Kim Kardashian in “All’s Fair.”
Disney/Ser Baffo
One Rotten Tomatoes critic has helped prevent Kim Kardashian’s new legal drama All’s Fair from being completely “rotten” on the review aggregation site.
All’s Fair premiered on Hulu with its first three episodes on Tuesday. The summary for the series reads, “A team of female divorce attorneys leaves a male-dominated firm to open their own powerhouse practice. Fierce, brilliant and emotionally complicated, they navigate high-stakes breakups, scandalous secrets and shifting allegiances — both in the courtroom and within their own ranks.
“In a world where money talks and love is a battleground, these women don’t just play the game — they change it.”
Kardashian stars in the lead role of Allura Grant in All’s Fair, which also stars Naomi Watts as Liberty Ronson. The series also stars Niecy Nash-Betts, Sarah Paulson, Matthew Noszka, Teyana Taylor and Glenn Close.
All’s Fair got off to a rough start with Rotten Tomatoes critics on Tuesday, getting a 0% “rotten” rating based on five reviews. By noon ET on Wednesday, the series was stuck at 0% after nine reviews, but sometime in between Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon, an RT-approved critic posted a “fresh” review on the site.
That critic is Joel Keller of Decider, who writes in his “fresh” review summary on RT, “All’s Fair is over the top and campy as hell, but it also knows it’s both of these things, which is why the show and the cases the firm deals with are going to be fun to watch.”
As such, the critics’ score for All’s Fair has improved from 0% to 5% “rotten” based on 21 reviews.
Since the initial round of RT reviews on Tuesday, All’s Fair now has a Critics Consensus that simply reads, “Too awful to love, too boring to war over.”
Verified Users On Rotten Tomatoes Like ‘All’s Fair’ Much Better
While RT has yet to post an audience summary, the series has landed a 66% “fresh” Popcornmeter score based on 1,000-plus verified user ratings. On Tuesday, All’s Fair had a 48% “rotten” Popcornmeter score based on fewer than 50 verified user ratings.
Despite the one fresh review on RT overall, All’s Fair still has a 0% “rotten” score from RT’s top critics. The series is the creation of Ryan Murphy, Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken, who take some heat in some of the RT review summaries.
Among the new “rotten” reviews posted by top critics on RT since Tuesday is a blistering take by Judy Berman of TIME Magazine, who writes, “This is what three men and the army of big-name female actors who also signed on as executive producers think women want to see? It’s possible to pander so hard to your target audience, you wind up insulting them instead.”
Amber Dowling of the Globe and Mail takes specific aim at Murphy in her RT review summary, writing, “For a creator that gave us gems such as Scream Queens, Glee and Nip/Tuck, Murphy missed the mark on this one. And he brought several beloved stars down with him.”
Kayleigh Donaldson of The Wrap also calls out Murphy, writing in her RT review summary, “It’s a cavalcade of wigs and screeching in search of truth, but Murphy seems to have lost the magic touch that made his work so appealing for so long. His snark has rotted into contempt, for audience and art alike.”
Also delivering a “rotten” review on RT is Kelly Lawler of USA Today, who writes, “It’s so stilted, artificial and awkward not even a glass of wine and leftover Halloween candy can make it remotely enjoyable to view.”
Despite all of the negative reviews All’s Fair has received, Kim Kardashian, Murphy and his fellow producers may end up having the last laugh.
On Friday, Deadline reported that All’s Fair had the biggest debut for a Hulu Original series in three years, amassing 3.2 million views globally in the series’ first three days on the streaming platform.
All’s Fair Episode 4 will premiere on Hulu on Tuesday, Nov. 11, with new episodes debuting every Tuesday through Dec. 9.