On the one hand, Trump and the Maga movement have been routed in the midterms. On the other, the second season of All’s Fair is out. Truly, the lord giveth and the lord taketh away.
For those of you who have blanked the first season from your mind, All’s Fair is the existentially terrible offering from Ryan Murphy’s increasingly manure-filled stable, starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts and, absolutely unaccountably, Glenn Close as the super-duper lawyers of an all-female California divorce firm. Sarah Paulson plays their bananas enemy lawyer, Carrington Lane. And if you think that is some rum work pulled at the font, the other characters labour under the monikers Allura, Emerald and Liberty. Close gets off lightly with Dina, which I hope suggests she has at least some clout left in this strange business we call show.
I would catch you up on what happened in the first season, but the second season doesn’t seem to care much, so why waste time when there’s so much nonsense to get through? Carrington and Dina have a head to head in which the former (dressed to indicate her evilness in a sort of pleather gabardine, unless mine eye deceives) recaps as much as is needed. “I did plant the dementia drug, but I didn’t frame you for the murder.” And on we go.
There is a lot happening and yet nothing at all. Since the end of her marriage to Chase (Matthew Noszka), Allura has moved home. “I’m still getting used to an all-glass house,” is a thing she says to explain to her fellow legal she-eagles why she is not spooked by the sight of a hooded male figure looking in at her as she cleans her teeth one evening. “I don’t think it’s anything to be worried about.” Dina disagrees. “You have to remember, you girls, how risky life can be for divorce attorneys. I know from experience. Vengeance is a savage game.”
This is the first sign that someone has been trying to improve things since season one. If you squint and hope, this could be a metatextual pop reference spoken by the star of perhaps the most famous revenge movie in film history – and the kind of camp, self-aware flourish for which Murphy was once famed. When Allura later makes a reference to failing to pass the California bar exam on her first attempt, as happened to Kardashian last year, the suspicion that a human has been introduced into the pool of script-typing monkeys hardens almost into delirious certainty.
Allura’s inaugural plotline is … throwing a ball. A scorpion ball, to be precise, à la Grace Kelly’s famed 40th birthday celebration in which Elizabeth Taylor stole the show by turning up in a velvet and silk cape by Tiziani Roma, embroidered with diamante scorpions. Allura has bought the cape at auction and hired Adele and Bruno Mars to play at the ball; Liberty says she has heard that he is well-hung, everybody laughs and I think I am losing my mind. Onward!
Liberty and Emerald have this week’s legal case to solve. A new client, Aphrodite Lovesong, has come to them after her husband served divorce papers a month before becoming liable for perpetual alimony and after nearly 10 years of banging every cover girl they met as he and – uh – Aphrodite built a magazine empire together. She also has an unsigned prenup. “It appears we have ourselves a case!” says Liberty, sharper always than a tack. The twist involves invisible ink. I check again whether I am losing my mind.
By the time it all kicks off at the scorpion ball, I must have. By then, I’ve heard Carrington call her rivals “Black Mae West, Fat-ass and Dry Vag” and “Dina-saur”, Liberty has come out as gay (“Deep down, I think I am a power lesbian”), astrology has been inflicted on everyone and Dina has been hit on by a waiter younger than Allura’s acrylics, because “you radiate power and that is incredibly alluring”.
However, at some point – although not one I can specifically locate – you realise that you are having fun, instead of, like last time, holding your jaw off the ground and wondering how television could be this bad. It has started groping its way towards “so bad it’s good” territory. Like the US, it is not fully on course yet, but this is a journey that deserves encouragement. And so, unlike last year’s offering, I award it a full one star. I wish this clattering bag of preposterosity well. For the sake of us all, but especially Glenn Close.
