I binged all of the American version of Laid over my holiday break. I threw on the first episode because I needed to make a quick viewing decision before my food got cold, and after about ten minutes, I was positive I’d finish the entire season. I did. I watched all eight episodes over the course of two days and then immediately hit up the Internet to see if it was getting renewed. Turns out it’s in limbo. No one is quite sure if/ when it’s coming back. I really hope it does, but also, I hope it learns some lessons from the first season and makes some key changes.
Before I get into those changes though, let’s talk about all the good stuff. That starts with the chemistry between leads Stephanie Hsu and Zosia Mamet, who have a fantastic rapport. The yin and yang of their relationship feels so genuine, and the way they communicate feels like best friends who have known each other forever. As a viewer, you just want to spend time with them, partly because of that authentic relationship and partly because they’re often saying hilarious things.
And it’s not just their banter that’s hilarious. Laid is often very funny in really subversive and unconventional ways. Its sense of humor is really pointed and sometimes kind of mean-spirited. That’s probably to be expected, given the show is about a woman whose former hook-ups are all dying, but the point of the series isn’t to laugh at these (mostly) young men dying in strange ways. Instead, it has a lot to say about sex and relationships and friendships and coping mechanisms and abandonment, and a lot of the comedy comes from addressing those issues in really blunt and aggressive ways. Sometimes the comedy even comes from dunking on its own main characters, especially Hsu’s Ruby and Mamet’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Zack, who is played in all his buffoonish glory by Andre Hyland.
Co-creator Nahnatchka Khan (Fresh Off The Boat, Always Be My Maybe) has been involved in a lot of funny projects, but this is easily her most unhinged. That’s saying something since she wrote a bunch of episodes of American Dad, but you can also see some elements of previous writing jobs on shows like Malcolm In The Middle and Pepper Ann coming through here too. Laid isn’t the sort of thing you’d watch with your mom or your kids, but underneath all those jokes about sex timeline maps and thrusting noises, there’s a real heart and a point of view to it.
Unfortunately, that’s also one of the show’s biggest problems. I like that it has a heart, and I like that it has real things to say about some heavy topics. The comedy is sharper, and it punches harder when it comes from a place of authenticity. Laid doesn’t always come from that authentic place though. Yes, the premise is absolutely ridiculous and involves a ton of dudes dying in a really short amount of time, but Khan and co-creator Sally Bradford McKenna still sometimes waffle back and forth in how realistic the world the characters are inhabiting should feel.
Let me try to explain what I’m saying another way. Think of comedy as a spectrum. On one side is something like Office Space that’s really subtle and grounded, where the jokes mostly come from things like not getting a slice of birthday cake or sitting near a coworker that sounds too cheery on the phone. Then on the other side, you have something like Airplane! where the jokes come from things like a character’s drinking problem where he literally can’t get liquid in his mouth. I love both of those movies, but I wouldn’t want to mix them together.
When Laid struggles, it’s often because the show gives us moments where we’re supposed to connect with characters on a very honest and human level and then follows them up with interactions that feel contrived and inauthentic, as if they’re merely to generate comedy. I love Laid when its making jokes about a boyfriend frantically trying to do all the tasks his girlfriend has told him to do over the past few months in order to get out of the doghouse. I like it a lot less when it’s introducing bumbling detectives and incompetent therapists and witches that work at Cinnabon, as the over the top style they’re written in contrasts too sharply with the moments that feel more genuine, at least for me.
I also think Laid needs to work on Ruby’s dynamic with her love interests, particularly Tommy Martinez’s Isaac. The show gives us a chance to see them connect over their shared love of musicals, but as an audience, we don’t feel that same rapport Ruby has with her best friend AJ or even with her other love interest Richie, played by Michael Angarano. We get a sense that she clearly likes Isaac. That’s obvious from her actions and also the way the character looks at him, but so much of Laid is about the chemistry and dynamic and the show needs to spend more time developing that, or else it’s not going to feel like a real choice between him and Richie.
I like Laid. There were a lot of moments during the first season where I even loved it, but if Peacock gives it a greenlight to return for another season, I hope everyone involved is open to tweaking some things. If it develops some more relatable side characters, improves Ruby’s relationships with her love interests and scales back like 10% of its most outlandish bits of unrealistic humor, I think it could be one of the best comedies on television and one of the best things Hsu has done, which is saying a lot. It's just not quite there yet.
Laid is available on Peacock in the United States and via other streaming options in other countries.
