{"id":350682,"date":"2025-11-02T16:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/350682\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T16:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:32:11","slug":"hbos-new-show-i-love-la-announces-another-voice-of-a-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/350682\/","title":{"rendered":"HBO\u2019s new show I Love LA announces another voice of a generation."},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview for her latest movie, Ayo Edebiri was asked about what it\u2019s like to be a member of Generation\u00a0Z. She reacted as if she had been accused of a terrible crime. \u201cI\u2019m literally turning 30<\/a>!\u201d she responded. \u201cMe and Rachel are always in articles that are like, \u2018These girls, who you think are young, are actually turning so old. You\u2019ll never believe who\u2019s about to die.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRachel,\u201d of course, is Rachel Sennott, whose very public friendship with Edebiri belies the fact that they\u2019ve shared only a single screen credit so far, the raucous 2023 comedy Bottoms<\/a>. Born only two weeks apart in 1995, they\u2019re both solidly millennial but close enough to the boundary that they\u2019re frequently asked to portray members of the younger generation, only to bristle when people confuse the actress with her parts. Generational boundaries are junk science, true in broad strokes but nonsensical up close; a Gen\u00a0Xer born in 1980 has a lot more in common with a millennial born in 1981 than they do with someone born in 1965. But they hold an almost mystical meaning for some, especially when others try to slot them into the wrong one.<\/p>\n

Sennott, like Edebiri, has just turned 30, an occasion she has marked by creating her first TV show: HBO\u2019s I Love LA. Sennott\u2019s character, Maia, shares much in common with the archetypal millennial: She\u2019s a hustler, an aspiring talent manager constantly trying to get a leg up at a firm run by an older woman who spouts girl-power rhetoric while undermining her at every turn, trying to convince herself that her $2,400-a-month bungalow is \u201ccozy\u201d and not confining. But the show makes a point of stressing that Maia is on the other side of the millennial\/Z divide. It\u2019s a Gen\u00a0Z satire, but it\u2019s one pitched from just outside the wall, by a millennial cusper saying, in effect: We\u2019re bad, but at least we\u2019re not that bad.<\/p>\n

The first episode opens on Maia\u2019s birthday, and when she tells her boss, Alyssa (Leighton Meester), that she\u2019s just turned 27, Alyssa makes an exaggerated sad face. \u201cOof, that\u2019s tough,\u201d she says. \u201cBetter than 28, though. Twenty-eight through 33 is, like, kill me.\u201d But then, Maia says hopefully, at least you\u2019re 34? Her boss just shakes her head and goes back to sipping from her Stanley.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Luke Winkie
\n He Was a Famously Anti-Woke Podcaster. Now He\u2019s Starring in A-List Movies.
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Meester, of course, is associated with the original Gossip Girl, whose millennial grinders would stop at nothing to secure their own advancement. But despite the fact that she runs her own at least modestly successful company, her character on I Love LA can\u2019t seem to shake the habit of stabbing others in the back. There\u2019s no sense of solidarity, or even stability; everyone is on the make, but no one is making it. Maia is both furious at and jealous of her old friend Tallulah (Odessa A\u2019zion), who abruptly split after Maia helped make her a social media star. (\u201cIs she the one who rode the subway in a bikini during COVID?\u201d an awed Alyssa asks. \u201cYeah,\u201d says Maia, \u201cI filmed that.\u201d) But when Tallulah abruptly turns up at the house Maia shares with her schoolteacher boyfriend, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), it turns out the booming influencer career portrayed by Tallulah\u2019s Instagram feed is all smoke and mirrors. She\u2019s broke, out of work, and looking to reconcile.<\/p>\n

Sennott has, somewhat atypically, cast herself as I Love LA\u2019s straight woman. While her friends, Charlie (Jordan Firstman), a pop-star stylist, and Alani, an Oscar winner\u2019s nepo baby (played by True Whitaker, daughter of Forest), like to run wild, Maia\u2019s idea of a birthday blowout is having dinner in Beverly Hills. But Tallulah is chaos in a skimpy top, and as soon as she bursts through Maia\u2019s door, her life starts swerving all over the road. One moment Tallulah\u2019s getting five-figure sums for posting Instagram stories with a client\u2019s product. The next, she\u2019s trying to prevent a coked-up heiress from pressing charges for stealing her Balenciaga bag. Bringing Tallulah in as a client allows Maia to finally escape the prison of assistant-hood at work, but she\u2019s trying to manage someone who\u2019s fundamentally unmanageable.<\/p>\n

I Love LA leads with its characters\u2019 most aggravating characteristics: Maia is desperate and narcissistic, Dylan a spineless pleaser, Tallulah a hot mess who makes her problems everyone else\u2019s. (She\u2019s the kind of person you are thrilled to see show up at a party, and wish would leave half an hour later.) But the writing gets sharper and more distinct over the course of the season, especially as its perspective broadens beyond its core characters\u2019 petty obsessions. When a video takedown of Tallulah goes viral, Charlie comments that it\u2019s gotten so big it\u2019s blowing up his Birthright group chat; Alani offers to connect someone with her doctor, who \u201cdoes an Instagram Live every morning,\u201d adding, \u201cHe\u2019s really good about replying to women.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    This Year\u2019s Most Controversial Show Just Produced One of Its Ugliest Scandals Yet. It Was Only a Matter of Time.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n <\/p>\n

    He Was a Famously Anti-Woke Podcaster. Now He\u2019s Starring in A-List Movies.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  3. \n <\/p>\n

    What\u2019s Fact and What\u2019s Fiction in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  4. \n <\/p>\n

    The Novel Was Less Than Impressive. The New TV Adaptation Is a Big Improvement.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The show\u2019s tone wobbles from social satire to character-driven comedy: In HBO terms, it\u2019s somewhere on the spectrum between The Other Two<\/a> and Girls<\/a>. (It also evokes, strongly at times, the work of a disgraced New York auteur famous for his mordant send-ups of egocentric Angelenos, although the creators of this show might not be delighted by the association<\/a>.) And even after a full eight-episode season, it still struggles to define its other characters as well as it does Maia and Tallulah. But there\u2019s something electric in that dyad. At one point, we learn that the two, for reasons that are never provided, used to call each other Roger and Munchy, and as they slip back into their old patterns, the pet names come out again. Sennott and A\u2019zion go at each other like feral animals, playing in a way that seems dangerous to everyone but them, repeating those words\u2014Roger, Munchy, Roger, Munchy!\u2014as if they\u2019ve opened the door to a world where only they exist. They\u2019re messes on their own and an even bigger mess together, but the latter is a lot more fun.<\/p>\n

    Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an interview for her latest movie, Ayo Edebiri was asked about what it\u2019s like to be a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":350683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1144,171,3991,5560,224,39623,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-350682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-comedy","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-gen-z","11":"tag-hbo","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-millennials","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}