"For most of its public existence, I Love LA, HBO's new comedy series created by Rachel Sennott, was known online as Untitled Rachel Sennott Project. One wonders if they should have kept the temporary moniker, which befits the show better than its actual title; though I Love LA does go to Erewhon, it's less a love letter to the city, nor a portrait of its precarious creative class, than a glossy, prestige brand bet on Sennott, an internet It Girl with a distinctly modern indistinction between actor and celebrity, and the popular, chaotic, very online sensibility that she embodies."
"The logic of the project flowed downhill: Sennott, one of the few internet-bred comedians with real movie mettle (see: Shiva Baby, I Used To Be Funny and Bottoms), given eight whole episodes; HBO, continually losing younger viewers to YouTube, appealing to extremely online zillennials; the chattering class, starved for a truly good young-adult comedy FX's Adults, released earlier this year, didn't cut it eager for a successor to the messy, self-absorbed and totally absorbing women of Sex and the City, Girls and Insecure."
"All can agree: nothing gets people talking like a confident and maddening woman on TV. Sennott's Maia certainly fits the bill, at once compelling and insufferable. We meet her on her 27th birthday in Girls-esque fashion during unremarkable sex with her boyfriend with a west-coast twist (She's so laser-focused on her own pleasure that she blithely ignores an earthquake. Also, it's 7am.). An aspiring talent manager living in Los Feliz, she's a distinctly Sennottian blend of contradictions, for better and worse at once hyper-self aware and delusional, histrionic yet dead-eyed, overtly sexual but girlish. She stretches her vowels like taffy, singes the end of every sentence with vocal fry, over-gesticulates as if perpetually before front-facing camera. At her best usually, in short videos or scene-stealing line deliveries, Sennott's teetering balance of clownish self-depr"
I Love LA began life titled Untitled Rachel Sennott Project and functions more as a prestige brand built around Rachel Sennott's internet-star persona than a sincere portrait of Los Angeles. HBO positions Sennott, an internet-bred comedian with film credits, across eight episodes to capture younger, extremely online viewers and satisfy critics seeking a successor to shows like Sex and the City, Girls, and Insecure. The protagonist Maia is a 27-year-old aspiring talent manager in Los Feliz who is simultaneously compelling and insufferable. Maia displays contradictions: hyper-self-aware yet delusional, histrionic yet dead-eyed, overtly sexual but girlish, with exaggerated vocal fry and gestures.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]