Rachel Sennott’s I Love L.A. is earning applause — and a few eye rolls — from critics ahead of its HBO debut on Nov 2. The eight-episode comedy follows a codependent friend group that reunites, navigating how time apart, ambition, and new relationships have changed them. The series currently holds a 76 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with most reviewers praising Sennott’s sharp, self-aware satire and confident ensemble, while some argue it barely skims the surface of the influencer world it aims to skewer.
At RogerEbert.com, Clint Worthington calls the show “uproarious” and “a stare down the barrel at the age of Internet ‘it’ girls,” praising Sennott’s voice as both acerbic and insightful. He says the series “finds a beautiful cadence for the kind of tossed-off, vocal-fry-laden witticisms these like-obsessed sociopaths spill from their mouths,” arguing that the creator-star “captures her setting and cohort perfectly.”
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IndieWire’s Ben Travers draws comparisons to HBO’s Girls but says Sennott’s show “largely avoids the reductive label of ‘Girls: L.A.’ by piling on its own steady (and stealthy) jokes.” While noting it doesn’t quite deliver the “savage satire promised by the pilot,” he grades the season a B+, commending its “mix of empathy and acrimony” and calling the ensemble “a tight-knit crew out to get theirs before the world comes crashing down.”
Over at The Hollywood Reporter, Angie Han describes I Love L.A. as “fitfully charming, frequently exhausting,” writing that “its perspective is that of a New York transplant trying and failing to convince herself she does love Los Angeles.” Though she finds the early episodes uneven, Han praises Sennott’s performance as Maia, saying that by the second half “the series starts to find its footing” as it embraces “a subtle and ever-changing mix of unease, desire, excitement and devastation.”
The sharpest criticism comes from USA Today’s Kelly Lawler, who labels the series “a masturbatory (literally and figuratively) prestige TV fantasy of the chronically online.” Rating it one-and-a-half stars out of four, she contends that Sennott and her cast are “shallower than a puddle in the desert” and that I Love L.A. “can’t find authentic feeling anywhere in its eight-episode first season because it is so bogged down by its cool-girl aesthetic and party-all-night vibes.”
Still, most reviewers agree that Sennott’s satirical instincts and fearless self-portraiture make her one of the most distinctive new voices on HBO. Even the detractors acknowledge flashes of brilliance — particularly in her chemistry with Odessa A’zion as a toxic-but-tender influencer duo whose friendship teeters between codependence and collapse.
I Love L.A. debuts Sunday on HBO and airs weekly through Dec. 21.
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