done a pretty earnest discussion i like it i hope it doesn't get bad i think i've seen i've seen a one to two story threads that i'm like oh i hope they don't go down oh i hope they don't do that oh i hope they just focus kind of more on like what it would be like to just to make the bachelor yeah and it's hard to know if it's just because we're more interested in the kind of material they cover the first season or if that's just objectively better material to cover i don't know i don't know it feels like the the show the show is sold as the premise of it is a fictional account of the creation of a real television show.

And the second season is it is the fictional account of the Game of Thrones-esque power conflict over the creation of a fictional version of a real-life television show. And I feel like they are one degree removed, I think, from what worked from the first season. Yeah. I think, from what worked from the first season. Yeah. Yeah, I think Griffin and I are such fans of the Bachelor franchise that when they kind of started to move away from what we think is really interesting about that franchise, I started to feel like, well, wait, isn't your audience people like us?

Definitely. It's got to be. Who the fuck else is it going to be? People who just watch lifetime and then and then unreal comes on maybe honestly maybe they're thinking who is our audience on lifetime you know it's women that love a serial drama with with murder and emotions and romance and let's just make our show that i don't know it's possible i enjoy it i i think it's it's doing a couple things i'm like don't do those things but it's still i still think it's good tv

yeah we should end the because cecil is like throwing himself against my office door because the fireworks have him spooked i gotta make him i gotta make him some of that kitty tea just put some catnip a little cinnamon stick and i don't know cinnamon might be poisonous to cats yeah don't don't do that recipe thank you all for listening to Rose Buddies

yeah I hope I hope this was entertaining for you I really didn't want to go another week without doing a show so hopefully you like Unreal

or you're curious about it if you don't like Unreal and you think it's gross like that's fine we also much like the

Bachelor Bachelorette think it's gross i think unreal gets away with it a little bit in that it's it's gross but some of that gross stuff actually happens and it's kind of like punk rock that they're like shining a light on it actors and actresses it's not like you're watching real yeah sure but at the same time, it's a gross fictional retelling of gross stuff that happens in this real television show that we do a podcast about that you're kind of rooting for to

happen, and that's the stuff that gets in your gully works, gets deep in your brain, and you have to really process what you think of that as a person. Yeah. I don't like it when gross stuff happens on the bachelor bachelorette the like slut shamey bullshit that happens in real life to real people that sucks um the gross stuff that happens on unreal like i don't know it's part of a

fictional character's arc and i think it's a different a different beast also again just A different beast. Also, again, just cartoonishly evil sometimes. Like a cart, like Snidely Whiplash. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a regular episode next week. Thanks for telling your friends about the show, reviewing it on iTunes, doing all that good stuff. Oh, we got a P.O. Box if you want to send stuff to us.

Yeah, we already got a nice little package. Yeah. It's P.O. Box 66639, Austin, Texas, 78766. Until next time. I've been Griffin McElroy. I've been Rachel McElroy. And we've been... Uh-oh. I forget how we do it.

Like, I threw it off so bad. I'm Griffin McElroy. I'm Rachel McElroy. When you're ready. We don't say the name of the show at the end of the show. That's right. No, we don't ever. Thanks for the, thanks.

This has been Rose Bunny. Here's your final rose, buddy. Here's your sign. Billington. Stay with us on this journey of joy. Spoiler alert. She is up with Soulja Boy. Bright reasons.

Bright reasons. Keep it going for all of our seasons. Spoiler alert! She ends up with Soulja Boy!