Latest news with #RebeccaShaw
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Adults' Is ‘Friends' for a More Anxious Generation
The FX series 'Adults' is the latest of many sitcoms to follow in the footsteps of 'Friends,' and it has several qualities typical of such shows: a vague title, a loose premise that is basically, 'People hang out.' The wrinkle with this one is that the pals are members of Gen Z, their brains poisoned with all the anxieties of their internet-obsessed cohort. The first episode of 'Adults' is rough. The creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, Yale grads who have written for 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,' seem eager to make their pilot as taboo-breaking as possible. (In the main plotline, the group is jealous of an acquaintance for getting sexually harassed at work.) But the show quickly finds its rhythm and starts to define the characters beyond their relationship to hot-button issues. (The first two episodes premiere Wednesday on FX; the entire season arrives on Thursday on Hulu.) These aimless 20-somethings all stay together in the Queens childhood home of Samir (Malik Elassal), an impulsive, awkward slacker. (His folks are traveling.) They are a motley bunch. Billie (Lucy Freyer) is a neurotic overachiever now flailing. Issa (Amita Rao) is talkative and oversexed with an inflated ego. Anton (Owen Thiele) forms fleeting connections with everyone but is resistant to finding something deeper. Eventually, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), a gorgeous bisexual sweetie pie, moves in. Everyone calls him by his full name, 'Paul Baker.' 'Adults' starts to sing when it finds creative ways to exploit these roommates' quirks for comedy. A standout episode involves the gang realizing that Anton — who exchanges phone numbers with everyone he meets — may have accidentally befriended a local stabber. Later, Charlie Cox guest stars in a surprising and delightful turn as Billie's former high school teacher — she reconnects with him when she visits her old school in an attempt to relive her glory days. If you don't think Daredevil can be funny, watch Episode 6, in which he unleashes some impressive physical bits. Set in New York but clearly not shot there — it was filmed mostly in Toronto — the show's strengths lie less in 'Girls'-esque verisimilitude than in ridiculous sitcom setups. 'Adults' is frank about sex and drugs, but it is best when it is just straight-up zany. While it seems unlikely to become a generation-defining sensation, once 'Adults' finds its groove, it is perfectly diverting TV.
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Adults review – Friends for the TikTok generation sitcom is a try-hard misfire
Adults, FX's new twenty-something comedy implicitly pitched as the Friends or Girls for the TikTok and location-sharing generation, opens with a studiously replicated scene of codependent young adulthood: five friends tangled together on a New York subway, their belongings and in-group references strewn between each other. In barely a minute, the characters gab in the way you'd imagine adult-adults imagine young-adults speak, breezing through exposition, getting high, being broke and not having enough hot water to shower. This being New York, there's also a subway masturbator, which Issa (Amita Rao), the loudest and bawdiest of a loud and bawdy group, handles by over-engaging, attempting to out-masturbate the creep. 'Is this the world you want?!' she shouts, to the horror of everyone else on the train. To my horror, as well – there's a fine line between cringe comedy and just cringe, and Adults, created by ex-Tonight Show writers Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw and executive produced by coming-of-age comedian extraordinaire Nick Kroll, is often on the wrong side of it. The barnstormer of an entrance – cue a joke about the progress of feminism – succeeds in setting the tone for the rest of the series (or at least, the six of eight episodes made available to critics): aggressively profane, a little off-putting, onto something but overdone, altogether doing too much. The television equivalent of the friend champing at the bit for inside jokes – Overcompensating, one could say, to borrow the title of another recent twenty-something comedy, albeit one set at US college, that has a better handle on its tone of heightened hijinks and egocentrism during a formative time. Which is a shame, because the viewing public is starved for a good show about one's miserable and magical twenties in post-pandemic New York – or, believably for a group of genuinely broke post-grads, an hour-plus train ride away from Manhattan in outer Queens (as played by Toronto). The archetypically messy group living for free-ish in Samir's (Malik Elassal) childhood home inhabit a recognizable world of post-Covid precarity and interconnectedness. Samir is chronically unemployed and struggling to assert himself. (His parents are off on a post-retirement jaunt.) His childhood best friend Billie (Lucy Freyer), the go-getter of the group, works at a cartoonishly bad media company with no health insurance. Even Anton (Owen Thiele), the house's resident charismatic gay and admitted 'friend slut', doesn't know what his job is besides chiming in 'uh-huh' on Zoom (an update on the Friends bit about Chandler's job). Issa appears to have made a career on hijacking social justice protests for personal gain. Her boyfriend, Canadian transplant Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) – always Paul Baker, never just Paul — is the group's resident softboy, the enthusiastic golden retriever to the over-contrived scheme of the day, such as air-tagging a man as a potential solution to Anton's dry spell. Over 20-ish minute episodes – Adults at least keeps it short and snappy – the crew flail about in ways both relatable and obnoxious. The gags are always a notch or two above necessary, such as an over-emphasis on a lack of physical boundaries (don't you remember letting your best friend pee through your legs?) or Issa and Anton convincing themselves that they annoyed their therapist to the point of suicide. (Issa, in particular, is a too-grating parody of narcissism, as if Marnie Michaels had negative shame and was also a socialist.) The show hits all the expected bases – a go-around on sex-positive app Feeld, an inadvertent and exorbitant hospital bill, the phrase 'defund the police and all, but…' – and some unexpected ones, including guest turns from an admirably game Charlie Cox as Billie's former teacher/older paramour and Julia Fox as her bleached eyebrow self. From house rules to a disastrous attempt at a roast chicken dinner party, all of it tastes overcooked, invoking the classic paradox that the harder one tries to make things look natural, the more contrived it seems. It's not that Adults doesn't have its moments, particularly as the season goes on and distances itself from a turkey of an opener. The cast, a mix of stand-up comedians, internet personalities and screen actors, eventually settles into a more level-headed groove, with Elassal and Freyer in particular demonstrating some emotional texture to their characters. (Thiele gets the award for comic timing). The less the writers strain for ego-centric, no-boundaries twenty-something-ness, the better; the funniest long-running bit is a simple gag about the gang referencing movies they haven't seen. But these are too few and far between, and likely too late after the overkill of the first episode to win over its target audience, though if Adults shares one thing with today's young people, it's a formless, ambient sense of anxiety. Perhaps that will diffuse if the show is given time to grow, and these young adults learn what most twenty-somethings do: in the game of winning friends and influencing people, one needn't try so hard. Adults starts on FX and Hulu in the US on 28 May and Disney+ elsewhere on 29 May
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw's ‘Adults' Sets FX Premiere Date
Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw's 'Adults' has set a May 28 premiere date on FX. The half-hour comedy series, which stars Malik Elassal as Samir, Lucy Freyer as Billie, Jack Innanen as Paul Baker, Amita Rao as Issa and Owen Thiele as Anton, follows a group of twenty-somethings in New York trying to be good people, despite being neither 'good' nor 'people' just yet. The five friends crash together in Samir's childhood home, where they share their meals, anxieties and, occasionally, toothbrushes. The show puts a slightly heightened twist on the wins, losses and humiliations of starting out in the adult world. Whether they're trying to get ahead at work, navigating the healthcare system, hosting a dinner party or dating in the age of Find My Friends, the group is finding that nothing about the real world is simple, and all their best intentions tend to make things worse. Guest stars will include Charlie Cox, Julia Fox, D'Arcy Carden, Grace Kuhlenschmidt, John Reynolds and Ray Nicholson. The project, which was initially titled 'Snowflakes,' first received a pilot order in January 2024 and would go on to be given a series order in July. In addition to Kronengold and Shaw, executive producers on 'Adults' include Nick Kroll ('Big Mouth,' 'The League'), Stefani Robinson ('Atlanta,' 'What We Do in the Shadows'), Sarah Naftalis ('What We Do in the Shadows') and Jonathan Krisel ('Baskets,' 'English Teacher'). Alicia Van Couvering ('Tiny Furniture,' 'Drinking Buddies') also serves as an executive producer under Kroll's Good At Business banner. 'Adults' is produced by FX Productions. The first two episodes will drop May 28 at 9 p.m. ET on FX, with two new episodes dropping every Wednesday for the following three weeks. The entire eight-episode season will also be available next day on Hulu and FX On Demand. The post Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw's 'Adults' Sets FX Premiere Date appeared first on TheWrap.
