After 'Fugitive,' Who Is UnREAL's Biggest Scumbag?

With Darius AWOL after one of its producers set in motion a series of events that culminated in the shooting (maybe fatal? this episode is maddeningly coy on that point) of his innocent cousin by overzealous cops, Everlasting is scrambling to keep from having to air another clip show. Adjustments to the format are made on the fly, spawning all-new ways for characters to scheme against one another as Everlasting meets Survivor. And in the midst of all this show-related chaos, a heavily medicated Rachel is possibly not in a fit state to make the best choices when she finds herself in the middle of a power struggle among Coleman, Quinn, and her mother.

These circumstances provide the perfect medium for truly noxious scum to bloom. But who's the most noxious of them all? Let's count them down, from slightly dirty to utter filth.

1. Ruby

   Ruby might not exhibit the very best judgment by responding to Darius's call by tipping off Jay. But she also lays out the case against Darius's belated realization that she's the one he loves: "You've got to be kidding me....I told you I loved you on national television. You cut me. You dropped me like a hot rock. You know what that looks like? Do you know what that feels like? You told the whole world that I was too demanding -- that I was some kind of sassy, stuck-up bitch....You told the world that I'm not a love story, and now you come to me in private, in the corner of some crappy diner, trying to make it up to me? Well, it's not enough. Not by a mile. You've got problems, Darius? Fix them yourself." Having departed the corrupt environment at Everlasting, Ruby seems to have figured out that it's not her job to turn Darius into the activist she might have hoped he could be, even if he's telling her now that he wants her to, and good for her. Stay out of the snake pit, Ruby! Darius did you a favour.

2. Chet & Tiffany

   These two are cynically using each other to get ahead -- in Chet's case, to gain entrée, via Tiffany's father, into the world of pro football team ownership because he thinks it will impress Quinn (???), and in Tiffany's, to advance on Everlasting and stick it to that very same father. But then Chet gives up on the football team owner idea and still pitches Tiffany her own spinoff as a "Suitress." Tiffany can't believe Chet would do something so selfless, as though extending the Everlasting brand is not entirely in his self-interest, but no matter.

   

   Chet doesn't get it until Tiffany reminds him that she has "major daddy issues." Eh, I don't mind these two together. And I don't think you need to have daddy issues, major or otherwise, to see the appeal in throwing Chet a hate-fuck.

3. Darius

   Darius thinks he has been radicalized by his police harassment (and Romeo's shooting), and maybe he has. But the Darius that storms back onto the Everlasting set, overrules all its producers' producing -- the girls may have used their one chance to vote Tiffany out of the game, but Darius vetoes the vote -- and bans Rachel from having any contact with him seems like he's mostly looking out for #1. On the other hand, no one ever really thought Everlasting could be a force for positive change with Darius as its Suitor except Rachel, and not even she seems to think that anymore. If Darius wants to rejoin the production to get his while he can, he really should. And if he's working a long game to expose the shooting cover-up, so much the better.

4. Jay

   After Ruby blows off Darius's declaration of love, Jay gets Darius back to the set by telling him how he made his own peace with being part of Everlasting: "The way you're playing it, you've been working against the machine. What you've got to do is let the machine work for you....If you really can't play anymore" -- and he can't; he's had the surgery on his back, finally -- "then you have to come back; I mean, what choice do you have? If you want even a shot at some kind of a life after football, you need to finish the show, because walking away right now leaves you with nothing." Is it more important to Jay that the first black Suitor show well, or that returning him to the production will get him a promotion? If he is working a long game to oust Rachel from the franchise beyond the current season, she kind of deserves it.

5. Yael

   Well, first of all, if you are a reporter, you don't announce the title of the story you're working on, even if it's "Reality TV Kills" and even if one of your subjects caught you messing with his computer and you needed to try to turn him and get him on your side. Actual journalists don't title their stories; their editors do. Moving on: one could argue that Yael is performing an important fifth estate function by exposing the truth surrounding the death of a reality show contestant; investigative journalists have a key role to play in a democracy, and if her work leads to the end of Everlasting, the culture will probably be the better for it. But (a) I'm still not convinced that she actually is a journalist, and she could have all kinds of dodgy reasons for collecting this information, and (b) if she is a reporter, I'm still reserving judgment on how ethical she is until we see what she does with Coleman's footage of Rachel's confession.

6. Madison

   As she has been pretty much since we met her, Madison is just a squirrel trying to get a nut. Arranging this "Exile In Paradise" nonsense is a shameless ripoff of Survivor, assuming that show exists in this universe; getting Yael and Chantal into an alliance to take out Tiffany when they get a chance to vote out one of their own is just good business, given that Chantal and Yael are both in Madison's stable. Quinn is right to dismiss her when she gloats a little too much about her brilliant strategizing -- "I understand a girl who puts her boss's penis in her mouth is definitely looking for the shortest, fastest way to get ahead," Quinn drawls -- but given everything else that's going on, Madison's really just keeping the trains running on time!

7. Rachel

   Was I the only one who thought for a second that Rachel agreed too easily to Coleman's exhortations for her to leave the hospital, and that what followed in her storyline was going to turn out to be a dream? Obviously I figured out that wasn't the case when Coleman ushered her into his office and started recording her recollections about every horrible thing that had ever happened on Everlasting in the time she'd worked there (not a short list), but that scene with Coleman in her room/cell still feels weirdly truncated.

   Anyway, this is the episode where we finally find out the root cause of what has made Rachel so insecure and unstable all these years. As she tells it to Coleman: "She believes that the drugs are going to shut me up....about the fact that I-- I can't....About the fact that I was raped by one of her patients at our house when I was twelve. And she blamed me, because she was protecting her practice, so she didn't want me to say anything to anybody ever and so then she said that she would just treat me herself." FUCKING YIKES. Rachel's still ranked this low because, as an adult, she's continued to make terrible choices, including during times when she hasn't been in a state of active and acute PTSD; we've seen enough of her standing back from her worst decisions and assessing them accurately that I -- as a non-psychiatrist -- feel it's not unreasonable to think that, even as I acknowledge the horrifying ways her mother deliberately kept Rachel dependent on her for years, once Rachel got the showrunner promotion and started (presumably) making decent money and getting benefits, she could have sought to start working on some of these issues with a therapist who was qualified and not related to her. Instead, Rachel continued seeking professional validation in antisocial ways. That her particular stripe of antisocialism is the kind that makes for good TV -- right up until the point when a man gets (maybe) killed for no reason -- is...not ideal for Rachel's mental health long-term, but then I suppose I'm just repeating the series premise.

8. Quinn

   Quinn would have my unconditional love forever if, during her first conversation with Booth, she had stuck by what is clearly her real position with regard to having children with him: "If we wanted kids, we would've already had them by now, and we didn't. And it's okay -- not everyone has to have kids!" (I get why she doesn't also point out how off-putting it is when Booth insists that he must have biological children, like, dude, you're already going to be sixty by the time this child graduates high school; if being a parent is that important to you, maybe consider giving a home to an older child who needs it.) But instead, she reacts to Chet's appeals to take him back by agreeing to have Booth's babies mostly out of spite. It's short-sighted of her to relent on the baby question rather than give up her relationship with Booth and, secondarily, give Chet hope that she'll reconcile with him once this rival's out of the picture; it's cruel of her to act like she wants to have children when she knows she doesn't, and thus delays Booth from making his own dreams of parenthood come true, however dumb and belated those dreams might be.

   But Quinn might be ranked lower if not for the revelation that she knows all about how Olive, Rachel's mother, has ruined Rachel, and has apparently really been mothering Rachel in her own way -- which is to say, withholding and fucked up, but with basically good intentions -- than any of us could have understood. But we'll get to that.

9. The Other Doctor

   So Rachel checks herself out of the mental hospital where Olive has more or less incarcerated her. Olive brings one of the facility's clinicians with her to collect Rachel from the Everlasting set. Rachel tries to insist she's fine and get rid of this guy, until she brings up "this other core issue that's not being addressed," and he expresses interest in her talking with him about that. Olive:

   

   Rachel abruptly says she would "really like to talk about that, actually," and is just getting warmed up when Olive intervenes and declares that this is "a family matter" and that she will keep an eye on Rachel and let him know how she's doing. And this fucking idiot is like, "Oh, word? BYE." And leaves! Who does he think he is, Wagerstein? Notice a person in need, alleged mental health professional!

10. Coleman

    Coleman talks a lot about wanting to make important stories, and now we know by that he means stories that will make him seem important, no matter the human cost. That's why Yael's offer to enlist him in "Reality TV Kills" is so irresistible: it lets him get revenge on the production that sidelined him while allowing him to tell himself he's contributing to a groundbreaking exposé, and if Rachel has to be sacrificed in the process -- if his pursuit of truth means a woman he claims to love is destroyed as a result, as Quinn tells him she will be (which is partly in her own self-interest, but is also true) -- he apparently has no hesitation in going forward. He puts Rachel on tape -- when she's barely in her right mind, by the way, thanks to whatever drugs Olive was feeding her -- and records her blaming herself for the events leading up to Mary's death, and the cover-up afterward. And by the way, did Yael show Coleman any kind of credentials to back up her claims as to what she's doing on Everlasting? If it turns out she completely suckered him, it will be so satisfying.

11. Olive

    The way Coleman takes advantage of Rachel when she's vulnerable, for the sake of his own career, and when he claims to love her, is despicable. But Coleman is not Rachel's parent. And when Rachel tells him that one of Olive's clients raped her when she was a child, Coleman knows that Rachel's rapist was wrong. Olive not only didn't acknowledge that: she immediately set about silencing Rachel, with drugs and sham treatments, and blaming her for her own assault. And, apparently, in all the years she's been violating Rachel mentally, Olive has never seen fit to revise her original view of Rachel's attack: in this episode, when Rachel says she's going to tell the truth about it, Olive warns her, "No one will love you if they find out." There's no prison hideous enough for someone this vile.