Will Rachel And Quinn Break Their Cycle Of Abuse In UnREAL's Second Season?

Season 2 of UnREAL dawns with Season 14 of Everlasting, and changes are afoot! After declaring their love in the Season 1 finale, Rachel and Quinn are tighter than ever. Now that Quinn's got a seven-figure production deal to work on/brag about, she's installed Rachel as the season's showrunner, and Rachel's decided to make history with a big move: for the first time ever, the show's getting a black Suitor. But while this turns out, after an initial freakout, to be a surprisingly easy sell to skittish new network executive Gary -- yes, that is Christopher Cousins, formerly "I Fucked" Ted from Breaking Bad -- the course of true love-themed reality TV never did run smooth. After an action-packed season premiere, I've got questions!

What do we think is the likelihood that we'll see more of Adam?

All we get in the premiere is a shot of his cutest smile on Rachel's phone...

...before she dismisses his call. Should we infer from this moment that he's still pining for her, full of regrets over his Season 1 finale cowardice? Or is this just to reassure those viewers who didn't know how this show (...or The Bachelor) works that just because he's not around anymore, that doesn't mean he died? I kind of thought we were all done with Adam forever, since what would be the point of learning more about him? And how much more could there even be to learn? At least we can be fairly sure now that Rachel doesn't have time for any unfinished business they might still have.

How closely do we think Gary's expression of anxiety about a non-white Suitor lines up with reality?

By which I mean: the reality of The Bachelor. See, Rachel's Suitor is this dreamboat.

His name is Darius Beck, he's a "pro" quarterback (I assume he's described thus because the show's not allowed to say "NFL" for the same reason all Super Bowl-related TV ads in January are required to refer only to "the big game"?), and like Adam, he has a reason to debase himself on reality TV: he's dealing with a PR issue after over-the-top media overreaction to his having said "Bitch, please" to a female reporter. (By the way, I love the detail that when Darius arrives at the house and starts to have second thoughts about the whole enterprise, Rachel talks him into it by citing her own on-screen meltdown origin story and he reacts like it's news to him. Partly it's economical writing to bring new viewers up to speed, of course, but it's also a character detail that rings true: of course this guy wouldn't be conversant with such Everlastingiana.) And while Brad is all about Darius...

...this new network president/dope Gary is unconvinced by Quinn's claim that Darius is merely "football black," and is having kittens about it, until Quinn promises mad buzz will greet his bachelorettes: a "hot racist"; an "even hotter black activist power person"; "a clergy"; and "a terrorist." (That they haven't actually cast anyone who matches any of those descriptions means Quinn's new showrunner's going to have a lot of running around to do.) But Quinn successfully turns Gary around on the matter in a conversation that barely breaks the two-minute mark, which is pretty remarkable considering neither The Bachelor nor The Bachelorette has placed a non-white person in the position of choosing among a field of aspiring fiancé/es. If convincing a network executive to go against conventional wisdom regarding his or her audience's baseline racism were as easy as UnREAL makes it look, it would have happened by now. That said: while I'm sure Darius's race will continue to be an issue in various ways as the season continues, I am immensely grateful that this stage has been dealt with so efficiently. Nothing is more boring than a business story. No one wants to go to work meetings, and it's annoying when TV writers get the mistaken idea that any of us wants to watch them.

Ugh, fucking JEREMY is back?

Jeremy was a walking spoonful of oatmeal in Season 1 that Rachel was correct to underrate -- never more so than when he responded to her having cheated on him (which, of course, was not okay of her to do) by tattling on her to her batshit mother. But he's working on this production again? Even though Rachel is in charge? I find it hard to believe she wouldn't be able to get rid of him once she determined that he wasn't going to quit? She doesn't get to fire him even after he's insubordinate with her in front of the whole staff at a production meeting? This better be building to a blowout where Rachel and Quinn get to destroy him in tandem -- methodically and literally limb by limb, preferably.

When did Jay turn into such a crybaby?

I obviously remember the sporadic moments in the first season when the business of making Everlasting offended Jay's sensibilities. But considering that his principles were not so badly assaulted that he found something else to do for a living, his attitude toward Rachel makes him look less like he's made of stronger moral fibre and more like he's jealous of her new status.

When the only person on your side is Wagerstein, you should be more concerned about your future, Jay.

Who's surprised Chet's reinvented himself as an MRA bullshit artist?

See, here's why the show should get rid of Jeremy and give all his screen time to Chet.

Chet is exactly the kind of guy who'd be susceptible to brainwashing by whatever the current iteration of Iron John posers are following these days -- and not only that, but to be so malleable that he'd actually try walking back into Quinn's office and explaining to her that he was reclaiming his empire (which was only ever barely his anyway) on gender essentialist grounds: "A man isn't a man unless he's got a purpose, Quinn. I got soft last year....I forced you to play the male role. That wasn't fair; it wasn't natural. Women are made to nurture. Be adored. Guys gotta do things." The sparky fighting chemistry between Craig Bierko and Constance Zimmer is already so much more fun now that Quinn's got this repellent nonsense to play off.

And it must be all the more infuriating for Quinn hearing the stupidest drivel imaginable coming out of this newly rechiseled face.

Chet is HILARIOUS, and his certainty that this ill-informed baloney is the anthropological basis for his idiotic ideas is only going to make him funnier.

Will Rachel and Quinn break their cycle of abuse?

The downside of Chet's return is that the comfortable, relaxed Quinn who was happy to recede and let Rachel learn her new job is now under attack. Chet's followed his masculinist theory to its logical conclusion and gotten around Quinn's authority by appealing directly to Darius and offering him enticements far above and beyond what the Suitor normally enjoys, thus luring him away from the Everlasting manse and holding him hostage to extort Quinn -- a development for which Quinn blames Rachel, for not keeping a close enough eye on Darius and preventing Chet from getting access to him at all, never mind removing him to a second location. In order not to burn a production day, Chet gets Quinn to compromise and introduce Darius to his bachelorettes at a pool party, with all the ladies in bikinis (requiring Quinn to march through a holding pen making sure all the ladies' pubes are in order, hee hee hee). The point is: Chet has not just successfully disrupted the production by establishing a separate camp for Darius and his closest associates -- making an already fairly adversarial process even more openly antagonistic; he's also turned his opposing general against her second-in-command. Maybe Rachel's mother Olive was right in her long-distance diagnosis of Rachel as being in a hyper-sexual manic phase, and maybe not.

But I do feel pretty certain that if relations between Rachel and Quinn continue to worsen, Rachel's anxiety and depression are likely to flare up.

Would it be weird if I made this my Christmas card?