All’s Fair review – Kim Kardashian’s divorce drama is fascinatingly, existentially terrible
Not even Glenn Close can rescue this Ryan Murphy series from its dismal plots, clueless characters, and notoriously bad kissing scenes. I was surprised that television could still reach such a low standard, assuming there was some unbreakable baseline for quality. "All’s Fair," starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, and Niecy Nash, centers on the founders of an all-female law firm delivering divorce justice to extremely wealthy but somewhat unfortunate women under the clear California skies. The show is frankly terrible — fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially so.
Dialogue that captures the tone
To illustrate the difficulty in processing the first episode, here are some direct quotes:
- “Let’s put the 'team' in 'teamwork.'”
- “My flight was turbulent and so is my mood,” says Liberty (Watts) to a man blocking her path to a client.
- “He’s wolf-like in his possessiveness,” says a client about her husband.
The writing is so bad it borders on contemptuous.
“I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad.”
The series reflects the sole creative responsibility of Ryan Murphy and his co-creators Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken—no Julian Fellowes involvement to be found.
Author’s summary
This show exemplifies how a high-profile cast and premise cannot save a production from becoming a bewildering failure in storytelling and character development.
Would you like the summary to be more analytical or neutral?