- - Kim Kardashian's 'All's Fair' is the worst TV show of the year

Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY November 4, 2025 at 7:10 PM

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Hollywood never loses its ability to produce absolute garbage. And perhaps that's somewhat reassuring.

But maybe you'd be surprised in the case of "All's Fair," from Ryan Murphy and Kim Kardashian. The two are powerful names in the world of Hollywood and celebrity. Murphy has produced countless TV shows that have been heaped with acclaim, ratings and awards and Kardashian is a reality show star turned businesswoman and billionaire, with millions of followers and fans hooked to her every move.

So if the two team up for a Hulu drama about wealthy divorce attorneys in Los Angeles, with help from actresses like Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, Niecy Nash and Teyana Taylor, it should be great, right? It should, at the very least, be kind of watchable and have good fashion, you'd think?

Kim Kardashian as Allura Grant and Naomi Watts as Liberty Ronson in "All's Fair."

"Fair" (now streaming, ★ out of four) doesn't have a single one of those redeeming qualities. An embarrassingly terrible show with scripts worse than what Chat GPT was spitting out two years ago and acting worse than your local Christmas pageant, "Fair" is an unmitigated disaster of such outlandish proportions it's a wonder not a single person in the production process didn't stop and ask "What are we doing here?" to their fellows. And lest you think that it is the kind of "bad" that is messy and fun and ripe for hate-watching, I will disappoint you further: It's so stilted, artificial and awkward not even a glass of wine and leftover Halloween candy can make it remotely enjoyable to view.

What are the building blocks of this soulless slice of Hollywood egomania, you ask? Kardashian and Watts play the ridiculously named high-powered divorce attorneys Allura Grant and Liberty Ronson, respectively, who leave their stuffy, fuddy duddy, man-led law firm to start their own practice, bringing along investigator Emerald Greene (Nash) with them (yes, again, that's the real character name). They are somehow so successful as to have mansions, private jets and Birkin bags that are really the provenance of their billionaire clients, and do their impressive "lawyering" by blackmailing cheating husbands and staring blankly at their competition across conference tables while wearing truly heinous designer clothing (an important reminder that just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's in good taste).

Sarah Paulson as Carrington Lane in "All's Fair."

When Allura goes through a divorce of her own she calls in old mentor Dina Standish (Close) to represent her, while her wayward husband Chase (Matthew Noszka) nabs Allura's foul-mouthed archnemesis Carrington Lane (Paulson) as his counsel. Oh no, whatever will Allura do!

It's impossible to take "Fair" seriously when not a single actor onscreen appears to be doing so. Watts, Nash, Close, Taylor (a member of the new firm) and Paulson are sleepwalking through their scenes, each one of them acting somewhat at a distance from the material and each other. It's like you're watching all of them through an old-fashioned telescope, so faraway and detached are their performances. Perhaps they're attempting to match Kardashian's complete lack of acting skill, for the reality star's bland line readings can't give her anything close to the title of "actress," no matter how many projects Murphy shoehorns her into.

"Fair" exists in an uncanny valley, with dialogue that no real human would ever utter and shot with an unsettling style that looks like motion smoothing turned all the way up on a cheap smart TV. It's hard to believe a series with this many award-winning actresses and produced by one of the most celebrated and prolific TV creators of a generation can be this excruciatingly awful in so many ways.

Examples of the scintillating lines you can hear on "Fair" include "you aren't capable of lawyering anymore" and "I'm good at women." The characters drop four letter words like so many pennies on the sidewalk, mixed with enough lewd language to make you skip right past clutching your pearls into being bored and desensitized when the writers wish you to be scandalized. Once Paulson has called Kardashian a 4chan-style misogynist sexual insult three or four times, it really starts to get old.

Glenn Close as Dina Standish in "All's Fair."

There have been plenty of other bad TV shows so far in 2025, but they all have one serious advantage over "Fair": they are all at least trying to do something good and just missing the mark. They are not mood boards of wealth fantasy and middle school clapbacks shoved into a designer suit and captured by an iPhone camera. They are not lazy. "Fair" is insulting to an industry with hard-working, creative and brilliant artists who are struggling to get their worthy ideas made into something with less than half the amount of money something like "Fair" required to look so astonishingly cheap.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kim Kardashian's 'All's Fair' is the worst TV show of the year

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