Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Love In Fairhope’ On Hulu, A Reality Drama About Women Finding And Fixing Love In A Small Alabama Town

Love In Fairhope is a reality drama; a disclaimer says it is “a collision of reality and fantasy featuring real people and inspired by their own stories.” Remember The Hills? It’s more or less like that, except it takes place in a small Alabama town and is produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company.

LOVE IN FAIRHOPE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As the camera flies over a wooded area into the town of Fairhope, Alabama, narrator Heather Graham intones, “If Hollywood’s taught us one thing, it’s that finding love in the big city can be, you know, such a mess.”

The Gist: Abby Mannich is coming back to Fairhope after spending her post-college years building a career in New York City; however, a failed relationship has sent her back to her hometown, where she’s just moved into a new house. At the local watering hole, she runs into Trevor Chunn, the “town bad boy” and her on-again, off-again boyfriend. The “situationship” started before she left for New York and it turns out that she just can’t say no to him, as we see the two of them having breakfast together at her house the next morning. But Abby knows that Trevor isn’t looking for anything serious and won’t even be exclusive. However, he does seem to know her better than anyone.

Mya Jo Williams is back in town on a break from college; her first stop is always to go see Nick Difilippi. He’s her closest friend, and from time to time since they met as kids, there have been romantic feelings going back and forth. When he tells her he’s dating someone new, her feelings are mixed between being annoyed that he didn’t tell her earlier and being a bit jealous that he’s currently taken. When his current squeeze, Baylee Sutterfield, shows up at a party, Mya Jo’s annoyance is palpable.

LaShoundra and Kendell Young are seen to have a “perfect” family life; Kendell is the pastor of one of the town’s biggest churches, and they have a teenage son. But they’re currently separated and living in different homes. They’re working on trying to repair their marriage, but as we see when LaShoundra asks her son whether he’d be OK with her driving him to school, he grumpily says he wants Kendell to do it. As far as the town knows, their marriage is still intact; at the big Magnolia Ball, LaShoundra appeals to Kendell that they shouldn’t be putting up the facade any more.

Clairborne Walsh has been to every Magnolia Ball since the tradition started in the early ’70s. She’s 76 years old and is mourning the death of her husband, to whom she was happily married for over 50 years. The loss is profound, but Clairborne is looking forward, seeing where her life goes, especially romantically, in the coming years.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Hulu claims Love In Fairhope is a “first of its kind real-life romantic drama,” but let’s be real: Is this any different than Laguna Beach or The Hills?

Our Take: One thing we do appreciate about Love In Fairhope is that it’s not even pretending to be a “real” reality show. It fully admits that, while based on the cast’s real-life stories, it’s that aforementioned “collision of reality and fantasy.” We’re not quite sure how the sausage was made here, but the scenes do play out as somewhat of a combination of contrived party scenes from a Bravo series like Vanderpump Rules (whose production company is also involved here) and improvised but guided scenes between cast members like you might see in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

But let’s just say that the “real people” in the cast don’t have the performance skills of Larry David, Susie Essman and JB Smoove. The limits of this format can be seen in the stiff performances of the cast members in the one-on-one scenes, many of which play out like a bad web series from the early 2000s.

Graham’s narration is way too intrusive in the first episode, filling narrative mortar in what is some immense openings in the storytelling. We not only hear her narration, but voice overs from the five cast members themselves, making for a format that doesn’t quite know what perspective should be the one that rules each story.

Yes, there’s lots of men with their shirts off and a lot of sexy times, mostly implied in this case. But the stories are mostly boring and the cast is mostly uncomfortable with the task of trying to pull off the “reality” part of this reality drama.

Sex and Skin: Like we said, any sex is implied. But at least we see people in bathing suits and open shirts, if they’re wearing shirts.

Parting Shot: Abby sees Trevor show up at the Magnolia Ball with another woman, and says, “Of course” under her breath. She then stares directly into the camera.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Olivia Ogeltree, only because she’s the only main cast member we haven’t met yet.

Most Pilot-y Line: Let’s hope Graham’s narration gets less and less intrusive as we get to know the cast better.

Our Call: SKIP IT. We give Love In Fairhope for admitting that it’s mostly not real. But we just wish that the unreality of it didn’t seem so stilted and stiff.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.