UnReal

Often uncomfortable to watch, sometimes hilarious soap opera, UnREAL is also both intelligent and thought-provoking, one of TV's smartest and most cynical shows.

Watching UnReal so ably slice up and serve all this topical relevance can be exhilarating--and also exhausting. Season 2 affirms that the series is not merely a fine and nasty piece of entertainment.

UnReal is simultaneously a very dark satire of reality TV and a soap opera that breathes new life into old tropes by placing them in this very familiar, modern setting. The story of the making of a show like this is ultimately far more exciting than the shows themselves seem to be.

UnReal is darker than a locked box inside a lightproof cube sitting on the bottom of the ocean at midnight. It is an ice cream sundae laced with ipecac, delectable and poisonous all at once.

A savvy, acerbic look at how the reality-TV sausage gets made, with all its inherent manipulation, and collateral damage be damned.

UnREAL is melodramatic and moralizing. But it’s also, in its first three episodes, pretty good: dark, deft and empathetic.

Nothing but completely off the rails. Every time you think the show--Everlasting, UnREAL, or both--has gone as low as it possibly can, it somehow sinks even deeper.