The last 15 years have been a golden era of TV, minting generational treasures out of Cold War-era Russian spies posing as an American nuclear family (The Americans), a Black family fighting for their family legacy through protecting their land (Queen Sugar), a talking horse that swears (BoJack Horseman), and a surreal trip through the mecca of Black cool (Atlanta). But, somewhere along the prestige TV path, humor went from straightforward absurdism that anyone can laugh at to overly intellectualized comedic vehicle to make drama more palatable.
That's why we need more shows like Peacock's hilariously self-contained comedy Laid. For eight 30-minute episodes, Ruby Yao (Stephanie Hsu) and her true-crime-obsessed best friend AJ (Zosia Mamet) trace every person Ruby had slept with after discovering that all of her sexual partners are dying in the order of when they had sex with her.
Laid doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it does steamroll over any drama, flattening it into nothing more than soil from which humor can sprout. Ruby is taken to task by all of her ex-lovers over her inconsiderate actions, including drunkenly sleeping with AJ's boyfriend and lying about it, and any deep self-examination she might engage in is promptly undercut as she makes a crude joke about her predicament.
Laid is a laughs factory with a joke manufacturing strategy I wish other shows would adopt. It manages to blend humor and relatable personal faults into a narrative that leaves audiences laughing while still addressing serious themes.
Collection
[
|
...
]