by Cris Mora-Villa, Contributing Writer
For eight consecutive Sundays, I made it a priority to watch HBO’S newest comedy series I Love LA, from Rachel Sennott. Without fail, I was met with a pop-up screen during the end credits that would direct me to watch a different HBO series, Lena Dunham’s Girls, which held no space in my cultural consciousness until I decided to watch the series at the start of 2025. By the time I arrived at the series finale after only a few months, I was secure in the belief that I would have championed the show as a masterpiece were I watching it as it aired. It had been quite some time since I had seen a show so culturally concise and emotionally available that it formulated a genuine connection to certain aspects of what I had been feeling in my own life. The show’s reevaluation from what I’ve read in the years since it concluded has aligned with my own assessment. I bring all this up because I get the sense there is an attempt to spiritually connect Girls to I Love LA as a companion series on the opposite sides of a generational divide. Girls was written for millennials, and I Love LA would follow a similar model for Gen Z. It is in this context that I ultimately see the comparison as unfavorable for the latter.
Without solely focusing on one-to-one comparisons between the two shows, what makes their theoretical relation difficult to take seriously is believing in the first place that I Love LA adds anything to the conversation. That doesn’t necessarily mean Girls was at the forefront of discussions surrounding mental health or interpersonal female relationships wrapped in a coming-of-age ethos. It took inspiration from other New York set cultural touchstones from different generations, in Sex and the City and Gossip Girl. Girls formed a bridge of sorts between its predecessors’ respective generations in Gen X and millennials. Girls also aimed its discussions around the millennial demographic, but the perspective was reframed to look at its characters and the space they occupied differently. With characters that were notably older than that of Gossip Girls, there was a heightened maturity allowed in being able to confront issues that were timely to a culture that was growing increasingly absurd and detached. Tailor that outlook to the specificity of New York subculture, and we get a refurbished perspective on life lived under conditions which force their characters to change for better or worse. Perhaps this conclusion is unfair, but the first season of I Love LA just doesn’t do any of this.
The past five years for Sennott have proven especially fruitful. While her creative chops as a writer show most in her collaborations with Emma Seligman, along the way she’s proven herself especially capable as a comedic performer in Saturday Night, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and I Used to Be Funny. With that resume, it was the most natural fit in the world that she would option an original series for HBO. The auteur-driven comedy series has reared its head more and more over the past 12 years. The best of which are shows like Fleabag or Atlanta,series I hold in equal regard to Girls. The individual content of those shows vary in tone and theme, but at the helm is an abundance of creativity, clarity, and ambition in telling a singular narrative composed of many disparate stories throughout a season. Sennott at best has a vague grasp at the kind of vision I’m referring to, which frankly is a bit dispiriting.
The central premise of I Love LA follows Maia Simsbury (Sennott) and her core group of friends in Los Angeles as they navigate their personal and professional lives in the entertainment industry. To extend the premise beyond that would be an exercise in creative inflation. To be blunt, I honestly don’t think there is much here worth exploring. Sennott and the assembled cast play their roles with real chutzpah, which makes each episode breezily fly by, but that never gels with the thematic beats. The pilot episode “Block Her” is also the best of the season, and retroactively feels like a tease for what the show could have been: regularly funny and unexpectedly nonchalant to an almost endearing degree, with charming leads. The remainder of the seven episodes fail to meet that potential, made worse when taking into account the immense talent at the show’s disposal.
We are introduced to Maia as an ambitious albeit aimless worker at a talent agency who is prone to posture her social standing higher than it actually is. There is space for the class ascendancy arc it has outlined to reach its apex in the season finale, but the show doesn’t utilize that time to the best of its ability. The following three episodes serve to highlight Maia’s inexperience when managing her only client Tallulah Stiel (Odessa A’zion). The following three episodes speed run the dissolution of her relationship with her boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson). Maia’s arc builds to an admittedly impactful scene in the season finale, and yet I have a hard time equating any of the events in the preceding seven episodes as time well spent. The writing is just too inconsistent to offer much investment in the show’s main plot, which also means the show’s side plots hold even less weight.
Rounding out the cast is Alani Marcus (True Whitaker) as the in-universe nepo baby of the group, and Charlie Cohen (Jordan Firstman), an emotionally unavailable stylist looking to also climb the social ladder. Though I am tempted to weigh the underlying tokenism of each person’s casting, Whitaker and Firstman are excellent in fleshing out Maia’s ensemble. The same goes for A’zion as sporadically rowdy influencer, and Hutcherson as the de facto straight man of the show. What I take issue with is the relative lack of depth afforded to the four. Charlie is likely the most developed character, as his linear progression as lovesick nihilist with the veneer of aromantic tendencies is afforded a fair amount of screen time per episode, but many of those scenes carry an attitude of predictability that infects so much of the show. My biggest drawback of the series is in its energy, or rather a lack thereof. Beyond my original Girls analogy, I look at I Love LA as a singular work on its own merits, as that’s how I look at any piece of media. The problem is it’s surprisingly lacking in personality.
There is one more note worth touching on that I feel most attributes to why this is the case, and that’s to do with the setting. Los Angeles and New York are without question the two most overly romanticized cities in North America in mass media. Considering the name of the show alludes to Los Angeles directly, perhaps Sennott felt it important to form that distinct relationship with the city as a means of fostering an identity. Assuming that’s at least partly true, the show fails in this regard as well, considering its last episode is set in New York City. That wouldn’t be an issue if handled well, but the series can’t help but to feign a connection to Los Angeles by juxtaposing it up against a version of New York that presents as outwardly unbecoming to the characters. The series also fails to live up to its intended satirical bite when taking the piss out of the entertainment industry. The undisputed king of television when tackling this subject matter for me is Bojack Horseman, so I’m not holding any show to that standard of satire. With that said, Silicon Valley, Hacks, The Studio, Dave, Insecure, Mythic Quest, and Barry are all examples of shows with a substantive relation to the vapid commerce of media within their respective landscapes, and they’re able to have those dynamics while also being hilarious. Leave it to a show with L.A. in the title to do the worst job at communicating that point.
Rating: High Side of It Was Just Okay
I Love LA is currently streaming on HBO Max
You can read more from Cris Mora-Villa, and follow him on Letterboxd