Perhaps it was inevitable that the premiere episode of “All’s Fair” would be a commercial smash. The moment its reviews dropped — embargoed until the day of release — its Rotten Tomatoes score dropped to 0% (later growing to 5%), but all that negative attention hooked audiences. Could this Hulu legal drama starring Kim Kardashian really be that bad? Yes, it was, but as viral marketing and the power of social media gossip have proven, everyone loves a trainwreck.
So, it barely mattered that almost every critic deemed “All’s Fair” to be unwatchable and curiously inept, because it created a wave of hype that led to Hulu getting its biggest ratings for an original scripted debut in over three years.
With any other showrunner, a year like 2025 would be a career low. For Murphy, the critical maulings and ethical quandaries have been sidelined as the ratings overwhelm such discourse. Aside from “All’s Fair,” which is truly the worst thing ever released under the sizable Murphy umbrella, this year saw Murphy release a third season of his Netflix anthology “Monster” focused on the story of murderer Ed Gein. This show may have a few Emmys to its name, but it’s also inspired some of the most skeptical reviews of the Murphy-verse, thanks to accusations that his fascination with true crime veered wildly into the fetishistic. With “The Ed Gein Story,” even ardent viewers of the previous seasons felt discomfort with the leering sexualization of a killer and necrophile, and the trite attempts to add cultural heft to a story otherwise packaged as hyper-violent trash.
But again, viewers still tuned in. Netflix’s ratings can be hard to parse, but the streamer said “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” hit number one on its weekly charts, with 20.7 million views in its first week of release. Still, that is down from the Jeffrey Dahmer season, suggesting that viewer fatigue could be setting in.
“Monster” and “All’s Fair” suffer from many of the same symptoms that have long plagued Murphy’s shows. They are both lavishly stylistic, tonally confused and increasingly reliant on gimmicks over craft. “All’s Fair” went for stunt casting through the presence of Kardashian, while “Monster” attempted to tie the story of Gein’s crimes to the wider American cultural fascination with serial killers and their presence in iconic films like “Psycho.” Both featured a slew of legendary actors doing some of the worst work of their otherwise illustrious careers.
They were also bound together by a curious technical and narrative ineptitude that feels like a world away from the prime years of Murphy’s reign. Compare “Monster” to the genuine brilliance of the first two seasons of “American Crime Story,” where the weaving of true crime and cultural autopsy was expertly done, and the differences are stark.
“ACS” offered a dense portrait of America through the lens of a famous crime, but remained tightly controlled and rejected the easy jokes or morals. But all three seasons of “Monster” have been a sledgehammer of noise, punctuated with a gawking approach to the disturbing crimes whose reverberations can be felt to this day.
Watching Ed Gein be portrayed as a cover model buff dude, whose perfect frame is obsessed over by the camera, cannot help but make one queasy, an emotion replicated in the Menendez brothers season, when the abused and traumatized siblings were depicted as pseudo-incestuous babes the viewer was meant to feel aroused by.
At least “All’s Fair” doesn’t want to tackle anything as serious as serial murder, but it also fails to pass the rock bottom expectations it sets for itself. Murphy used to be a great soap opera maker, as shown through the slick melodrama of “Nip/Tuck” and the first season of “Glee” (after that, we dare not speak of.) There’s a genuine sense of impish fun in these shows where emotions are high but taken just seriously enough amid outlandish plots. Crucially, these shows worked when the characters had some grounding in expressive truth. Think of Brittany and Santana in “Glee,” tropey cheerleaders whose relationship evolved from a one-line joke to something of surprising heft. There’s nothing remotely like that in “All’s Fair,” where these ciphers of women are held up only by expensive clothes. They’re not so much people as mouthpieces for some of the most flop-sweaty dialogue on TV in 2024.
Those terrible one-liners, however, have broken containment and found what might have been their intended home: social media. “All’s Fair” seems a hell of a lot more watchable in bite-sized increments or via Instagram photos with the captions overlaid on pictures of Sarah Paulson looking fabulous. It made the show enticing to an audience that consumes content through TikTok summaries and gif collections. If the ethos that any publicity is good publicity is true, Ryan Murphy is Exhibit A.
Murphy has a level of power that few people in TV history will ever possess. He is a household name who attracts a major audience across multiple channels and platforms, and who receives a seemingly unlimited supply of blank checks to make whatever he wants. He doesn’t need to follow network notes, if they’re even given, because the viewer numbers speak for themselves. Critics and victims’ rights groups think “Monster” is repulsive? Commercial ratings speak louder. “All’s Fair” is poorly made and insulting to its own audience? They’re tuning in anyway. It’s unwatchable? Hate watching still counts. Maybe we’re being rage-baited.
But that untouchable quality doesn’t make Murphy impervious to some more personal criticisms. Horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins, whose father, “Psycho” star Anthony, is a character in Season 3 of “Monster,” called the show out for being part of the “Netflix-ization of real pain.” And during filming of Murphy’s upcoming“Love Story” series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, Jack Schlossberg repeatedly called the creator out for hijacking his family’s struggles. To that, Murphy made a pretty nasty comment about Schlossberg, the nephew of JFK. Jr., insinuating that he had no right to be mad because he probably didn’t remember his own uncle. Are all real people’s tragedies just a blank canvas for him to project his own gawking melodramas onto?
Murphy will, of course, be fine. Aside from the critical low points of his two newest series, he’s still on top of network land with the “9-1-1” franchise — where his silliness makes sense — and “Monster” Season 4 is underway. Still, that doesn’t make his creative slump any less disappointing.
Dishearteningly, “All’s Fair” and “Monster” make it seem like Murphy simply doesn’t care as much as he used to. As aggravating and grotesque as these shows are, they are, above all else, half-baked to the point of shoddiness. More clout and freedom should have made for far more nourishing results rather than the wannabe prestige version of trash we’ve gotten. We’d suggest that audiences deserve better, but if they’re tuning in either way, does it really matter?
“All’s Fair” releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu. “Monster” Seasons 1-3 are now streaming on Netflix.
