Unreal & The Reality TV Iceberg
I’ll admit an unusual fact for someone who works in Hollywood: I bypassed the entire phenomena of reality TV until my senior year of college, when I was a development intern for CMT. While there, I got hooked on Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making The Team, and the rest is history. I’m now something of a reality junkie: I’ve seen every episode of Survivor, The Traitors, Queer Eye, Love Is Blind, Too Hot To Handle, The Circle, The Mole, and lots (LOTS) more. While DCC was my gateway drug, it actually took a Lifetime scripted series, UnREAL, co-created by a former Bachelor producer, to teach me how to watch reality TV. The secret is to remember that sometimes the most interesting part of the show is what’s happening off-screen.
Ever wonder how they jam so much conflict into a season of The Bachelor? Or why there’s always someone you really want to win and someone you really want to lose? To spill those secrets, UnREAL pulls back the curtain on the production circus of a Bachelor-inspired reality show called Everlasting, starring eligible bachelor Adam and following Quinn, a power-hungry showrunner, and her producer, Rachel.
Quinn’s job is to come up with storylines for the season – identifying heroes, villains, and opportunities for conflict. In the pilot, as the Everlasting producing team watches the first girl step out to meet Adam, Quinn screams “Cut! Reset. First girl out of the carriage is always a wifey, and that is not a wifey.” Before filming for the first episode even begins, Quinn already has endgame wife candidates in mind. There’s a huge whiteboard with headshots of all the women in the cast, where Quinn slaps up labels like “villain” and “desperate MILF” when her team secures relevant soundbites. People are cast in order to be characters, invisibly pre-slotted into archetypes for the audience – that’s how you ensure there’s enough story to sustain an entire reality show.
While Quinn has a vision for Everlasting, it’s Rachel’s job to create those storylines, by going onto set and whispering in the ears of contestants, pouring drinks, and keeping Adam on task. Right before Britney, Quinn’s selected villain, meets Adam, Rachel tells her “he’s very sexual, just go for it.” This leads Britney to kiss and grope Adam, creating a viral entrance moment that highlights Britney in a negative way; Quinn enthuses, “People are going to hate her!” A villain is born. When another producer makes a contestant cry and storm off, Rachel directs Adam to swoop in and console her, creating an “aww” moment out of a potential story disaster. After Britney attempts to leave set without an exit interview, Rachel tells the cameraman to stop filming and pulls her aside for a one-on-one chat, getting her to open up and cry – right into the lens, as the cameraman is hiding in a nearby plant. UnREAL is an elevated, sharp satire of the reality system, but the basic principles hold true: episodic conflicts and narrative arcs don’t just appear – they’re actively created and shaped by those behind the scenes.
Reality TV is like an iceberg: there’s a whole lot more going on beneath the surface. Once you start paying attention, you can begin to see why certain people were cast, what characters everyone is supposed to play, and where the producers left fingerprints. For Too Hot To Handle fans, remember when they broke the show’s format to keep Nathan of Holly & Nathan around, even after he was eliminated from competition? My guess is that the producers pulled an emergency lever because there was only one other couple at the end of season three, which would have led to a pretty lackluster finale. I see you, producers!
Another way to stay one step ahead is to keep an eye on the edit: think about who’s getting the most screen time and juiciest diary cam moments, especially in early episodes. There’s a solid chance that those are the people who get to the end – and one is probably your winner. Reality TV may function by creating a simpler, stripped-down version of reality itself for viewers to inhabit, but the funnest way to watch is by besting the producers at their own game.