Adam's Best Mate Helps Deliver A 'Mother' Of An UnREAL

So I guess those who wondered how far Lifetime was prepared to go in its not-terribly-flattering portrait of reality dating shows have their answer: dark enough not just to feature the (offscreen) sexual assault of a female contestant, but her dominant emotion afterward seems to be anxiety that the suitor will hold it against her. And that's just one pretzel stick in the poisonous Chex Mix of an episode that also includes a sex-caused coronary episode; unethical psychiatric practice; the exploitation of a contestant's bulimia; and footage ruined by an inattention to music clearance issues. Let's sort it all out by ranking the characters from who had the best episode to who had the worst.

1. Jeremy & Lizzie
   It's fitting that the two most boring characters have the least angsty time: from what we can see, all the blowback from the sex-email blast at the end of the last episode has landed on Rachel, not Jeremy (although telling Lizzie his former relationship with Rachel was nothing more than one hookup seems like a lie that's going to screw things up with his current fiancée in the future). And anyway, Jeremy's apparently completely moved on from the embarrassing evidence of Rachel's former and probably current feelings and is now all in a funk about how unsatisfying his job is. Confidential to the producers of UnREAL: I barely give a shit about Jeremy. You think I care whether he's trying to figure out the colour of his parachute?
2. Roger
   I would love to put Roger last due to the trauma I believe he'll suffer once he sobers up and realizes that he used his position of power -- as Adam's best friend, he gets to choose which ladies will get a three-on-two date with Roger and Adam, and then a one-on-one day-long date with Adam -- to take advantage of an intoxicated woman manipulated into out-of-character behaviour by a conscienceless producer. But, in fact, I think Roger will probably look back on his time visiting Adam's "whorehouse on telly" as a great time about which he has no regrets, because he is a sociopath.
3. Grace
   This girl is willing to blow Adam even in a truck where literally anyone could interrupt them, and where they almost immediately get caught.
   

   And she doesn't even get the one-on-one date for her troubles?! I mean, I'd make a "who does she have to blow" joke about her wasted effort, except we know whom she'd have to blow, and this week, Adam's definitely the wrong recipient of her attentions. But given that even when she gets in a slap fight (which we'll get to), she comes out looking like the victim, I'd say everything else is still pretty much proceeding according to plan for good old Grace.

4. Chet
   News of Anna's father's untimely passing, in his forties, due to damage he did to his heart by being a stoner all his life hits Chet hard: he's only a couple of years younger than Anna's late dad, and as we've all seen, he doesn't exactly treat his body like a temple. So it's not great that, almost immediately, his worst fear comes to pass and he experiences the effect of a mitral valve prolapse, but it's not actually that serious, and he gets the news while in the company of the two women who've pledged their lives to him, so all things considered, Chet's doing okay.
5. Quinn
   Not so okay is Quinn, who's been with Chet so long that she knows the details of his family medical history and rattles them off for a doctor who, reasonably, mistakes her for his wife. Then, when Chet's actual wife shows up, she decides this is the right time to let Quinn know that she hasn't quite been the master of deception she's thought she was throughout these many years. "Chet's not easy, but he needs you," says Cynthia. "Look, I've got the house, the cars, the vacations. Chet has you. But if you kill him with all this partying, I get $40 million life insurance. What do you have?" Quinn:
   

   But Cynthia's not done! "Actually, I wanted to thank you for sleeping with him -- it's just one more thing off my to-do list. And it keeps him from wandering too far, so: thanks, Quinn. You're a real class act." DAAAAAAAAAMN. I wouldn't want to be the producer who has to bear the brunt of Quinn having gotten her spot blown up like this!

6. Anna
   This poor idiot. Having let herself get talked into returning to this stupid dating show while in the midst of mourning her father, now she has to face the reality of what she's signed up for: sharing the guy who's supposed to be her prize with a bunch of other women, some of whom are clearly opportunistic floozies; having the specifics of her ED strategies captured on video...
   

   ...but she, like everyone else, is still subject to manipulation by show staff, and doesn't even realize that the narrative casting her as a crazy, wild-eyed bitch has already started airing to the public. Confronting Grace about the shit she's maybe (probably not) been talking about Anna's bulimia and making it physical?

   

   Bad move.

7. Adam
   He gets interrupted, whilst getting a beej, by the woman he seems to like the best and who isn't one of the bachelorettes vying for his hand. He watches as his supposed best friend denigrates the PR move he's currently in the middle of, then sexually assaults one of his TV girlfriends, and then admits that Adam's father sent him to the show to try to keep Adam from going through with it and bringing shame on the family -- oh, and also, bring tidings of the woman who dumped him when he got caught with prostitutes but now may be ready to take him back, and who's presumably much more respectable than any of the ladies on Everlasting. Adam's got to be asking himself a lot of questions right now, starting with "Why did I agree to do this?" and ending with "How the fuck do I weasel out of it?"
8. Rachel
   Forced to take a few hours off from work, Rachel decides the time is right to quit dodging her mother's calls and go home for a visit -- ideally one that will end in her getting a big fat cheque she can use to pay off her debts, because the $189 in take-home pay she's raking in after garnishments is not going to do it. And here, we get a glimpse at how Rachel became the way she is: her mother, Dr. Olive Goldberg, is terrifying. She's a shrink, and apparently not a great one if she insists that she'll only give Rachel money on the condition that Rachel agrees to let Olive resume treating her -- which, as Rachel correctly points out, is a major ethical violation. The other way we can tell Olive is a terrible shrink is that she's thrown up several different diagnoses for Rachel -- including ADHD, bipolar, narcissistic personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder -- and prescribed her a variety of meds over the years. After a tense discussion about whether Olive is the only one who knows what's best for Rachel and how to get her life on track, Rachel returns to the set (in a show van she was driving with a suspended license) to discover that the wild party Shia instigated is well underway, and totally unusable for TV purposes because music is playing that they won't be able to clear or cut around. Ever the professional even after what she's just been through with her monster mother (and tearing up the $20,000 Olive's given her), Rachel shuts it down, but not fast enough to avoid getting a dressing-down from Quinn, who's in the middle of her own shit.
   

   Quinn guilts Rachel not for failing to keep things running smoothly when neither of them was on set, but for not taking sufficient care of herself -- to wit, washing her hair. Rachel tearfully denies that she's slipping and goes straight from their encounter to one with Anna, in which she reuses all of Olive's techniques to prod Anna into a fight with Grace. As Rachel watches from a distance while Anna tries to tear Grace's hair extensions out, Quinn rolls up and proudly congratulates her protégée on her triumph. When she mentions that she heard Rachel went home, Rachel ruefully recounts her mother's concerns about Rachel's mental health, which Quinn immediately dismisses.

   

   Is it any wonder which mother Rachel's decided to be loyal to?

9. Maya
   Come out of your shell, they said. Have some liquid courage, they said.
   

   Uh oh.

   

   YIKES.