The premise of the new FX series Adults isn’t exactly new; there have been shows about twentysomethings struggling to be adults for decades, from Friends to Broad City to Girls. So what you look for in a show like Adults is if this is a group of friends you want to spend time with. For the most part, we think the answer is yes, though we have some caveats to that.
Opening Shot: On the subway, a group of friends sit together, complaining to one of them that they need hot water to shower. But they’re all buddies, so it’s more friendly complaining.
The Gist: Billie (Lucy Freyer), Issa (Amita Rao) and Anton (Owen Thiele) all live with their friend Samir (Malik Elassal) in Samir’s parents’ house in Queens; Samir has been living there while his parents have decided to have an RV-style retirement. Issa’s boyfriend, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) — everyone calls him by his first and last name — is there often and it seems that everyone wants him to move in, though Samir isn’t sure.
This group of friends are definitely close — sometimes too close. For instance, Issa spies a man masturbating on the subway and seems to have no problem touching herself in some sort of twisted retaliation. The group often seems to be physically intertwined like they’re one organism.
An annoying friend of the group, Kyle Haberman (Will Ropp) has gone public as a victim of “bommer on zoomer” sexual harassment, and it’s become a big story. Billie, who works at a news channel hates that her Gen X (i.e. “really old”) bosses seem to go to her as their “youth ambassador” but don’t give her any real journalism work. Samir, Anton and Issa think that, because of Kyle’s story, “the window” is open for her to request a promotion. However, when her boss keeps putting her off, she says something to him that puts her job in jeopardy.
In the meantime, after hearing from Billie that “half the time men don’t realize they’ve crossed the line sexually,” Samir goes back to his previous partners and tries to find out if he, indeed, crossed a line. Everyone tells him that he was great and respectful, even the partner that told him that he had sex with her when she was drunk. That, of course, makes Samir spiral, and he finds himself in a bathroom with one of Kyle’s friends about to have some confusing sex that includes her spraying him with water.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Adults, created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw (Nick Kroll is one of the EPs), is Friends combined with the bawdiness of Broad City.
Our Take: Firstly, we’ll readily admit that we’re in that “really old” category that the gang bemoaned in the episode, so while we can vibe with a group of friends being found family, references to Queens being a “shit-taint” don’t necessarily connect with us.
The self-centeredness of the characters, especially Trevor and Issa, rubs us the wrong way a lot of the time, mainly because it can be over the top at times; in the second episode, for instance, Issa is more concerned about Billie not picking her as her medical proxy after going to the ER than about her friend’s condition. However, it’s not like the characters on either show we mentioned above, along with shows like Girls and others, weren’t completely self-centered. We chalk the irritation up to our age and decreased tolerance of such behavior more than anything else.
But the show made us laugh more than once, especially in moments that were surreal in nature. There’s a moment when Samir goes to the bank to try to get access to his parents’ account to fix the water heater, and doesn’t even know his Social Security number; the teller hands him a form that has one question: “Are you a fucking idiot?” It’s those moments that made us confident that once the banter among the friend group settles down into something less frantic, the show has a good comedic sensibility that will give them really funny situations to navigate.
Sex and Skin: We mentioned the bathroom scene above, but any sexual content is mostly talk in the first couple of episodes.
Parting Shot: Billie comes home to find her roomies all high, wearing Samir’s childhood hats, and trying to fix the boiler themselves by watching YouTube videos.
Sleeper Star: We liked Jack Innanen as Paul Baker because he was the most chill and least self-centered of the group. No wonder why everyone wants him to move in.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Samir calls Anton on the “shit-taint of Queens” remark, he replies by saying, “but it’s our shit-taint.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Adults definitely starts out a bit frantic, and the characters a bit cartoonish, but there is more than enough that’s funny about this group of friends that makes us want to spend more time with them.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.