Nearly a decade after its 2017 finale, a lot of people still can’t agree about Lena Dunham’s now-seminal twentysomethings-in-the-city HBO series “Girls.” Even some of its fiercer defenders will describe it as satire, which to this fan seems like an oversimplification. The show is certainly unsparing of its self-centered characters, and has satirical elements, but it’s ultimately more character-study comedy than socio-generational takedown.
So it’s only appropriate that amidst a raft of recent shows with “Girls” influence, including FX’s thematically similar “Adults,” Netflix’s hit “Nobody Wants This” (which had an infusion of “Girls” staffers injected into its second season) and Dunham’s own recent show “Too Much,” one in particular would really run with the question of whether it’s satire. That funny, vexing program is Rachel Sennott’s “I Love LA.”
Sennott’s slender filmography has nonetheless prepared her well for a line-blurring comedy-drama-satire series; she’s starred in an uneasy comedy of jangled nerves (“Shiva Baby”), a drama set in the world of comedy (“I Used to Be Funny”) and a raucously heightened broad comedy (“Bottoms,” which she also co-wrote). She doesn’t play the same type in all three movies, yet she has a clear persona and accompanying physicality: a glammed-up but messy twentysomething with a distinctively scraped-out voice, powering (and sometimes stumbling) through zillennial neuroses. It’s surprising, then, to see what a muddle “I Love L.A.” sometimes makes of her character Maia, despite Sennott creating and executive-producing the series and writing several episodes herself.
One way the show creates some conceptual murk, right off the bat: By introducing Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), a second glammed-up but messy twentysomething with a scraped-out voice. The first episode begins, promisingly, with Maia working at a kind of influencer agency as a glorified assistant, as her old bestie Tallulah rolls back into Los Angeles for an open-ended stay. Maia and Tallulah once planned a New York-to-L.A. move together, only for Tallulah to back out at the last minute and return to New York, where she’s made a name (but not necessarily much money) for herself as an It Girl. Maia, meanwhile, has toiled at her agency and moved in with her blessedly normie boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), an elementary school teacher.
Initially frustrated, even incensed, by her friend’s return, Maia is ultimately won over and agrees to make a go of it in L.A. with Tallulah as her client — forcing her airy, condescending elder-millennial boss Alyssa (Leighton Meester) to take her slightly more seriously. For a little while, this places Sennott in the odd position of the de facto straight-man role, trying to corral the flakier, more impulsive, drug-friendlier Tallulah, as well as the pair’s cartoony friends: caustic gay stylist Charlie (Jordan Firstman) and nepo baby/dilettante Alani (True Whitaker, who, true to both the character and the show’s “Girls” influence, is the daughter of actor Forest Whitaker).
This dynamic throws a lot of the funniest lines to Charlie and Alani — Whitaker especially tosses off nonchalant bits of accidental self-characterization with aplomb — in a way that makes sense but also tamps down some of Sennott’s natural comic talent. Then, as the season goes on and Maia becomes even more gung-go about her career, the whole show feels unmoored by any sense of reality or consequence, but not in a particularly surreal or pointed way. Maia and Alani sneak around a forbidden upstairs area at a party held at Elijah Wood’s house. Charlie falls in with a super-Christian but extremely upbeat pop star and his cadre of bros. Maia attempts to ingratiate herself to Alyssa. Talulah spends time with a hip but grounded chef (Moses Ingram).
Much of this is entertaining, and some of it is quite funny. Yet it’s also possible to spend eight episodes with these characters and come out of it not really understanding what it is they like about Los Angeles — or each other, for that matter. It’s probably uncharitable to keep bringing up “Girls,” so let’s say that the L.A.-set “New Girl” had a rich sense of both new and evolving friendships, even as the show was clearly making a lot of stuff up as it went along (and taking place mostly in an apartment). The recent “Platonic” also makes its characters’ offscreen history feel lived-in while ribbing and reveling in Los Angeles trendiness. The younger-skewing “I Love L.A.,” by contrast, conveys the years-long, on-and-off bond between Maia and Tallulah by having them both act and even sound pretty similar. Tallulah is more impulsive and Maia is more of a hesitant people-pleaser — Sennott speaks volumes via the frequency and tone with which she says “totally” in response to things that are entirely disagreeable — but there aren’t many interlocking layers to their differences. As both a comic team and a dramatic contrast, they’re kind of a flop. Supposedly Tallulah’s presence shifts something in Maia, but most of the changes these characters undergo feel sitcom-style temporary by default, or at least subject to switch back at a moment’s notice.
That would be fine if it was more clear how seriously we’re supposed to take them. Even by the standards of young people behaving badly in pursuit of highly questionable professional goals, there’s a lot of vacuousness echoing around “I Love LA” It’s genuinely difficult to tell whether Sennott is trying to gin up some respect for Maia’s hustle, or savaging the rise-and-grind pointlessness of securing brand endorsements for influencers with extremely tenuous skill sets. In one episode, Tallulah gets a glimpse of the above-and-beyond algorithm-gaming it takes to become a TikTok star. It’s fascinating, grim, seemingly dwarfs the supposedly hard work Maia puts into her client … and is altogether never commented upon for the rest of the season. There’s no real joke to it, but it’s also ultimately not a plot point, or even a free-standing episodic observation. The show often feels like it’s coming from the just-a-bunch-of-stuff-that-happens school of not-quite-comedy.
Within that realm, it’s fun enough to let “I Love LA” tumble along in Maia and Tallulah’s wake, enjoying some laugh-out-loud moments, its nuanced explicitness about sexual power dynamics, and Sennott’s general presence. But as the show goes on, its quarterlife ennui seems increasingly like something the show’s creators are trying to outrun with soapier turns, rather than a thematic concern.
That’s the thing about “Girls”: Even when it made a misstep when walking the line between satire and empathy, the show felt like it was making progress. “I Love LA” sometimes feels caught in a creative gridlock.
“I Love LA” premieres Sunday, Nov. 2, on HBO and HBO Max.
