A delightful holiday treat just dropped for those with a Peacock subscription, and it’s none other than a streaming comedy starring Girls’ Zosia Mamet and Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Stephanie Hsu. The two have great chemistry and the comedy has a totally unexpected premise. Yet one thing is for certain: I absolutely will not be watching it with my mom this holiday season.
That wasn’t always the intended outcome when I perused the 2024 TV schedule hoping to find some stuff to watch this coming week. I’ll be hosting guests who really enjoy television and despite the racy title Laid, I thought a comedy might be just the ticket. But this is a comedy about a young party planner who’s slept with an untold number of men when they start mysteriously dying in the order they’ve slept with our fearless lead, the charming yet remarkably selfish young woman named Ruby.
Tonally it’s wild, and I’ve seen a few other critics so far calling the show uneven, but I love it. Testing out the first few episodes, Hsu and Mamet definitely have A+ chemistry. To be honest, it almost feels as if the conversations in the show are ones they’ve had with one another in real life, and I’m so happy they ended up on TV together. It’s so good that it sort of reminds me of Lorelei and Rory’s quick-witted banter in Gilmore Girls, only in some ways it’s nothing like the Amy Sherman-Palladino show, as it’s also modern, graphic and the conversation feels more realistic, even when the plot gets zany. Still, the end result is the same: Some of the moments are so funny in this show I laughed out loud.
The sex itself isn’t super racy or weird to watch with your rents, though the occasional violent moment might really come atcha out of nowhere. Still, the real reason I’d probably avoid watching with relatives has to do with some of the frank conversations our characters have about such taboo topics as blowjobs versus handjobs, creating blowjob overlay maps and discussing sex loophole surrogates. And that’s not even getting into jokes about anything including weird thrusting noises guys make during sex, culturally inappropriate kimonos, oh yeah, and the number of Elsbeth ads we’ve all been bombarded with since Season 1 premiered last year.
Outside of the show being legitimately laugh-out-loud funny, the character development feels real and I like that it’s trying for something new. New comedies — particularly good cringe comedies — have had a really tough time breaking out in recent years, and it’s nice to see super flawed people behaving badly –but hysterically – again.
Laid is honestly the streaming delight I had no idea would be dropping before the holidays. It’s probably the best thing about streaming that something can just come out of nowhere and be the center of my TV universe for a few days (though alternatively when people don’t find these delightful gems they often end up hitting the year end TV cancelation list.) Just, maybe, you know, don’t watch it with your parents.