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Los Angeles isn\u2019t beating the superficiality allegations. At least, not according to Rachel Sennott.<\/p>\n
In her new half-hour comedy series \u201cI Love LA,\u201d which premieres Sunday on HBO, influencers reign supreme. Designer purses are social currency. TikTok videos can make or break careers. If your friend shows up to the hang with bandages wrapped around his head, don\u2019t worry \u2014 he isn\u2019t hurt, he just got a trendy cosmetic procedure.<\/p>\n
Sennott, 30, known for films such as \u201cShiva Baby<\/a>\u201d and \u201cBottoms<\/a>,\u201d acknowledges that the series she created and stars in offers an exaggeration of zillennial life in the West Coast city. Plenty of Angelenos couldn\u2019t care less about the latest microcelebrity. Many weather terrible traffic on their daily commutes to work, unable to make money by posting to Instagram. But Sennott built a career<\/a> lampooning the bizarre behavior of a specific subset of digital natives, and \u201cI Love LA,\u201d for better or worse, follows suit.<\/p>\n The series follows Maia (Sennott), an aspiring talent manager who works for a girlboss, Alyssa (Leighton Meester), too condescending to promote her. Maia copes with her thwarted ambition by complaining to her sweet live-in boyfriend, Dylan (a welcome Josh Hutcherson), but is reminded of how truly miserable she is when her influencer frenemy, Tallulah (Odessa A\u2019zion), comes to visit. After they bicker and make up, Maia agrees to manage Tallulah\u2019s career. It\u2019s her one chance at glory.<\/p>\n The girls\u2019 antics scale up from there. They attend a party at Elijah Wood\u2019s house \u2014 with their friends, nepo baby Alani (True Whitaker, as in Forest\u2019s daughter) and stylist Charlie (Jordan Firstman) \u2014 just so Tallulah can appear on a high-profile TikToker\u2019s account. Later, Maia is driven so mad by her determination to land invitations to a big fashion industry dinner that she somehow stabs her own foot while trying.<\/p>\n At first, the characters in \u201cI Love LA\u201d can be painful to watch. These 20-somethings are supposed to be annoying, speaking in stretched-out syllables and using ridiculous amounts of slang, but that doesn\u2019t make it any easier on viewers. The title is borrowed from Randy Newman\u2019s 1983 anthem but feels like a slant rhyme for the line that made Sennott a microcelebrity herself in 2019: \u201cCome on, it\u2019s L.A.,\u201d which she slurred in an 18-second Instagram video<\/a> captioned, \u201cThe trailer for any movie set in L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n Anyone who remembers that viral clip fits squarely into the intended audience of \u201cI Love LA,\u201d which recalls the cheeky humor of the Prime Video series \u201cOvercompensating<\/a>\u201d or \u201cAdults\u201d over on FX. These are shows for young people who enjoy laughing at their own worst impulses, or whose egos get a boost from witnessing the comparatively bad behavior of their silliest peers. It\u2019s not dissimilar to what drew so many millennials to \u201cGirls,\u201d Lena Dunham\u2019s sharp-witted satire of her New York contemporaries.<\/p>\n \u201cI Love LA\u201d does have its merits. Like her character, Sennott lives in Los Feliz and paints a knowing portrait of young professionals residing near the Eastside. Episodes directed by Lorene Scafaria (\u201cHustlers<\/a>\u201d) are visually striking and paced swiftly enough to make viewers feel they\u2019re along for the ride. While the jokes land inconsistently and often rely on strong performers to elevate them \u2014 a cartoonish guest appearance by Sennott\u2019s New York University classmate and \u201cBottoms\u201d co-star Ayo Edebiri comes to mind \u2014 these are vividly drawn characters.<\/p>\n Sennott anchors \u201cI Love LA\u201d with an absurd comedic performance that makes many of her previous characters, even the naive podcaster of \u201cBodies Bodies Bodies,\u201d seem gentle. It won\u2019t be for everyone. She may very well have been pitched to HBO executives as the voice of her generation; it seems more likely that, as \u201cGirls\u201d protagonist Hannah Horvath once admitted of herself, Sennott is merely \u201ca <\/i>voice of a <\/i>generation.\u201d This eight-episode season, while a worthy exploration of social-media-fueled hustle culture, isn\u2019t substantive enough to warrant another.<\/p>\n I Love LA<\/b><\/i> (eight episodes) premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, with subsequent episodes airing weekly.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n