Summary
It’s hard to figure out whether All’s Fair is a parody, at least in Episode 1. Ryan Murphy’s legal procedural is all style, no substance.
Only rarely have I ever seen a show lay out the basic shape of its premise as quickly as All’s Fair does. Episode 1 starts with a ten-year-earlier prologue in which Allura Grant and Liberty Ronson are frustrated divorce lawyers trapped in — all together now — the patriarchy, represented here by a table of older dudes cackling at bad jokes. With the blessing of their kindly mentor, Dina Standish, they go to start their own all-female firm, and they’re allowed to take one member of staff with them. They choose Emerald Greene to be their lead investigator, promise her she’ll be an equal partner and a multi-millionaire in a couple of years, and off they go.
But! They leave behind Carrington Lane, a crazy workaholic who thinks she should have been chosen in Emerald’s place, and swears vengeance against the main trio by setting up her own firm and billing more than them. Ten years later, both firms are exceedingly successful, hate each other, and constantly seek to outdo and sabotage each other. And here we are.
There’s no mystery as to what All’s Fair is about, then. A more interesting question is perhaps what kind of show it’s trying to be, because in the premiere, it’s basically impossible to tell. Is this a joke? Is that why Kim Kardashian, of all people, is leading an all-star cast? You do kind of get that impression. Success is communicated exclusively in terms of fancy outfits, Bentleys, and expensive taste (and a coterie of assistants handing people folders without being asked). It’s constantly reiterated that the leading ladies are the best divorce lawyers in the city, and everyone speaks exclusively in cliched girlboss platitudes. It very much looks like a parody.
I genuinely can’t tell if it is, though. There are a couple of introductory cases in Episode 1, and they’re both in this kind of style, all slow-motion walking to camera, and Grant, Ronson, and Greene securing easy wins from every angle. One of the cases is that of Grace Henry, who moved to Hollywood to become an actress and ended up becoming a trophy wife. Her husband, Lionel Lee, kept her isolated and bound by the terms of a stranglehold-tight prenuptial agreement, but, of course, there’s a way around that. It turns out Lionel had rapacious sexual appetites and brought a third person into their marriage, a woman named Emma, whom Grace subsequently fell in love with.
There’s a bit of investigation involved in this, most of which occurs off-screen, but the payoff is predictable. It turns out big, bad Lionel is into deep squatting on a toy the size of a traffic cone, which he’d prefer not to become common knowledge. Fair enough.
The second case is a briefer one involving a woman named Sheila who calls Liberty from out of state because her husband bought a Rembrandt and now wants everything else in the house gone — including her. Liberty is able to board a private plane, get inside the property, quote California divorce law — they were married there — and secure Sheila tens of millions of dollars in about five minutes. Easy work.
You’d think the personal problems would be the more illuminating material, but at least in All’s Fair Episode 1, these seem like a parody, too. Allura is married to a younger football player named Chase, who, by the end of the episode, decides he wants a divorce. It’s very hard to see this as anything other than a commentary on Kim Kardashian’s personal life, but maybe I’m just overthinking it. Natually, the partners all assemble to remind a thoroughly unbothered-looking Allura that Chase didn’t deserve her anyway, and she was simply settling out of low self-esteem.
The only potentially interesting angle here is that Chase is seeing another woman — Milan, the junior working for Grant, Ronson, and Greene. Now that, at least, could cause some genuine problems, but nothing I’ve seen thus far suggests they won’t be easily resolved.
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