I Love LA<\/a><\/p>\nUpstairses<\/p>\n
\n Season 1<\/p>\n
Episode 4\n <\/p>\n
\n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n
3 stars<\/p>\n
***\n <\/p>\n
\n Nothing triggers an existential crisis quite like a daytime party in the Hollywood Hills.
\n Photo: Kenny Laubbacher\/HBO\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s just true that some of the darkest vibes on this entire planet can be found at daytime parties in the Hollywood Hills. Sure, any place full of people trying to network and one-up each other is basically a waking nightmare. But when you\u2019re stuck with them up in the Hills with spotty cell service, you might as well be stranded in space where no one can hear you scream.<\/p>\n
Maia, Charlie, Tallulah, and (especially) Alani have probably already been to a party like the one in \u201cUpstairses,\u201d which internet star Quen Blackwell (playing herself) throws for friends and assorted hangers-on at Elijah Wood\u2019s house (just go with it). But as they all quickly realize, Quen specifically inviting Tallulah after her viral Paulena takedown is a whole different thing. They\u2019re not just crashing a random party for the fun of it. They, like everyone else around them, are there to get $omething out of it \u2014 and\/or to give the host $omething in return.<\/p>\n
Maia wants Tallulah to make a good impression on Quen, or even just a fraction of her many millions of followers. Whichever works! Frankly, Maia also wouldn\u2019t mind getting in with Quen\u2019s inner circle herself. Unfortunately, that dream quickly dies under the withering power of the influencer\u2019s disdain for management. Once Quen identifies Tallulah as someone who\u2019s actually worth talking to, she promptly whisks her away from Maia to sow some seeds of doubt about her friend\u2019s managerial skills. \u201cHave you booked anything since the Paulena vid?\u201d she asks an immediately insecure Tallulah. \u201cWhat are you trying to be? A fashion girl? Did Maia get you the bag or did your sweat get you the bag?\u201d<\/p>\n
Tallulah isn\u2019t sure what to say. Besides the literal Balenciaga bag sitting in her lap, her online momentum hasn\u2019t exactly resulted in tangible IRL success just yet. The way Adessa plays this moment, Tallulah is genuinely sad to realize that Quen isn\u2019t exactly a cool girl for her to be friends with. She\u2019s a hardened online professional asking harder questions of her than her own manager, and she almost definitely invited Tallulah over with a plan in mind.<\/p>\n
At this point, I thought of a comment that caught my eye from last week\u2019s recap (yeah, I read the comments, don\u2019t worry about it): \u201cThis recap \u2026 like this show \u2026 is lacking something.\u201d While I was briefly tempted to be offended, I had to admit that the sentiment wasn\u2019t entirely wrong. I\u2019ve found I Love LA funny enough, but it\u2019s mostly been skimming the surface of the already shallow pool that is Los Angeles influencer culture. At this point, it just hasn\u2019t given me enough of a reason to dig in \u2014 and watching Tallulah experience even the tiniest of existential crises in this scene made me understand why. With the exception of Maia\u2019s dreams of being a stellar manager (if that\u2019s even what she dreams of), no one on this show has any sort of driving force, let alone a goal. They just want to be. That might be true to the specific Los Angeles subculture that the show skewers, but vibes can only take you so far. These characters\u2019 stubborn lack of direction automatically creates voids where more compelling motivations could be.<\/p>\n
So as perverse as it sounds, it\u2019s somewhat encouraging that Tallulah\u2019s reaction to Quen asking what she actually wants is a nervous sort of terror. She clearly has no fucking idea, but maybe \u2014 just maybe! \u2014 this moment could prompt her to try to figure it out. But even if she never does, the show could only benefit from her considering this question a tad more seriously anyway.<\/p>\n
This week, though, Tallulah doesn\u2019t have an answer for any of that. Instead, she follows Quen back into the house and straight into an elaborate video studio to capture #Content for both their channels. (What looks spontaneous online is, of course, anything but.) Tallulah, who loves perks but hates work, can neither compute the levels of fabrication behind Quen\u2019s online persona nor imagine doing anything like it to sustain her own.<\/p>\n
Countless takes and costume changes later, she finds herself having a full-blown identity crisis, which only gets worse once she stumbles into Quen\u2019s Hackers-level \u201cclick farm\u201d of constantly whirring iPhones. Quen registers Tallulah\u2019s horror, but shrugs it off as another example of her being unserious. \u201cIf you stop for a fucking second, you will disappear,\u201d she explains. At this, Tallulah has to stop herself from falling face-first into a well of despair by making a break for it. To escape back to the bottom of the Hills, though, she\u2019ll have to find her friends first \u2014 and that proves easier said than done.<\/p>\n
Maia, smarting from Quen\u2019s insultingly casual rejection, ends up tagging along for Alani\u2019s mission of the day: finding and seducing Elijah Wood, the only celebrity that makes her nervous. She\u2019s not at all worried about breaking Quen\u2019s strict \u201cno one goes upstairs\u201d rule, though. If anyone is going to ignore a \u201cPlease Stay Downstairs :)\u201d sign, it\u2019s Alani, who has seemingly never experienced, recognized, or respected a single boundary in her life. Plus, she insists, \u201ccelebrities have, like, the best upstairses.\u201d (Maia: \u201cI know, but the upstairses is where the Diddy stuff happened, so \u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n
And lo, who should they find upstairs but Wood himself, alone, watching The Simpsons in his pajamas. He isn\u2019t at all fazed by the interruption; if anything, he just seems benignly pleased to remember that other human beings exist at all. The more people who want to join in on his favorite activity (i.e., watching clips of his favorite cartoons on YouTube), the better.<\/p>\n
As with Entourage before it, I Love LA is a show that\u2019s perfectly set up to let celebs play weirdo versions of themselves, and Wood happily obliges here. But there are \u2014 to borrow an improv\/sketch comedy term \u2014 a few too many \u201cgames\u201d happening with this characterization of bizarro-world Elijah Wood. He\u2019s pleasant. He\u2019s dumb. He\u2019s a hypochondriac. He has a goldfish memory and relies on his meticulously mapped memory palace to get from one minute to the next. Also, he loves Shrek and bathrobes as much as he hates it when women think he wants to fuck (as Maia and Alani do). It\u2019s fun enough to see Wood stray from his public persona, but it never quite gels into something cohesive enough to be as funny as it otherwise could have been.<\/p>\n
In any case, Maia and Alani scramble downstairs to get the hell out of there before Wood\u2019s meltdown escalates any further. When they run into a shell-shocked Tallulah, the palpable relief they feel is a welcome sign that whatever glitzy promise a party like this might make, their friendship (for now) still comes first.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Charlie (Jordan Firstman) spends most of this episode off on his own, once again. This time, he hits on Lukas, a cute guy who reveals that he\u2019s \u201cnot gay, I\u2019m Catholic!\u201d before driving them both 40 minutes away to pick up more ice. Charlie is infuriated \u2014 until he finds out Lukas has 4-million-plus TikTok followers, an impending Vegas residency, and potentially a job for his newly unemployed friend. Hopefully, this character will become a more fully integrated part of I Love LA sooner rather than later, but it\u2019s not this week anyway.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Dylan is even more MIA this episode (boooo), but him being \u201cbasically fine\u201d with Maia having a threesome with Elijah Wood \u2014 albeit only if Alani \u201cdoes the penetration stuff\u201d \u2014 is at least another good character detail.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Great casting alert: comedian Caitlin Reilly (a.k.a. \u201cGirl Who\u2019s Going to Be Okay\u201d) as Quen\u2019s try-hard manager who can\u2019t seem to stop speaking in hashtags.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Alani associating her good friend Robert De Niro most with Shark Tale is probably accurate, generationally speaking, but it still stings!<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201cI don\u2019t want people to know my address. I just feel like I\u2019m going to have a stalker really soon, so \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
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