\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span> did not know it was still possible to make television this bad. I assumed that there was some sort of baseline, some inescapable bedrock knowledge of how to do it that now prevented any entry into the art form from falling below a certain standard. But I was wrong. The new series from Ryan Murphy, All\u2019s Fair \u2013 starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts and Niecy Nash as the founders of an all-female law firm delivering divorce-y justice to incredibly rich but slightly unlucky women under the azure skies of California \u2013 is terrible. Fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially terrible. While I try to get my thoughts in order after bearing witness to the first episode, I\u2019m going to give you a few direct quotes, so you can see why I\u2019m struggling.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s put the \u2018team\u2019 in \u2018teamwork\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy flight was turbulent and so is my mood,\u201d says Liberty (Watts) to a man barring her way to a client.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s wolf-like in his possessiveness,\u201d says a client of her husband.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so<\/em> awful, it feels almost contemptuous.<\/p>\n I looked for Julian Fellowes\u2019 name in the credits, but apparently this is all the responsibility of Murphy and his co-creators, Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken. They are also executive producers, along with Kim K, her mother Kris Jenner, Watts, Glenn Close (who also has a small role as the protagonists\u2019 early mentor \u2013 I cannot imagine what kompromat the Kardashian clan have on her that led to her participation in this dreadful business), Nash and many, many more. The list goes on for ages. I suspect a variation of the bystander effect (whereby the more witnesses there are to a mugging \u2013 for example \u2013 the less likely any one is to intervene) is in operation. Thus, the more exec producers linked to it, the worse the show.<\/p>\n Still, there\u2019s worse and then there\u2019s All\u2019s Fair. Beyond the embarrassment of the script, there is the embarrassment of the performances; although I take the point that when someone \u2013 in this case, Murphy stalwart Sarah Paulson as psychopathic rival \u201clady\u201d lawyer Carrington \u2013 is required to scream \u201cAre you calling me an ugly duckling? So what if I give myself home perms? It\u2019s economical!\u201d, while smashing up her mentor\u2019s office, they are probably not going to be able to give their best.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Beyond the embarrassment of the script, there is the embarrassment of the performances\u2019 \u2026 Kim Kardashian and Naomi Watts in All\u2019s Fair.<\/span> Photograph: Ser Baffo\/Disney<\/p>\n Kim K as Allura, married to a football star who is resentful of the shadow cast over his own success by hers, is as expressionless as you might expect, but is at least inoffensively useless. Watts preens and pouts and poses in search of a character, and reminds you of nothing so much as Ally McBeal at her very worst, delivering her lines so archly that you can almost hear her joints cracking. The guest stars are worse. Nash \u2013 an unstoppable onscreen force \u2013 fares better in a role where the comic intent suits her well. But how parts for Black women are still being written as nothing more than Loud! And Sassy! I do not know. The one good thing And Just Like That \u2026 ever did was seem to be the nail in that coffin. But All\u2019s Fair makes it look like Heimat.<\/p>\n If this was all part of a lurid, camp drama played with gusto by all and narratively stuffed with treats, Murphy might have got away with it. But no one seems to know what they\u2019re doing; the performances seem to respond to about nine different ideas of what show is and the plots are dismal. The trio (\u201cYou\u2019re the best divorce lawyers in town \u2013 maybe the country\u201d) wrap up multiple cases in the time it takes Kim K\u2019s nail varnish to dry. There\u2019s the younger wife who falls in love with the woman her husband hires for a threesome, then walks off 10 minutes later with a $210m settlement once Nash acquires video evidence of his extensive perversions. (\u201cSow teats\u201d is all I\u2019m prepared to say here. Do not let this tempt you into watching.)<\/p>\n There\u2019s the older wife caught cheating (\u201cHe wasn\u2019t even attractive! He just looked at me the way you used to look at me!\u201d) and about to be thrown out of the New York marital home by her billionaire husband (\u201cThe guy who, like, owns all of cosmetics\u201d) until Liberty flies out on the private jet to tell her she can take the $40m worth of jewellery she owns with her. These are fitted in around a couple of the worst kissing scenes ever seen on screen, the collapse of Allura\u2019s marriage, a jarringly unfashionable obsession with brand names (\u201cLet\u2019s get those Goyard travel cases and start stuffing!\u201d) and conspicuous consumption (\u201cOh my God \u2013 didn\u2019t this belong to Elizabeth Taylor?\u201d). All this, and a concept of female empowerment (\u201cI settled \u2026 Did I not love myself enough?\u201d) would have shamed the Spice Girls 30 years ago.<\/p>\n So bad it\u2019s not good. Nowhere near.<\/p>\n All\u2019s Fair is on Disney+ now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad. I assumed that there was some sort of baseline, some inescapable bedrock knowledge of how to do it that now prevented any entry into the art form from falling below a certain standard. But I was wrong. The new series from Ryan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[18615,4429,2222,18617,3328,18616,14419,501,1085,1779,7730],"class_list":{"0":"post-32176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alls","9":"tag-divorce","10":"tag-drama","11":"tag-existentially","12":"tag-fair","13":"tag-fascinatingly","14":"tag-kardashians","15":"tag-kim","16":"tag-review","17":"tag-television","18":"tag-terrible"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}