“Can you just choke me, like, real quick?” Maia (Rachel Sennott) asks her boyfriend, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), in the midst of a spirited round of morning sex. The choking Maia likes, and it’s an easy gift to give on her birthday. But the quickness is a necessity. Shortly after things heat up, an earthquake hits. Dylan’s eyes go wide, and he reaches for his buzzing phone to check his seismology app. “Baby, this is the big one!” But Maia is unfazed. She doesn’t stop. She’s focused on what she wants. “If we’re going to die, I just want to come.”
As much as I hate to tip the opening scene of an new comedy — and there are plenty more jokes to appreciate, I promise — few introductions so neatly incorporate the major motifs that make up the ensuing series. In “I Love LA,” there’s a relationship that, in the moment, is mainly transactional, even if it’s also only sporadically working toward the same goal. There are characters who invite judgement from the audience, whether it’s disbelief over Maia’s lack of concern for her own safety (not to mention Dylan’s), or it’s admiration for Maia’s unflappable determination to get what she wants. (You can judge Dylan, too, as I did simply for using a seismology app.) And then there are the satiric quips, the candid carnality, and the love-it-or-leave-it depiction of life in Los Angeles.
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Following her breakthrough in “Shiva Baby” and the cult adoration of “Bottoms,” Sennott’s HBO series is easy to frame as the next step in becoming what Hannah Horvath called “a voice of a generation.” The similarities between “I Love LA” and “Girls” (including much of what’s mentioned above) make it easy to compare this Gen-Z comedy to that early millennial touchstone, especially as the ensemble fills out and the narrative settles in.
Still, Sennott’s HBO debut largely avoids the reductive label of “Girls: LA” by piling on its own steady (and stealthy) jokes, leaning into influencer culture’s vacuous reach, and embracing its characters with surprising sincerity. The warm, relatable territory where the first season ends up doesn’t fully square with the savage satire promised by the pilot. But the combination of empathy and acrimony is endearing in its own right, making it difficult not to be won over by a tightknit crew out to get theirs before the world comes crashing down on top of them.
Joining Maia for her pivotal birthday are her two local best friends, Charlie (Jordan Firstman) and Alani (True Whitaker) — respectively, an on-the-rise fashion designer with a smattering of star clients and the nepo baby of a famous filmmaker who gave her a job (in title only) at his studio. Befitting her privileged, blinkered upbringing, Alani makes for an outstanding airhead, and she regularly shares fascinating glimpses into her curious, calcified mind — like when she’s out to dinner and suggests moving her uneaten carrots closer to her uneaten rabbit “as a veneration, or a little offering.” Charlie, on the other hand, is sharp. His cutting observations are a regular highlight, like when he slags a frenemy for drawing out her 15 minutes of fame: “She’s bread-crumbing the posts out like it’s her Midwestern wedding photos.”
Spoken shade amongst the group is as plentiful as actual shade is absent in LA’s concrete desert, and the trio tosses it around with the casual dominance of Shohei Ohtani. Their online parlance is punctuated by empty enthusiasms, vicious aspersions, and obvious hypocrisies that rarely matter. The group will pump each other up (often, by taking others down), and any reversal of previously stated beliefs are automatically ignored for the sake of the friendship. That, or the past has already been forgotten. Because so much in their professional lives pivot on what’s in and what’s out, day by day, moment by moment, people’s thoughts and feelings can be treated as equally immaterial, even disposable — the result of growing up terminally online and importing that slippery, spinning world of social media into their real ongoing lives.
‘I Love LA’Courtesy of Kenny Laubbacher / HBO
That troubling temptation to treat your phone like a magic portal to a better life finds an ideal personification in Tallulah (Odessa A’zion). When Maia’s old college friend from New York shows up in her apartment as a birthday surprise, the model/influencer is all bubbly enthusiasm — despite the fact that Maia just blocked her on Instagram that morning. Yes, Tallulah is the aforementioned bread-crumber, but she’s got enough online followers and offline charisma to unlock a few doors, including Maia and Dylan’s, where she’s decided to crash for the weekend — and maybe beyond.
At first, Maia vents her frustrations with her attention-seeking friend. “She just sucks up all the oxygen in the room and makes everything about her!” Maia says, shortly before Tallulah does it again. But when she realizes all that narcissism can be deployed to her advantage, things change: Tallulah needs a manager. Maia needs a client. They both want to move up in the world, and they both think the other one is holding the ladder.
Whether they pull each other up or tear each other down provides the tension driving most of Season 1’s drama. Sennott and A’zion (Pamela Adlon’s middle daughter, soon to be seen in “Marty Supreme”) are electric together, especially when trading passive aggressive attacks, but you’re never rooting for an implosion; not after the actors vividly establish their characters’ genuine bond, which goes a long way toward wanting their strange, superficial dreams to somehow work out. There’s less to worry about with Charlie, whose talent is proven, and Alani, who was born rich enough to thrive in ignorance, but they still feel substantial and, just as critically, really bring the laughs.
“I Love LA” takes a few too many easy shots at the city’s superficial subculture of fame-chasers obsessed with selfies and beach trips. There’s room for more incisive, challenging commentary, and the first season is missing a complete episode that makes you sit up and say, “Yes!,” the way “The Return” or “Vagina Panic” did for “Girls.”
But Sennott and co-showrunner Emma Barrie weave clever arcs into memorable episodes centered on a Hollywood Hills party, a trip to New York City, and a Ritz cracker campaign. Pilot director and executive producer Lorene Scafaria brings her hard-edged clarity to a crew that wouldn’t settle for anything less than brutal honesty (so long as it also caught their good sides, which she does). Her episodes are alive and exciting, especially the premiere, and she gets the best out of exquisite guest stars like Leighton Meester (perfectly cast as Maia’s queen-bee boss) and Moses Ingram (as a flirty chef who falls for Tallulah).
Even if “L.A.” doesn’t quite earn those four little letters every TV fan wants to say when they try out a smart new show, there’s a lot to like here, and that’s what really matters in a debut season. Time will tell if Sennott’s creation has the stamina and footprint of its forebears, or if it’s more in line with this generation’s succinct series’ length and segmented audience impact. But one thing is clear already: This influencer’s going her own way.
Grade: B+
“I Love LA” premieres Sunday, November 2 at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO. New episodes will be released weekly.
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