Which Of UnREAL's Scumbags Is The Scummiest?

Watching last week's tremendous episode of UnREAL, I had the very clear thought that it was weird for the show to have hit its climax so early. "If they're going for the Game Of Thrones approach, that should have been the second-last episode of the season, not fourth-last!" I thought, anxiously. "They just had a producer fake a damn suicide note and everyone pretty much be okay with it: where can this bunch of dicks go from here?!" After the latest episode, though, of course I owe UnREAL a formal apology: I never should have doubted that its characters could find new lows and race each other to reach them.

Everlasting, naturally, has had a significant ratings bump with the episode revolving around Mary's death, and network executive Brad doesn't want to sleep on the opportunity to capitalize on it. He orders a two-hour Everlasting wedding special for the end of the season, and on the fly, Chet and Quinn pitch him a spinoff, Royal Love, that would cover Adam and "his" intended settling into life in London together; not only is Brad all about it, but he knows exactly which lady should get the nod. The only problem is Adam and his occasional attacks of ethics, but Chet knows how to deal with that one: put Rachel on the task of getting Adam to drop his silly objections. And while Rachel tries to take care of that on Chet's behalf, Chet's got his own big move to make.

As pretty much everyone grapples with life-changing decisions, who comes out the other side looking...decent-ish? Let's count down the jerks from least jerky to basically the Devil.

1. Jeremy

   Helping Rachel distract herself from the horror of Mary's suicide with a little grief sex last week was not exactly a proud moment for Jeremy by most people's standards, given that he was engaged to Lizzie at the time. However, sleeping with Rachel and then breaking things off with Lizzie rather than deceive her further puts him way out ahead of everyone else in Everlasting's nest of vipers. It's just too bad for Jeremy that he really seems to believe that his interlude with Rachel is indicative that they have a future together: he doesn't know what she's doing when she misses their appointment at her truck bed, but what we've seen of Rachel-related secrets on this show thus far suggests that he'll find out soon.

2. Grace

   Directed by Brad to pair Adam with Grace because her ethnic background will "bring in the Telemundo audience," Quinn and Chet take Adam and Grace aside for a private chat in which they inform them that they're going to get married on the show and then star in a spinoff. Grace gets handed a bridal showcase and another whole year of TV fame: what's she going to say, no? We already know she likes Adam enough to blow him; is agreeing to a probably mostly phony marriage really that much of a stretch?

3. Madison

   Speaking of blowing people to get ahead in television: congratulations to Madison for forcing this viewer to learn your name, eight episodes in. Posing as Rachel to perform her community service in the series premiere and thus keeping Rachel on set was a good indicator of how far Madison was willing to go to help the production of Everlasting progress smoothly; giving Chet a blowjay pretty strongly suggests that she's playing a longer game on her own behalf, and not just an enthusiastic member of the team. (Heh, "member.")

4. Anna

   What's grosser than agreeing to marry a guy you barely know because some reality TV producers want you to? Trying to get between a guy you barely know and the girl some reality TV producers want him to marry. I understand that Anna's in the unenviable situation of having been induced, against her better judgment, to return to Everlasting after her father's death, and that she therefore has a stronger incentive than the other remaining bachelorettes to get to the very end of this process -- and beyond, now that she knows there is a beyond -- so that her having decided to stay retroactively looks like the right choice in a cosmic sense. On some level, she's got to be thinking how important it is for her to live out the narrative that she had to come back because she and Adam were destined to be together, and not end up just another castoff who could have been spending all this wasted time with her also-bereaved brother. But colluding with Rachel to usurp Grace's gig is unseemly. Participating in a fix on a crooked dating show, as Grace is excited to do, is venal enough; fixing the fix is even worse.

5. Adam & Rachel (tie)

   Rachel might be higher on this list if the inducement Chet offered her to deliver Adam ("On a silver platter!") for Royal Love was that the production would drop the charges against her -- something that, weirdly, she never even asks for; did they already get dropped and I somehow missed it?! But no, he's offering Rachel the chance to run her own show as an Executive Producer, which makes everything that follows more straightforwardly terrible. First, she enlists Anna in the plot to get Adam to agree to do Royal Love, describing Adam to Anna as her husband. Then, she sets up Grace to fail on her spa date with Adam by arranging for a treatment guaranteed to spike Grace's claustrophobia and make her look like a high-maintenance wacko. Then, she pitches Anna to Adam as an alternate Royal Love co-star by promising him that they can annul the marriage at the end of a year...

   ...and here's where Adam gets to be just as bad as Rachel: even knowing that Anna won't understand the marriage solely as an arrangement for the cameras, and after all his talk throughout the rest of the episode to this point about what he would and wouldn't do to these girls, he agrees. Mostly, it seems, it's Rachel's promise that they'll shoot the show at the vineyard that convinces him -- we've all seen how far Adam is willing to go for the sake of his business -- and the seriousness with which he takes Anna's trust can't compete with his need to make a success of himself apart from his family. On camera, Adam performs exactly as he needs to in order to get Anna to commit to be his fake wife; off-camera, he and Rachel celebrate their victory by doing exactly what they probably plan to spend his whole year-long TV marriage doing: fuckin'. All of which would be fine if Anna were in on the sham. Since she's not, I guess I'll just hope Rachel and Adam are very good at sneaking around.

6. Chet

   For almost this whole episode, Chet is just killing at every aspect of his life. He nails his pitch for an Everlasting spinoff! He talks his wife into taking a cash settlement instead of dragging out their divorce in court! He proposes marriage to Quinn! Even the scene where he convinces Rachel to redouble her efforts to lock up Adam for Royal Love by letting her drive his car and then forcing her foot on the gas and practically killing them on those slick California roads ([raised eyebrow]) is kind of a boss move and a reminder of where Rachel could end up if she does every wrong thing right. But accepting (or requesting -- we don't see which) fellatio from Madison at the workplace he shares with his brand-new fiancée is just so...icky. And expected, which is even worse.

7. Quinn

   It's not that I blame her for, after walking in on Chet's pretty much immediate infidelity, instantly hatching a plan to marry him right away and then screw him over financially. But to be slightly fair to Chet, it's not like Quinn didn't know what he was when she accepted his proposal. That said, it's not like he didn't know what she was when he made it. So we'll probably all need safety goggles to watch this implode.