Lifetime's 'UnReal' skewers reality romance

The black woman can't come out first. No matter how beautiful or accomplished she is, she simply can't come out first. It's not racist, it's just bad TV.

That, at least, is according to Quinn (House of Cards' Constance Zimmer), the acerbic executive producer of Everlasting, a Bachelor-type show at the heart of Lifetime's UnReal.

Quinn is directing which suitors will be introduced first to their prince, a hunky Brit hotel magnate (Freddie Stroma) more interested in advertising his company than in finding love. As a vet of the faux-love game show genre, Quinn knows women of color don't make it past the first episodes. Bachelor/Bachelorette acolytes know this well. These are shows that celebrate their down-home, "real America," pastoral whiteness. The black woman can't be introduced first. She doesn't have a chance.

It's one of the many sharp shots UnReal takes at The Bachelor complex. These shows are not romantic, yet they are addictive because the people behind the scenes know how to make good TV.

UnReal's heroine is Rachel (Shiri Appleby), a producer who returns after a meltdown, but who has a way of getting contestants to open up.

Rachel is on a redemptive and romantic path. But, more important, she helps humanize these contestants, so often forced into character archetypes - the single mom, the virgin, the nasty one, wife material - when they appear on TV.

UnReal is based on the short "Sequin Raze" by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro. She cocreated UnReal with Marti Noxon, who specializes in messing around with types and making human beings out of them. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which Noxon served as a writer, she transformed the ingenue into the action hero. Recently, she has taken the privileged housewives of Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, a better show than it had any right to be, and rendered them human.

UnReal comes at an interesting time for reality TV. Networks are shoring up their dramatic slates and ditching the unscripted content. The latter doesn't get the ratings it once did (unless there's a Kardashian attached). Noxon's Girlfriends' Guide was Bravo's first scripted show after building a brand on Housewives of all stripes.

This season's iteration of The Bachelorette is also going through its own overhaul. Usually, the male contestants are the ones without power. This time, they got to choose between two women. (Kaitlyn Bristowe beat out Britt Nilsson.)

Though UnReal's purpose is to skewer the fakeness and calculation behind reality shows like The Bachelor, it really does something more important: It humanizes these archetypes. No matter how many format changes The Bachelor or The Bachelorette goes through, it will never accomplish that goal - because who wants people when you can have archetypes?

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UnReal

10 p.m. Monday on Lifetime.EndText

215-854-5909 @mollyeichel