In a way, Kim Kardashian might just be the perfect choice to topline Alls Fair, Ryan Murphys glossy new legal drama for Hulu. This is not to say the American Horror Story: Delicate alum is good in it, mind you shes not, and surrounding her with powerhouses like Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, Sarah Paulson and Teyana Taylor only makes her weakness as an actor more apparent.

But Kardashians performance, stiff and affectless without a single authentic note, is exactly what the writing, also stiff and affectless without a single authentic note, merits. Her very presence, which succeeds at generating buzz and not much else, feels fitting for a show that seems to want not to be watched so much as mined for viral bits and pieces. Its the other actresses, trying to sell material unworthy of their efforts, whom you feel sorry for or whom you would feel sorry for, if the show werent also reminding you every five minutes how awesome it is to have lots of money and then make even more money. For their sakes but also for my own ability to believe in a world that occasionally makes sense, I hope that all of them, Kardashian included, collected huge paychecks for whatever theyre doing here.

Reteaming Murphy with Grotesqueries Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken, Alls Fair arrives under a female-empowerment veneer that grows thinner every time the plot dangles kinky consensual sex or a trans sex worker as a lurid reveal. Fed up with never being taken seriously by the indistinguishably old, white and male colleagues at their white-shoe firm, lawyers Allura Grant (Kardashian), Liberty Ronson (Watts) and investigator Emerald Greene (Nash-Betts) credit where its due; those are incredible names decide its time to strike out on their own.

In no time at all, theyve formed their own shingle specializing in divorce law and representing all-female clients. A decade later, Grant Ronson Greene Associates is thriving, as illustrated directly by the victories they recall in exposition-dump office chatter but more vividly by the fact that when theyre not clacking their designer stilettos down vast marble hallways, theyre swanning around beachside mansions, driving Bentleys around Beverly Hills and chatting about what million-dollar jewels they hope to snag at auction while flying to New York via private jet.

Inspired by executive producer and Kardashians real-life divorce attorney Laura Wasser (who is also rumored to have been the model for the Laura Dern character in Marriage Story), Alls Fair ostensibly means to explore how these womens careers inform their personal lives, and vice versa. Each of the first three hours that premiered Tuesday combine a case of the week populated by impressively recognizable faces like Judith Light, Elizabeth Berkley Lauren, Jessica Simpson and Rick Springfield with ongoing concerns about the main characters love lives.

Alluras seen it all but is still blindsided when her own husband, a hot younger football player named Chase (Matthew Noszka), announces hes leaving her. Liberty is blissfully coupled up with a handsome doctor, Reggie (O-T Fagbenle), but fears commitment because shes watched too many of them end. The gangs mentor and mother figure Dina (Close) has kept her romantic spirit despite her work, but struggles with the declining health of her husband, Doug (Ed ONeill). And so on, and so forth.

But any actual emotional resonance or narrative coherence that Alls Fair manages along the way is purely incidental. Really, the show is here to serve fierce looks, bitchy one-liners and big juicy moments, with severely mixed results.

It finds most success on the first front. Cheerfully unconcerned with any notion of what real lawyers might wear to work, costume designer Paula Bradley creates her own fantasy version of office wear involving jewel-tone hats and gloves, diamonds the size of baseballs and enormous displays of cleavage. The outfits may not always be chic or even very pretty, but as modeled by red-carpet pros like Kardashian, Nash-Betts or Taylor (who plays the firms receptionist, Milan) they do exactly what theyre intended to, which is make you stop and stare.

On the flip side, the series completely fails when it comes to minting memorable quotes, because when the dialogue isnt so bland it borders on inane (I failed. I hate failing, Allura pouts), its so extravagantly profane as to be exhausting. Not even Paulson, as villainous rival attorney Carrington Carr Lane, can wrap her tongue around a line as over-labored as I wouldnt do [that] even if I were penniless and starving on a street corner, forced to blow a priest with chlamydia for a bowl of refried beans.

The drama generally falls flat, too, at delivering the sort of watercooler or to put it in more 2025 terms, TikTok-friendly moments it seems reverse-engineered to create. Its not for a lack of wild overreactions. But even when Carr smashes a model boat to smithereens after a professional rejection or Allura imagines herself going full Lemonade on Chases sidepiece, their actions feel divorced from any larger context. These characters are so thin, their storylines so flimsy and their motives so underbaked that theres no recognizable emotion underlying any of it, and thus no feeling to be provoked by watching it.

You might as well be looking at random GIFs from some show youve never seen before. Which, given how dull Alls Fair turns out to be despite how hard it tries to make itself sexy and splashy, might actually be the ideal way to experience it.