I love Los Angeles doesn't make a particularly good statement with the pilot, so to give you a better idea, I'll ruin the joke. (If you'd rather not know this spoiler, feel free to skip to the next paragraph, but I assure you: it's not the show's best or most interesting highlight.) In the second episode, Rachel Sennot's Maya and Odessa's Tallulah A'tzion meet the latter's New York City rival, a sparkling blonde influencer who claims Tallulah stole her Balenciaga bag. The purpose of the visit is to restore relations; naturally, it turns into a cocaine-fueled nightmare captured on video. The footage leaks onto the Internet, and Maya's affectionate teacher friend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), while chaperoning the school carnival, learns that his cocaine-snorting face has become a meme, “Coke Larry.” (“Because I do cocaine and they say I look like my name is Larry,” he tells Maya desperately.) As his sleazy director approaches, Dylan prepares for the inevitable: getting fired, fighting with his girlfriend—a classic spiral. “Are you Cox Larry?” – the director asks, and Dylan timidly confirms. “Next weekend I have a…golf trip?” – his boss stutters. “A couple of my classmates. I don't want to let them down…” The beat drags on, the principal eventually pulls away (“Great job on those snickerdoodles!”) and Dylan realizes he needs to stock up on coke for his boss. However, this shouldn't be a problem; Maya's friend will connect it. The show goes on, as if to say: “This is is Los Angeles after all.
It's like the heart of the series I love Los Angeles lies in its ability to capture what it's like to be young – when your heart is still singing with opportunity and ambition, a vital defense in a world all too ready to shower you with disappointment. When you start your career, you haven't yet learned to be truly cynical (another excellent half-hour debut this year, Forex Adultsvibrates at the same frequency), and Maya and Tallulah's relationship gives the series a buoyant, us-against-the-world energy, a sense of shared delusion and drive that fuels both its comedy and its pain. This type of ambitious twentysomething comedy invites inevitable comparisons: Unreliable for an influential age, Girls for millennials, Wide City in the west – but I love Los Angeles ultimately amounts to much more than the sum of its origins.
As Maya, Sennott plays both with and against the image of the unlucky sex spot she honed in film as Shiva Baby, BottomAnd Bodies Bodies Bodies. Maya is driven and ambitious in the way she needs to be to make it in Los Angeles, and her boss at creative agency Alyssa 180 doesn't take her seriously. (The titular Alice is played by Leighton Meester, who steals the scene, and immediately after set the house on fire Nobody wants this.) Maya is supported by her inner circle, which includes stylist Charlie (Jordan Firstman), kind but clueless child helper Alani (True Whitaker), and Dylan, whose interests are more focused on board games and World War II than TikTok and brand deals. Their status quo is shattered when Maya's former best friend, boisterous It girl Tallulah, comes crashing into town, and by the end of the pilot, the alienation born of distance and perceived success gives way to a new connection: Maya sees an opportunity to work with Tallulah, reviving both her career and their friendship. This first episode suffers from having to do so much heavy lifting and feels both busy and too traditional, but once all the pieces are in place the show relaxes and its true voice emerges.
I love Los Angeles it's a showcase for Sennott, who also created and writes about it, and Maya's funniest moments come from cringe-worthy humor, including a remarkable outburst of jealousy taken to sublime extremes. What makes Maya so appealing is that her character seems like a mystery to herself. She fusses, not knowing why or what it will cost her, and this ambition leads to clashes with Alyssa. Whenever their conflict comes to a head, Sennott's face shows a mesmerizing tension: interested but confused, a deer in headlights clutching a knife. Her performance is in sync with an ensemble that teeters on the edge of cartoonishness without ever collapsing, a balance achieved by a writing team attuned to the cast's chemistry and aware of the boundaries not to be crossed.
It's hard to pick a standout in a group of such killers, but Whitaker's Alani, good-natured and easy-going, consistently delivers some of the best asides and weirdest beats in the series. Hutcherson, meanwhile, is a revelation, his earnest, quirky presence laying the foundation for the show's otherwise manic energy. The jury is still out I love Los Angeles effectively curbs the sensibilities of its generation, but at the very least its visual palette serves as a time capsule for this peculiar moment in culture, when Los Angeles is rife with clout-chasing influencers. The gang's costumes represent a consistent progression of world-building and gags: Tallulah's loud, barely there outfits reflect the hyper-performative ambitions of the powerful world she inhabits, and Charlie's elaborate, layered wardrobe highlights how each character fits into their version of L.A.'s professional aspirations.
This dynamic animates the show's highlights: the fight for brand deals, the encounters with Los Angeles' quirky celebrity fauna, the flirtation with the next echelon of fame and fortune. The energy of each episode comes from these activities, but at its core I love Los Angeles believes in the fantasy that ambition and friendship can be enough to make a life in a big city and a professional world designed to break you. The series features a host of successful EPs including Lorene Scafaria, Max Silvestri, Emma Barry and Aida Rogers; Barry and Rogers Barry alumni, and their influence seeps into the show's deadpan Hollywood surrealism, though I love Los Angeles swaps BarryExistential darkness for the sake of something brighter and more hopeful. The result is a comedy that's both precise and crazy, absurdly funny but emotionally truthful—a portrait of youthful ambition and friendship that makes someone a little older while simultaneously grateful that they're not so young anymore, and a little jealous of those who are.
