Rachel Sennott lampoons zillennial hustlers in ‘I Love LA’
Los Angeles isn’t beating the superficiality allegations. At least, not according to Rachel Sennott.
In her new half-hour comedy series “I Love LA,” which premiered 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’t worry - he isn’t hurt, he just got a trendy cosmetic procedure.
Sennott, 30, known for films such as “Shiva Baby” and “Bottoms,” acknowledges that the series she created and stars in offers an exaggeration of zillennial life in the West Coast city. Plenty of Angelenos couldn’t 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 lampooning the bizarre behavior of a specific subset of digital natives, and “I Love LA,” for better or worse, follows suit.
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’zion), comes to visit. After they bicker and make up, Maia agrees to manage Tallulah’s career. It’s her one chance at glory.
The girls’ antics scale up from there. They attend a party at Elijah Wood’s house - with their friends, nepo baby Alani (True Whitaker, as in Forest’s daughter) and stylist Charlie (Jordan Firstman) - just so Tallulah can appear on a high-profile TikToker’s 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.
At first, the characters in “I Love LA” 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’t make it any easier on viewers. The title is borrowed from Randy Newman’s 1983 anthem, but feels like a slant rhyme for the line that made Sennott a microcelebrity herself in 2019: “Come on, it’s L.A.,” which she slurred in an 18-second Instagram video captioned, “The trailer for any movie set in L.A.”
Anyone who remembers that viral clip fits squarely into the intended audience of “I Love LA,” which recalls the cheeky humor of the Prime Video series “Overcompensating” or “Adults” 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’s not dissimilar to what drew so many millennials to “Girls,” Lena Dunham’s sharp-witted satire of her New York contemporaries.
“I Love LA” 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 (“Hustlers”) are visually striking and paced swiftly enough to make viewers feel they’re along for the ride. While the jokes land inconsistently and often rely on strong performers to elevate them, these are vividly drawn characters.
Sennott anchors “I Love LA” with an absurd comedic performance that makes many of her previous characters, even the naive podcaster of “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” seem gentle. It won’t 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 “Girls” protagonist Hannah Horvath once admitted of herself, Sennott is merely “a voice of a generation.” This eight-episode season, while a worthy exploration of social-media-fueled hustle culture, isn’t substantive enough to warrant another.
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“I Love LA”
Premiered Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, with subsequent episodes airing weekly.