<\/p>\n
Watching HBO’s new comedy “I Love LA,” you can almost see the outlines of the earlier HBO comedies it’s trying to emulate. With its blend of self-conscious twentysomethings, bold sexual frankness and L.A. stargazing, it feels like a Gen Z mash-up of “Girls” and “Insecure,” with a little bit of “Entourage” sprinkled on top. But its characters are still finding their voices, and “I Love LA” \u2014 premiering this Sunday at 10:30 pm; I’ve seen the first three episodes \u2014 is still finding its voice, too. It feels slight, unpolished and stuck in between genres: not quite comedy and not quite dramedy. It’s not deep enough to get us emotionally involved, and it’s not funny enough to get us to overlook how shallow it can be.<\/p>\n
Rachel Sennott created the series and stars as Maia, a low-level employee at a PR firm who’s turning 27 and isn’t quite sure where she’s headed yet. She has a sweet teacher boyfriend named Dylan (played by “The Hunger Games” veteran Josh Hutcherson), but her career is going nowhere… until she gets her big break when her wild-child friend Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), who’s become an It girl on social media, impulsively moves to L.A. and hires Maia to be her manager. If that set-up sounds a little “generic young-people comedy,” that’s because it is; even the show’s official logline, “An ambitious friend group navigates life and love in LA,” could apply to, oh, about a thousand shows since “Friends” premiered three decades ago.<\/p>\n
Read more: Friends: 20 Memorable Exes, Ranked<\/a><\/p>\nAre They Funny Annoying, or Just Annoying?<\/h2>\n