As UnREAL Takes Its Bad Decisions On The Road, Whose Ethics Are Most Questionable?

You can't work on a dating reality show without expecting violent incidents on camera -- and when they happen, you just separate the combatants and then the show must go on. So it is, apparently, when a violent incident takes place off-camera. But Rachel's not really okay, and her post-traumatic decisionmaking is only one area where ethics are...questionable. Let's count down the players of "Casualty" from most ethical to least.

1. Darius

   Darius is being pursued by several interesting, beautiful women who are so determined to win this season of Everlasting that...well, they might not each cut off a hand if he asked them to, but they would probably think about it pretty seriously. Yet this whole experience continues not to be that much fun for him, all things considered. It's time for Darius to choose one of the ladies to take back to her hometown so that he can meet her family; he's determined to go back to Atlanta with Chantal, but Rachel thinks the real drama is guaranteed to ensue if he heads back to Alabama to hang out with Confederate flag bikini model Beth Ann and her presumably also somewhat bigoted family. Darius is already done with Rachel's machinations, what with the epidural she convinced him to get against his own doctor's orders and her manipulating him into firing Romeo...but Darius's own self-interest is no match for the hysterical case Rachel makes for him to go to Alabama, and when he backs down and agrees, it seems like it's mostly so she'll stop screeching at him.

   At the ranch, everyone is on their warmest, most welcoming, best behaviour, to Rachel's disappointment and disgust, but just as she's losing faith that any drama is going to break out, Beth Ann approaches her.

   

   Beth Ann's pregnant, and the father is her ex-con ex-boyfriend Brock. Rachel can see the promo now, and after floating for the briefest of moments the idea that Beth Ann could preserve her dignity by quitting the show, she immediately pivots, filling Beth Ann's head with all kinds of nonsense about telling Darius the truth and giving him a chance to prove how real the connection is between Beth Ann and himself by gracefully accepting her news and volunteering to raise her ex-boyfriend's child with her -- something Rachel knows full well he wouldn't do. Convinced by Rachel's conviction and passion, Beth Ann uses a family barbecue to tell all her gathered family and friends that she's pregnant. That's when Brock -- tipped off by Rachel, of course -- shows up with an engagement ring, and when Beth Ann refuses his proposal, she implies that the baby might just as easily be Darius's. The night descends into extremely Everlasting-friendly chaos, surely causing Darius to rue that he ever changed his mind about Atlanta.

   At the elimination ceremony, Darius is ramping up to a declaration about how important honesty is to him -- which is definitely either going to be about Beth Ann's implication that Darius fathered her unborn child, or about Tiffany's having hooked up with Romeo (of which more later) -- when Beth Ann stops him, confessing that he has behaved honourably and imploring him to give her and her baby a chance. Darius declines, but spontaneously offers to set the child up with a college fund. Is the point of this season that Darius has actually always been the most ethical character in it? Or is he just correcting in reaction to all the scumbags around him?

2. Brock

   It's not great that he embarrasses Beth Ann and her family on camera, but at least, after getting Beth Ann pregnant, he's willing to marry her and raise their child together. She absolutely should not do this -- or maybe she should; she's not exactly a great person herself, so maybe this dude is the best her Confederate ass could hope for -- but it's nice that he's prepared to make the gesture.

3. Coleman

   Is Coleman maybe...kind of an okay person? He's definitely a hard worker: he could have skipped out on the trip to Alabama -- even though he's the showrunner, he's only had that role for, at this point, a matter of weeks at the most, and no one on the production expected him to go since he wouldn't know better than Rachel how to produce it -- but he doesn't shirk his duties. When he finds out about Rachel's assault, he doesn't hesitate to say they all need to go through the proper channels to address it, not that anyone is prepared to hear it. He has empathy for Beth Ann's situation and countermands all of Rachel's manipulations, urging her not to share her private business on camera (though when Beth Ann goes ahead anyway, he's behind the scenes cuing cameras, so he's not a saint). And though he seems extremely disappointed that Rachel's ordeal is going to end in a cover-up, when he tells her that as soon as the season's over, he's taking her away to work with him, presumably on something less grubby, I actually believe he wants to do it. I don't believe she'll let him, but he really does seem sincere. Which means he's actually going to end this season totally demoralized and destroyed, probably.

4. Beth Ann

   I realize that Beth Ann is pretty dumb, and that her panic and confusion after her unplanned pregnancy might just compound her baseline terrible judgment. But going on TV to say a celebrity you never slept with might have knocked you up is not a classy move.

5. Jay & Madison

   Even if they really have joined forces to try to take down Rachel, that doesn't mean I think they'll actually pull it off. Still, Rachel has enough antagonists on this production without these two trying to form a united front against her. Also, Jay, this little Bambi is your ally? Look harder.

6. Dr. Wagerstein

   At long last, Dr. Wagerstein gets her promised segment, and it's nothing but a new format for the usual: giving the women a forum to denigrate themselves and undermine each other. I hope she thinks it was worth it! I do, however, give her a little credit for successfully steering Quinn toward trying to make a go of things with Booth rather than sliding back to Chet (though I also think it's still too soon to tell how good an option Booth actually is for Quinn; he seems to have a suspicious amount of free time for a billionaire media mogul). "Don't sabotage it with this guy, Quinn," Wagerstein advises. "He may be your last chance." (My prediction is that Rachel will hear something very similar about Coleman right before she fucks it up.)

7. Rachel

   Rachel is ranked this low not because the way she blows up Beth Ann's life is especially cruel -- it is, but it's really all in a day's work at Everlasting -- but for the manic glee she derives as she watches her puppets performing their parts...

   

   ...and for how literally horny it makes her.

   

   But ultimately, Rachel's just trying to get through this. Her initial response in the immediate aftermath of Jeremy's assault is to take the matter to the police, and not to be "another silent woman." Her survival instincts kick in when Chet reminds her about the shit Jeremy's seen -- the true story of Mary's suicide, for example -- but not so much that she doesn't still get out a Sharpie to draw the outlines of her bruises and photograph them in case she needs evidence in the future. By the end of the episode, she's once again committed to Everlasting, without any apparent thought of pressing charges with any authority higher than Quinn's, and we see her delete at least some of the pictures off her phone...but maybe not all of them?

8. Chet

   Chet's manipulation of Rachel to act against her own instincts isn't terribly elegant, but it gets the job done. He might not have ever been the true creative force behind Everlasting, but he's been paying attention and he's learned a few moves. See also: promising Tiffany he can help her erase the stain of having fellated Romeo if she'll just introduce him to her NFL team owner dad. What could go wrong?

9. Quinn

   That Quinn's confrontation with Jeremy ends like this...

   

   ...at first made me yearn for an alternate cut in which it was she, not Chet, who found Jeremy assaulting Rachel and pulled them apart. But as satisfying as it is in the moment to see Quinn crushing Jeremy's balls -- to dust, I hope, and I believe she has that power -- Quinn is ultimately no more Rachel's champion than Chet was, really. She's not prepared to do more than Chet already has, which is to fire Jeremy (and then let him loiter around the set unattended, apparently, because what could go wrong). She might recognize that someone with Rachel's history of erratic behaviour might need attention after suffering a trauma and place an anxious phone call to her, but given that the degree of trust between Quinn and Rachel has been in such a state of flux this season (...or since we met them, really), Rachel's refusal to let Quinn mother her about this evinces a reasonable amount of self-preservation. Quinn's choice is no different from Chet's: she needs to keep the production on track, and a criminal investigation of a criminal act would derail it. And once she knows Rachel is coping "well" enough not to insist upon pursuing the matter through the legal system, she can get back to her overarching project, which is to separate Rachel from Coleman and make Rachel dependent on her again. "You know, I think Rachel's in love with that guy," says Chet. "I've never seen her like this before."

   

   But Quinn has.

   

   And one phone call later, Quinn has yet another tool at the ready to use against her protégée.