UnREAL Teaches Rachel A Tough Lesson About End-Runs

You've got to feel for Rachel. Not even one full shooting day into what she's only just very reluctantly admitted to herself is her dream job -- showrunning Everlasting -- its two creators have declared open war on each other, and Quinn has booted her protégée from her seat in the control room and busted her back down to her old producer gig, running a stable of girls and creating camera-ready drama. It's not like Rachel's forgotten how to do the job she had mastered so completely that Quinn said of her, in Season 1, "She's worth five crashed Ferraris": she convinces the "hot racist" Beth Ann to meet Darius while wearing a Confederate flag bikini; she sends up a false flare about a girl-on-girl hot tub make-out sesh to lure Chet's camera team away from the real action; she produces props for Madison to pass on in order to create a moment between Darius and Chantal. (She also uses her ability to lie to her own advantage, as when "Hot Rachel" tries to ally with her and Rachel claims that she'll succeed in the game if she sticks with Madison, "a genius," in the hopes of getting her hot doppelgänger off the show more quickly -- having no idea that Hot Rachel has game enough to fake a drowning so that Darius can rescue her.) Rachel's so good as a producer that she even convinces Romeo not to submit to a blowjob from Tiffany, Quinn's #1 Wifey, because earning this reputation for himself and ruining his relationship with Darius will scotch any hopes Romeo might have had to become a sportscaster. Romeo knows it's hollow for Rachel to warn him that Chet is manipulating him: "And you're not? As far as I can tell, everyone's manipulating everybody." "Yes," Rachel admits, "but I am the only one that is doing it for the right reasons." It's a phrase one can easily imagine Rachel using to justify any move she makes. She's doing it all to make great TV: is that reason actually "right"? Can there be "right" in a setting like this?

Rachel pitches in despite her temporary (or is it?) demotion because the production is -- and always has been -- more important than her feelings, which is why it's especially galling when Quinn's reaction to the winning, natural moment between Darius and Tiffany that Rachel has salvaged from Chet's blowjob sabotage is to take credit for it: "This is the show, Rachel. Thank god I'm here." Rachel wearily reminds her that she's spent the night running around for Quinn and bringing her the girls they're watching, but Quinn's not awarding a cookie for that, under the circumstances: "And you lost the suitor. You did all the small parts, but you screwed up the biggest part." Quinn trained Rachel, she reminds her: "I set this up for you, but you need to deliver." "Okay, well, you need to let me," snaps Rachel. But Quinn doesn't think she's impeding Rachel's success at all: "It takes an iron spine and a steady hand to do this job. I don't know -- maybe your mother was right."

As Rachel stares at Quinn not so much in shock as in resignation and defeat, Quinn elaborates: "We all know you've had episodes. You're great! Until you're not. You had a couple of whirligigs in there, you know? Which was fine before, but not so much if you want to be the boss." "Did she call you, are you talking to my mother?" asks Rachel, her voice firm but her eyes full of tears. "Let's just forget it," drawls Quinn. "Why don't you just get back out there and make yourself useful?" Last season, Quinn controlled Rachel by, in part, explicitly setting herself up as the diametric opposite of Rachel's mother Olive (who doesn't appear in this episode except in the form of a sick care package: a note informing Rachel that she's worried about her, and a box of pills she really should not be prescribing to someone who is not her patient). Where Olive fretted about Rachel's participation in a workplace that contributed to Rachel's self-destructive tendencies, Quinn affirmed Rachel's (coerced) choice to stay on Everlasting, calling her a genius. Now, it seems, Quinn is prepared to subject Rachel to mental abuse if the result is that Rachel will work harder to prove both her mothers wrong about her.

And at first, it seems like all of Quinn's shots have hit their targets. Jay, with whom Rachel had fought earlier over his handling of activist Ruby, snidely calls out Rachel for trying to emulate Quinn in every respect by taking up smoking. When, in her despondency, Rachel doesn't fight back at first, he feels guilty and softens, which just makes Rachel respond the way she's been taught: attacking the least sign of vulnerability -- in this case, accusing him of jealousy for her having been promoted ahead of him. "I'm not jealous of you because I don't believe you actually got promoted," he replies. "I'm your boss," claims Rachel. Squatting on the ground next to a fairytale stone wall is not the most authoritative position for a boss to be when trying to dress down a direct report. But no matter where Rachel was, Jay would have a hard time acknowledging her as his supervisor: "As long as Quinn's around, she's my boss. And she's your boss too. Wake up, Rachel, because Quinn is never leaving this place -- not until you pry Everlasting out of her cold, dead hands."

...Which is when the camera pulls out so that we can see the wall Rachel's chosen for her hiding place is a very temporary and very symbolic piece of set dressing. Rachel doesn't get the luxury of pretending any of these fairytale trappings are for her -- or, at least, not for long.

Jay's remarks actually do seem to make Rachel reconsider what recourse she may have, because before long she's fishing Olive's prescriptions out of the trash (though what she does with them, we don't see) and then showing up at Gary's house to -- with "much" "reluctance" -- narc on Chet and Quinn and their dueling Everlastings scheme; to denigrate both their contributions to the show over the years relative to all the great stories Rachel herself has delivered; and to volunteer, selflessly, to take her showrunning duties back over as soon as Gary has dealt with Quinn and Chet's in-fighting.

By the time Gary makes it to set, Quinn and Chet have each cut a sizzle reel for their versions of the franchise (Chet having dubbed his EverBlasting, in order to leave no doubt as to its character). As Gary dresses them both down for being "off the rails"...

...Rachel sits next to him, preening so hard and so smugly that you know Gary is about to disappoint all her expectations of getting re-elevated to Executive Producer. And then that's exactly what he does.

As far as Gary is concerned, the answer is not to prop up the Quinn regime by installing her protégée in her place; it's to endorse Chet's EverBlasting concept, but bring in Coleman Wasserman to run it, not Rachel. Coleman's apparently the founder of something called Blink that Gary enthuses is "going to become a network because of this guy." (So it's...Vice? Before the HBO show and A&E offshoot channel?) Left alone together at the end of the meeting, Coleman -- without any apparent animosity -- tells Rachel he knows she was the one who dimed out Quinn and Chet, and that she did so on the assumption that she'd end up sitting where he is now.