Quinn’s back in her element and she’s getting her hands dirty on this week’s UnREAL as she and Rachel continue to push their idea of Everlasting. With Coleman taking the reins as the new executive producer and handing over a date to Chet, Quinn decides to get back into it doing what she and Rachel do best…manipulate and “curate” the story.
Chet’s idea of a date with the girls and Darius involves some very strange mix of Miss America and American Ninja Warrior (though, it looked more like those Spartan competitions than anything) as a way to turn the tables on the girls and get them to compete for Darius and a one-on-one date. All of this is going on as Coleman watches on from production HQ with Rachel trying to get him to side with her and Quinn about the kind of show they are trying to make. Of course, Coleman is this indie-documentarian who doesn’t seem to be taking the whole concept of Everlasting nearly as seriously or as strategically as we’ve seen Quinn and Rachel over the series. This lack of care makes him primed to be schooled by the pair, starting with his conversation with Rachel. With amazingly minimal effort, she managed to get him to divulge a lot about his last failed relationship. Coleman continues to be amazed and horrified at just how well Rachel and Quinn do their jobs for most of the hour, especially after Brandi pulls Chantal off of the final obstacle in the course and Chantal ends up with a concussion.
All the while, Quinn’s decided to get back into the trenches and produce some of the girls. Her dive back into everything gave us peak merciless Quinn as she calmly walked around and messed with these girls to no end, especially with MMA fighter and former foster child, Brandi. Her conversations with her throughout the episode were simultaneously masterful at what they accomplished as well as terrible because of the sheer fact that they essentially preyed on her history of abuse against her for the sake of the story, locking her up for hours in a small room before releasing her for her dinner date with Darius. But hey, that’s the show and it will always be one of the aspects that fascinates me.
It’s only in the final moments of the elimination ceremony that we find out Quinn’s long game for Brandi, as she hires a woman to play her mother and convince Darius that she is a pathological liar despite everything she told him on their one-on-one dinner date. Things get crazy (just like they’d hoped) and she attacks him, leaving him looking a little pained. Maybe the threw-out-your-back kind of pain?
Of course, as all of this is going on, we’re getting a bit more of the focus on the contestants themselves which provoke a wide range of reactions from frighteningly real as we see Madison goad Beth Anne into letting her inner racist out with the horrifying line “you’re like Donald Trump with boobs,” to seeing Ruby reach out to Yael (“Hot Rachel”) for some wardrobe help after Jay calls her out and bringing up that she actually likes Darius. That conversation between the women was good to watch and put a focus on the girls who know what the game is about, though this time around it seems like that makes up a larger group than last season.
It wouldn’t be UnREAL though, unless the production team was dealt one more twist and it came as Rachel had her Coleman makeout session interrupted as an unmoving Darius calls her and Gary tells Quinn exactly who called his attention to what was going on with production. If looks could kill at that point, Rachel would have gone up in smoke right there.
That’s it for this week! Now to see how Quinn will exact her revenge, what happened to Darius, and what’s next for the ladies of Everlasting.
Don’t miss the next new episode of UnREAL on June 27 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime.