In his influential video essay “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” a definitive exegesis on the sprawling metropolis and its representation on screen, critic Thom Andersen takes issue with the city’s nickname. “People blame movies for all sorts of things,” Andersen argues. “I blame them for the habit of shortening the city’s name to ‘L.A.’” Andersen considers the nickname “a slightly contemptuous diminutive” that indicates “a city with an inferiority complex.” Worst of all, he laments, “When people say ‘L.A.,’ they often mean show business.”
The HBO comedy “I Love L.A.” has an apt title, because it’s not a show about Los Angeles, a diverse and sprawling place that cannot be defined by a single industry. It’s a show about L.A., or even “L.A.” in quotation marks: a blank canvas for the projections of both detractors and dreamers. The stereotypes of superficial people in athleisure wear and the ambitions of fame and fortune are, in themselves, a form of fantasy.
Creator: Rachel Sennott
Stars: Rachel Sennott, Odessa A'zion, True Whitaker
“I Love L.A.” takes place entirely within this bubble, populated by delusional strivers feeding on empty euphoria. It’s more of a sociological deep dive into the influencer era than a sitcom based on jokes or even characters. That is to say, watching “I Love L.A.” made this nearly decade-long Angeleno want to stare at a wall for several hours in a state of despair and numbness, and I suspect that may be the intended effect.
“I Love L.A.” was created, executive produced, and occasionally written and directed by its 30-year-old star, Rachel Sennott, a comedian and actress who has risen from viral social media videos to starring roles in independent films like “Shiva Baby” and “I Used to Be Funny.” (Sennott has partnered with more experienced individuals, such as director Lorene Scafaria and screenwriter Emma Barrie, to bring her vision to life, but there’s a reason the series was announced as “Untitled Rachel Sennott Project”—a name I wish it had kept.) This multifaceted job description instantly places Sennott in the same spotlight as her predecessors Lena Dunham and Issa Rae, women who were also given the golden ticket of a series on television’s most prestigious platform at a surprisingly young age. In reality, however, “I Love L.A.” bears a closer family resemblance to “Entourage” and “How to Make It in America,” HBO series about the hustle and grind involved in evolving models of success. But instead of movie stardom or a fashion empire, the ultimate goal here is converting TikTok followers into cold, hard cash.
Surprisingly, given her background, Sennott doesn’t play herself as the internet ingenue whose rising career drives the story. Instead, she plays Maia, a New Yorker aspiring to be a talent manager who sees her estranged friend Tallulah’s (Odessa A’Zion) growing profile as a potential source of income for both of them. We never see any of Tallulah’s digital posts, which makes it difficult to assess the nature of her appeal. (Is she funny? Is she stylish? Is she just really good at lip-syncing?) I wavered on whether this omission was a frustrating oversight or an effective way to underscore the emptiness at the heart of the attention economy. With major plot points revolving around a fashion house offering Tallulah a free handbag or a potential endorsement deal with Tresemmé, the message comes across regardless. Tallulah isn’t an artist with a greater purpose than having a good time; in fact, she’s stubbornly opaque, more a collection of impulses that Maia tries in vain to control than a person with any discernible inner life. There's no creativity attempting to balance commerce here, just the pure exchange of influence for corporate sponsorship.
Maia's friends are equally detached from anything anyone born before 1980 would recognize as entertainment. In a metatextual wink, True Whitaker, Forest's daughter, plays Alani, the daughter of a famous actor who settles for an obviously fake job at his production company; Charlie (Jordan Firstman, another front-facing camera video genius) is a stylist who spends most of his time dealing with the egos of various pop stars. The only person with a regular job is Maia's boyfriend, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), a teacher who's basically there to point out his partner's increasing lack of perspective, as she expends all her mental energy on whether Tallulah will get an invitation to the "Formé dinner." Is Formé a magazine? A clothing brand? An experimental art project about the depravity of late capitalism? Who knows?
But there’s a world Sennott knows far better than the city she moved to in the fall of 2020, and it shows. A feud between Tallulah and another influencer leads to a meeting with a crisis PR professional, played by Josh Brener of “Silicon Valley,” who remains utterly unfazed by the anxious panic Sennott portrays so well. “It’s two monkeys throwing shit at each other until they get tired,” he says of the public spat, before cynically laying out his typical apology protocol: “For racism, you wait three days; for homophobia, two. For antisemitism, you respond immediately.” The entire playbook is in service of keeping Tallulah’s image “controversy-free.” This nihilism lands hard, as does the appearance of popular personality Quenlin Blackwell playing herself. Her advice for Tallulah? “If you stop for one second, you’ll completely disappear.”
“I Love L.A.” doesn’t have as many jokes as “The Other Two,” the undisputed benchmark for contemporary media satire. That’s a reasonable choice, but it requires delving deeper into the characters’ emotional lives to achieve pathos rather than punchlines. In this respect, the underdevelopment of Tallulah and Maia’s relationship becomes the series’ Achilles’ heel; we never quite understand why they drifted apart, nor how the manager-client dynamic affects a status quo we don’t understand to begin with. Charlie has a couple of storylines that showcase the highs and lows of “I Love L.A.” In one, he struggles to express his feelings for a girl he likes with whom he shares a vaguely defined history, a situation that left me unmoved; in the other, by joining a group of extremely earnest Christian boys, Charlie questions the automatic insincerity of his own friends. The latter achieves a blend of sharp observation and surprising resonance that I’d like to see more of in a second season, which seems inevitable given the abrupt way the eight-episode season ends.
What “I Love L.A.” It pursues with much greater intensity the idea that humor is a factor in popularity, sometimes reflecting the desperate schemes of Maia and company to achieve the same. While the soundtrack, supervised by Ian Broucek, has a slightly retro feel—featuring artists like LCD Soundsystem, Metric, and Peaches—for a series that aims to reflect contemporary life, the costumes, designed by Christina Flannery, are distinctly Gen Z. (This writer, a survivor of the 2000s, cringed at the sight of Tallulah's thong peeking out from above her low-rise pants, but would happily buy Charlie's T-shirt with a Cher tweet on it.) A trip to New York, predictably, begins in the trendy Dimes Square neighborhood. It's an aesthetic inspired by current trends that will undoubtedly give rise to many more, an endless cycle of signifiers.
“I Love LA” premieres on HBO and HBO Max on November 2 at 10:30 p.m. ET, with subsequent episodes airing weekly on Sundays.
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