From the moment I saw Rachel Sennott make holding a bagel with disquieting anger in Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby feel like both a setup and punchline, I haven’t been able to shake off what the eventual star of Bodies Bodies Bodies, Bottoms, and, yes, The Idol could do for a wry laugh. And as the creator, writer, and lead of HBO’s I Love LA, she doesn’t disappoint. With her deadpan humor and penchant for embodying messy young women who are their own worst enemies, she’s concocted a fitting love letter to this aggressively sunny city that opens with the most L.A. thing you can think of: an earthquake.
Not that Maia (Sennott) notices it all. She’s much too focused on the sex she’s having with her boyfriend, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson). Indeed, she’s mistaking all the shaking around her for proof that she’s having the best birthday sex she could’ve ever asked for (now if only he would choke her more). We learn plenty about this junior manager in this opening sequence: Maia may be unable to think outside of herself, but she’s a pragmatist to a fault: “If we’re gonna die, I just wanna come,” she tells him when he begins worrying this might be the big quake everyone in L.A. is always waiting on.
Maia, as we learn, is at a crossroads. She’s turning 27, arguably a terrifying age for someone who’s still trying to make her own mark in Los Angeles after leaving New York City behind a few years back. She already feels she’s aging faster (she blames L.A. air). Thankfully, Dylan knows how best to navigate his girlfriend spiraling, redirecting her to focus on how skinny she looks now and her achievements at work. Now if only she got the promotion she’s been angling for at the boutique agency she works at.
But first—and because this is a decidedly L.A. show—Maia has to go walking with her friends around the reservoir. Said pals are Charlie (Jordan Firstman, playing an L.A. Jordan Firstman-type gay) and Alani (True Whitaker, portraying your quintessential L.A. astrology girlie) who are stuck in what has to be the most 21st century discussion you can imagine: Should you block or mute a friend (or frenemy) you’ve had a fallen out with? There are clear pros and cons, especially because the person in question (Maia’s old friend Tallulah) lives an extremely online life, what with being an influencer who once went viral for taking the subway in just a bikini (in a video that Maia took, no less). There’s clearly bad blood, some money owed, and plenty of hurt feelings. It makes sense Maia would choose to just block her and avoid getting angry seeing how well Tallulah is still doing back in NYC, booking ad campaigns and clearly living it up.
Right now, she’s stuck barely mustering enough courage at her job to ask her boss (a fabulous Leighton Meester as Alyssa, who’s getting her nails done while meeting with Maia) for a promotion. Presented with the Kafkaesque L.A. conundrum of “you can’t really become a manager unless you have experience being a manager,” Maia is quick on her feet. Oh, but she is! To Tallulah Steele, who’s been doing great lately. Only her ruse is foiled when Alyssa, looking at Tallulah’s Instagram, realizes she’s not following Maia and, seeing her phone ring (“Maybe: State Farm”), insists she has to get it and that they’ll follow up later.
The day is clearly not going how Maia envisioned it. And it only gets worse. For guess who’s waiting for her at home? Tallulah, who may well be a human hurricane. As soon as Odessa A’zion enters the frame it’s like an electric jolt, her gorgeous curls, piercing eyes, and loud demeanor taking up all the space (and air) in the room. You immediately understand why Maia would equally love and loathe her. And she just doesn’t have time for this at the moment. But Tallulah, who obviously got into an altercation at the airport when she left her bag on the plane and dared to go back (and still found time to steal tiny airport liquor bottles in the process—yes, she’s that kind of mess) is elated to see Maia, at the apartment the two of them were once supposed to share had Tallulah gone through with their OG plan years ago to move together to L.A. It seems she was flown in by Alani as a friendly gesture to get them to make up.
Despite some protesting, Maia tries to make the most of it (watching Sennott calculate as Maia how best to still appear cool to Tallulah while also showing how incensed she is at the whole thing is just a thing of beauty) and eventually gets roped into going out for the night. Maia hates that Tallulah wants to go somewhere with a line (“They used to roofie people here but then they fixed it”), especially when she fails to leverage her new promotion (a lie, of course) to skip it and gets to watch her friend succeed, instead, by simply having met the owner out on the street. Where Maia’s efforts go unnoticed, it seems Tallulah just skates on without any problems whatsoever. And that’s how the two eventually get way too drunk, waking up hungover the next day and arriving late at Alani’s, where Maia’s birthday celebrations were to begin.
The day was supposed to be simple: bagels at Alani’s, then Erewhon, and later a dinner at 7 p.m. Except that’s all too boring for Tallulah: Why not go to the beach? (This is a basic non-Angeleno proposition. Does she even know how long that takes?) No matter, after donning one of Alani’s swimsuits, Tallulah’s convinced that’s what they should do. Oh, and maybe move dinner to 8pm in case they do get stuck in traffic. It’s all too much for Maia, who has become a guest star in her own birthday and just bails and says she’ll meet them for dinner.
What follows is arguably the show’s essence in a montage: set to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” we get to see Alani and Tallulah have a fabulous day in Los Angeles (driving, walking around Erewhon, flashing the Scientology building on Fountain, thrift shopping—and yes, going to the beach) all while Maia is stuck trying to get her dinner reservation changed. This is a caricature of Los Angeles that, trust me, is also hilariously on-point, which seems to be the tone I Love LA is trying to strike.
And it all comes together at Maia’s dinner, which turns out to be a surprise party of sorts (courtesy of Tallulah lying about it being her birthday, thus getting herself a suite and a cake with her name on it in exchange for a few Insta posts). This all drives Maia a bit insane and leads to the Tallulah vs Maia fight the episode was building toward: “L.A. is hard for a lot of people,” Maia insists, embittered. “Like I’ve been here, it’s really isolating. It sucks. And you have to drive everywhere.” Meanwhile, Tallulah just waltzes in and makes it look easy. It’s infuriating. Only Tallulah’s life is not that great. She got dumped and is basically broke. (The scene, shot in a bathroom and increasingly giving us close-ups of Sennott and A’zion, is proof that Lorene Scafaria is a great director, understanding how best to capture the oppressive intimacy that exists between these two lifelong friends.)
And so, we have the setup for the show: What if Tallulah doesn’t head back to New York? What if she stays and has Maia become her manager? What if they enjoy the cake together and relish dancing with the stripper they got for the party who soon enough is dancing up on Tallulah, all while Maia takes what I have to imagine will soon become incriminating pictures of an up-and-coming L.A. starlet? It’s all a delicious kind of mess. And I cannot wait to see how it all unfolds.
Stray observations
- • Comparisons will be made to Girls, Insecure, Broad City, and, of course, to the show that stands as their forebear: Sex And The City. Can I Love LA make its own mark?
- One of this episode’s great lines: “Voice memos are so narcissistic; it’s like bitch, you’re doing a podcast.”)
- • I can already tell I’m going to be obsessed with Maia’s wardrobe because that Bob Baker Marionette Theater hat is just a divine costume choice, equally thrifty and tryhard, effortless and cool. Her red barely-there birthday dinner dress? Carrie Bradshaw-level. Even her Powerpuff Girls PJs tee is a scream.
- • “Google fucking boobs!” and “Have fun being tourists!” are two lines that, on their own, don’t sound like much. But the way they made me laugh out loud is proof this cast is really working so far.
