Watching Hulu’s new legal drama series All’s Fair is a thrilling experience.
There’s a level of badness to the show that is so astonishing that it feels almost invigorating to watch, a full-body reaction of disbelief that is so intense it’s possibly electric. It is a nadir of storytelling so deep in the basement that you wonder what innovation had to take place in order to excavate down to such an unexplored layer of the earth.
I almost want to recommend the series so that we can transform its existence into a communal moment for us all, so that we can share our awe, commiserate together, and, most importantly, somehow come up with an answer to the big question: How??!?!!
As in, how did this new show come to be this bad?
I don’t think anyone was expecting a masterpiece from a television program that’s been mostly known until now as the drama that cast Kim Kardashian as the lead actress. But still, there is enough pedigree involved that should have prevented an abomination of this dystopian scale.
The show is created by Ryan Murphy, whose track record may be uneven, but who is behind some of the best series of the last few decades—and here, he assembles many of the producers, writers, and directors that he frequently collaborates with. He’s had some misses, but nothing like this, a whiff akin to swinging at a piñata while blindfolded after spinning around in one of those insane astronaut training thingies.
At the very least, the cast should elevate the proceedings. Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, and current Oscar contender Teyana Taylor surround Kardashian. They’re trying their damndest to spin any sort of acting magic out of the disastrous dialogue, which veers wildly from shockingly wooden to absolutely ridiculous. I swear at one point a bead of sweat projectile launched through the TV and hit me in the forehead during one of Paulson’s scenes, the poor woman was working so hard.
And to be fair to Kardashian, who is often unfairly mocked and certainly prejudged, she was an unexpected delight in her last collaboration with Murphy, American Horror Story: Delicate. It’s a cast of divas that should have been gallivanting around a playground of Murphy-esque camp and soapy twists. Instead, we get this? Again…how???
The series centers around an all-female law firm that was created to defend female clients only, motivated by attorneys who were fed up with their bloviating, boorish male colleagues.
I am so excited for this next part of the review, in which I get to tell you what these characters’ names are. Oh, these names. Get ready.
Kardashian plays Allura Grant, Watts is Liberty Ronson, and Nash-Betts is Emerald Greene. Like I said at the beginning: absolutely thrilling levels of WTF happening here.
Inspired by their mentor, Close’s Dina Standish, the trio broke out on their own, are millionaires who swan around their mansions in Dynasty-meets-my-sleep-paralysis-demon couture, and have staked a reputation as legal wolves who philandering men should cower in fear from. Their adversary, outside of “all men, generally speaking,” is Paulson’s Carrington Lane, who felt jilted when they didn’t recruit her for the firm.
In the first three episodes, a Who’s Who of random celebrities guest star as their clients and the hubbies who they plan to milk dry: Elizabeth Berkley, Jessica Simpson, Rick Springfield, Judith Light, Eddie Cibrian, Mamie Gummer, Kevin Connolly, and Kate Berlant.
When they’re not tailing the bad boys for dirt they can blackmail them with in their negotiations, the ladies spend every waking moment sitting on various iterations of fabulous furniture to talk about the plight of women, the power of women, what it means to be a woman, their lives as women, women they just saw on the street…you get the idea.
As a gay elder millennial, these scenes should be a thing of my dreams: a diva summit where the divas act divalicious in their diva clothes with their diva names. Outside of the bedroom, I’m obsessed with women! Couldn’t love them more!
But the dialogue these characters are speaking is utterly preposterous, empty feminism clichés that one would be tempted to say was written by ChatGPT, but frankly not even ChatGPT deserves that kind of slander. It’s as if their lines have been translated back and forth between four different languages, and what we’re left with is the strangest syntax I’ve heard people use on screen since Yoda.
The first three episodes of the series are now on Hulu, with the rest of the season being released weekly. They made news Tuesday for debuting with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 0 percent. Those pans trickled out throughout the day because no advanced screeners were given to critics, meaning that, on top of getting to watch and review such a treasure of TV, writers had to rush through them and their assignments to catch up.
Maybe the circumstances of how reviews had to watch episodes doesn’t inspire the most sympathy. But trust me, that’s no tiny violin I’m playing. After/if you see this series, you’ll be assembling a full symphony orchestra for me.
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