All’s Fair Season 1: Inside Dina and Doug’s Breakup — Why It All Fell Apart
Hulu’s All’s Fair wastes no time: Dina Standish and husband Doug, played by Glenn Close and Ed O’Neill, juggle high-stakes careers as a spiraling health crisis turns devastating — by episode 3, his prostate cancer has spread to his bones and liver.
Hulu just dropped a new Ryan Murphy legal drama, and yes, it is glossy and chaotic in all the expected ways. But the part that actually hooks you is Glenn Close and Ed O'Neill quietly breaking your heart as a long-married couple trying to hold it together while cancer and career pressure chew up the edges.
- Premiere: November 4, 2025 (Hulu, US)
- Creator: Ryan Murphy
- Season: 10 episodes total; Episodes 1–3 are out now
- Main cast: Kim Kardashian, Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson, Niecy Nash-Betts, Teyana Taylor
- Premise: Three lawyers — Allura, Liberty, and Emerald — bail on a male-dominated firm to launch their own, with guidance (and permission) from mentor Dina Standish (Glenn Close)
- Vibe: Couture-heavy, high-profile divorces, plenty of personal mess
The marriage storyline that sneaks up on you
Dina Standish and her husband Doug (Ed O'Neill) are under a constant grind: his illness, their jobs, and the emotional fallout that comes with both. Doug is fighting prostate cancer. By Episode 3, we learn it has spread to his bones and liver — a brutal update that nearly breaks him. Dina is trying to be there for him, but the show makes room for the very human parts: love, fear, resentment, and how ugly it can get when intimacy disappears.
Did Dina cheat on Doug?
Short answer: no — but she wobbled.
Episode 2 is the pressure point. Dina tells the younger lawyers she feels isolated and emotionally ignored because of Doug's illness — and that she hasn't had sex in three years. At an auction hosted by Liberty's client, Sheila, Dina drifts toward something she knows she shouldn't. The auctioneer, Oliver, flirts with her at the bar afterward, compliments her, and invites her to his room. She is tempted — she wants the physical connection she is not getting at home. She kisses him, then pulls herself back. No affair. No night in his room.
Instead, she goes home and tells Doug exactly what happened. It doesn't blow them up. He appreciates her honesty and tells her he still loves her. That honesty — and the conversation it forces — actually closes the distance between them. They end up making love that night for the first time in years.
Episode 3 turns the knife
The next hour lands the harsher reality: Doug's cancer has metastasized to his bones and liver. It rattles both of them, deeply. The show doesn't sugarcoat it, but it does underline something obvious and hard: the only way through it is talking about what they need and what they are afraid of, even when it is messy.
Meanwhile, at the new firm
Allura's personal life starts throwing elbows into the main plot just as the firm finds its footing. The cases stay flashy, the fashion budget keeps flexing, and the series leans into the spectacle while threading these heavier personal beats through the middle of it.
Glenn Close on finding Dina
Close had not worked with Murphy before this, and she admits it was an adjustment. At a Paris press conference with the cast, speaking to Numero, she put it this way:
I was the only actress who had never worked on a series by Ryan Murphy, and I was very intimidated at first. It took me some time to find the right tone. I think Ryan is a genius. He pushes boundaries, and who would have thought we'd have such incredible chemistry and that the stories we could tell would be endless.
It was truly a gift to be a part of this group of exceptional women.
The admiration goes both ways — the cast has been vocal about getting to work with Close and with Murphy.
So, should you stick with it?
Early reactions are mixed, which tracks for a Murphy show that is trying to juggle courtroom fireworks with a very quiet, very adult marriage story. But it's a 10-episode season, and Episodes 1–3 set up enough moving pieces — especially for Dina and Doug — that I'm curious where this goes.
Have you started yet? Do you think Dina and Doug can hold the line with everything closing in? Drop your take in the comments.
All's Fair Episodes 1–3 are streaming now on Hulu (US).