Fed up with not being taken seriously, divorce lawyers Allura Grant (Kim Kardashian), Liberty Ronson (Naomi Watts) and investigator Emerald Greene (Niecy Nash-Betts) open their own Los Angeles practice, helping rich women, alongside their former partner Dina Standish (Glenn Close).
Streaming on: Disney+
Episodes viewed: 3 of 9
“The hallmark of camp,” wrote critic Susan Sontag in her oft-cited 1964 essay, “is the spirit of extravagance.” But what happens when “camp” is packaged in something that’s extravagantly bad? It’s a question that feels ever pertinent when discussing TV mogul Ryan Murphy, whose glory days on Nip/Tuck, Glee, and American Horror Story have long since passed, if this latest series is anything to go by.
All’s Fair positions itself as a feminist fable of empowerment. Yet it’s far crueller and tackier than the rich men it targets, drenched in faux girlboss energy. What’s crueller still is how it gives powerhouses like Glenn Close, Naomi Watts and Sarah Paulson the most stilted, inauthentic writing you’ll see all year. It makes Keeping Up With The Kardashians look like Citizen Kane.
So wooden is [Kim Kardashian’s] acting that the furniture around her looks positively alive by comparison.
Then there’s Kim Kardashian herself, the show’s inexplicable lead. In one early scene, an absurd number of candles are lit around her, presumably to create the illusion of emotion on her otherwise bored face. “She’s a dominatrix, I love that for her,” says Kardashian at one point, yet no “love” or expression of any kind is apparent. So wooden is her acting that the furniture around her looks positively alive by comparison.
And therein lies the problem. All the most lavish costumes and ridiculous dialogue in the world still fall flat if there’s no emotion to back it up. Camp is defined by a “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”, but there’s often a theatricality to that exaggeration which is sorely lacking here. As such, lines like “piggly wiggly titties” aren’t so bad they’re good — they’re just exhausting. Murphy’s earlier show Scream Queens was a masterclass of camp by contrast — you’re much better off rewatching that. That is, unless you love high fashion and atrocious acting. In that case, this might just be the show for you.
It takes a special talent to make something so fascinatingly dull, especially with a cast this strong. No words yet invented can fully convey just how much you need to avoid this disastrous show.
