Celebrity attention economist and pants merchant Kim Kardashian isn’t really an actor, and it would be unfair to judge her on this niche skill at this stage in her career.
In All’s Fair (Disney+), the new drama in which she stars, it’s fair to say she operates as a sort of special effect for others to act nearby, much like the twister in the film Twister or Jaws in the film Jaws or the smiley-faced sun in Teletubbies. (She does indeed have the windy braggadocio of a twister, the blank eyes of a shark and the luminescent geometry of a chortling daystar.)
Because Kardashian’s primary acting style is basically “existing”, her extremely talented co-stars Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash, Glenn Close and Sarah Paulson must, in contrast, gurn and emote and gesticulate in a style of acting that experts call “very lucrative”.
I’m fine with that, because All’s Fair asks the big questions. Questions such as: what if, instead of writing books, feminist firebrands Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin set up a special law practice for lady billionaires?
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That’s Kim K’s job in this show. She plays attorney Allura Grant, who with her best friends and colleagues Liberty Ronson (Watts) and Emerald Greene (Nash) protects rich ladies in the name of boardroom feminism.
Yes, everyone in this show has a vaguely determinative name. I’m surprised they didn’t just go with Sexica Richlady, Feminista Yugogirl and Dollarena Hunkwrangler. The director and main writer of All’s Fair is Ryan Murphy, after all, who thinks subtlety is for cowards and believes it’s very important to constantly explain what is happening lest viewers are shouting affirmations too loudly to hear the dialogue.
Murphy got away with this shtick for a long time because his characters seemed to be in ironic quotation marks. Increasingly those quotation marks seem entirely decorative, so his output now resembles children’s programming but real sexy like.
This trio of sexually and financially liberated women wear colour-coded clothing, like Power Rangers, travel by private jet a lot and really hate the patriarchy and, also, presumably, the environment. Within minutes of the show beginning our heroine has assembled a crack team, Ocean’s Eleven style, and exited a sexist agency filled with guffawing boors so they can start their own law firm (Richlady, Yugogirl & Hunkwrangler) aimed only at extremely wealthy women.
Then we jump a few years ahead, where we see Kim in her cavernous mansion, sitting at a table flanked by far too many candles (I genuinely worry that Kim Kardashian may be flammable, so this is the most exciting moment in the show for me), preparing to celebrate her wedding anniversary with her hunksband (a husband but hunky; I myself am a hunksband).
Her hunksband has a topknot on his head and no top buttons on his shirt, and he surprises her with a huge diamond ring of the sort that can only be mined by the very best child labourers. What a catch!
Sadly, he is also having a very well-lit and muscular affair with one of Allura’s colleagues. “All’s fair in love and war,” he smoulders at one point, stopping just short of staring right down the camera lens as he says it.
Allura’s law firm is really lucrative because they’ve noticed the worst crime that can be committed against woman: not getting enough money in divorce settlements from billionaires. Oh, the humanity! Why, God, why?
Our heroes spend every episode dealing with this very relatable and heartbreaking problem when not clinking champagne glasses, shrieking with joy about what bosses they are and saying things like, “See you in court, c**tburger” (which you will, of course, recognise as a Seamus Heaney quote).
Now I think of it, this is a line said by their enemy, a fellow lawyer named Carrington Lane (Paulson), who chomps the scenery like a happy beaver while wearing what look like black rubber gloves even though nobody on this programme has ever done the dishes or seen a sink and usually has their servants burn their dirty crockery and buy a new set.
There are two cases in the first episode. In one our heroines argue that a ditched spouse has a right to keep $40 million worth of gifted jewellery despite a restrictive prenup (we’ve all been there). In the other they get a nice payout for another young woman by threatening her tech-CEO ex with the release of sexual images that his dominatrix gave them. “But surely the bonds between a tech CEO and his dominatrix are among the most sacred known to man?” cries you. I know, that’s what I thought too.
Anyway, to recap: the “goodies” in this aspirational TV show about female friendship, conspicuous spending and environmental destruction are blackmailing a man who has had consensual S&M sex by threatening him with image-based sexual abuse.
I feel like this is a bad message to be sending the kids (if any of the kids still watch television), but what do I know about lucrative ladyboss law-firming in the 21st century? Nothing, that’s what.
But oh no! By the end of the first episode Allura’s hunksband tells her he is leaving her because she is simply too rich and brilliant for him (again, very relatable), so he is getting a divorce.
Luckily, Allura is a divorce lawyer surrounded by trash-talking, champagne-quaffing rich ladies and has a private plane that takes her to a jewellery sale in New York.
All’s Fair makes Sex and the City 2 look like a Mike Leigh film about bag ladies who live in the woods and own ferrets. The stakes in aspirational dramas are getting lower and lower, but that’s okay, because our nerves are frayed. Frankly, I’m happy to watch something to which I can respond with the dead-eyed blankness of Kim Kardashian or Jaws from the film Jaws.
I Love LA (Now) features scuzzy, broke twentysomethings struggling to make their way in the city of angels, Athlone. Sorry, Los Angeles, I mean. It’s a bit of an antidote to All’s Fair, really, and it’s another of those generational TV shows that try to take the erratic pulse of an upcoming generation of people who are trying to replace us.
Basically, I Love LA is to Gen Z what Girls was to Millennials, with Rachel Sennott in the Lena Dunham acting/writing/creating auteur role. She’s a talented woman, so with luck she won’t attract the same rabid ire poor Dunham did.
It’s got the slightly scuffed indie-film cool of Girls, with all the toxic friendships, unglamorous nudity and general youthful dysfunction of that show but with extra workplace anxiety and internet poisoning. Troubles schmoubles. If I’ve learned anything from All’s Fair it’s that all of us, Gen X, Boomers, Millennials and Generation Zers alike, could solve all our problems simply by divorcing our no-good billionaire husbands.
