It should be illegal for a legal drama to be this terrible.
To say that Ryan Murphy’s new series “All’s Fair” has the quality of a Hallmark movie is an insult to the latter. At least Hallmark movies can be entertaining and tonally consistent.
“All’s Fair” is awful in a way that’s mind-boggling.
Now streaming on Hulu, the legal drama stars Kim Kardashian, Sarah Paulson, Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Teyana Taylor, and Niecy Nash-Betts.
The plot is a hat-tip to the “Girlboss” Sheryl Sandberg “Lean In” era. So, it’s at least a decade stale. The story follows several women working at their own divorce law firm.
One of the lawyers, Emerald (Nash) says lines that sound like a tedious self-help book, like, “we stepped away from the patriarchy, and towards something of our own. Now, look at us!”
The absurdly named Allura Grant (Kardashian) gives her colleagues conversational prompts like, “Your favorite case of the last 10 years – go!”
Ah yes, that’s a natural conversation. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it was revealed that ChatGPT wrote this script.
Outside of the show, Kardashian is an aspiring lawyer herself, and recently blamed ChatGPT for failing her law exam. It’s a cautionary tale, but the show’s writers seem to have taken it as a directive.
Every creative choice that went into “All’s Fair” is baffling.
The stunt casting of Kardashian might have worked to draw eyeballs to the show’s posters. (She and her mom, Kris Jenner, are also among its exec producers). But that’s as far as it goes. When she’s onscreen, it feels like a strange joke the audience isn’t in on, to watch her give mannequin-blank expressions and deliver lines like, “They don’t take divorce law or women seriously!” in a robotic monotone.
Is this supposed to be feminist? Is it camp? Does it think this is a “Scandal”-esque drama? To ponder the show’s aspirations is to put more thought into it than its creators clearly did.
It’s all well and good for a show to be off-the-wall, if it’s self-aware. But “All’s Fair” doesn’t seem to know what kind of show it wants to be, lurching chaotically from one scene to the next like a toddler learning to walk.
Every scene feels curated to be shared as a two-minute snippet on TikTok. But stringing TikToks together doesn’t make a watchable show.
Nobody behaves like a real human being. When Allura’s boyfriend, Chase (Matthew Noszka), proposes and presents her with a diamond ring, her immediate response is, “Didn’t this belong to Elizabeth Taylor?”
Huh?
Chase replies, “I know how much you love her…even though I don’t know who she is.” He then says “come to daddy” as they awkwardly make out.
It’s so cringeworthy, I had to pause it and look away for a minute. It’s hard to say if I felt more embarrassed for the actors, the crew members who had to be there, or myself as a viewer.
The entire interaction feels like aliens who don’t grasp human behavior, but are trying to mimic it. Some shows can get away with that, like Tim Robinson in his HBO series “The Chair Company,” because that’s his schtick. He’s honed that behavior down to a comedy science.
But “All’s Fair” isn’t sharp or deliberate about it, and it’s not clear that the soapy mess is trying to be a comedy.
The dialogue is straight out of a bad “Saturday Night Live” sketch that leaves you wondering what the joke is supposed to be. So are the production values, including odd sudden close-ups on people’s faces and distracting pop music cues.
Following their initial nonsensical interaction, the next scene between Allura and Chase is an emotional breakup fight.
We’ve been given no context for their relationship in between these disjointed scenes. There’s nothing to invest in, nothing to hold on to. A nature documentary has more of a narrative than this.
The real actors are unable to save this trainwreck. Paulson and Close are Hollywood heavyweights. Paulson gives a melodramatic performance that feels like it belongs in a high school play, shrieking lines like, “Why can’t you choose me, why?!” and, “Having me as an enemy is very unwise,” as she smashes knick-knacks decorating an office.
Paulson is just one of many actors with bizarre overwrought performances, as if the show is trying to balance out Kardashian’s affectless delivery by having every other cast member weep and shout their lines.
Who directed this? A 14-year-old would have done a better job. It’s no wonder the critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes is 0%.
Fellow critics such as Lucy Mangan of the Guardian wrote, “I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad.”
USA Today‘s Kelly Lawler called the drama “the worst TV show of the year,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s TV critic Angie Han called the series “brain dead.”
The only nice thing that can be said about “All’s Fair” is: congratulations to the cast and crew for getting a paycheck.
Close hasn’t been in something this murderous since she was Cruella de Vil.
It’s so painful to watch, it’s a mercy when the credits roll.
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