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Adults ★★★★
Sitcoms take time to find their comedic groove – even all-timers Seinfeld, Sex and the City and Parks and Recreation had shaky first seasons, with major characters and narrative devices abandoned as the writers homed in on the magic of their show.
As streamers order shorter seasons and are ready to cancel a show that’s not an immediate hit, we see fewer shows reach their potential – thankfully, Disney+ and FX gave Adults a chance, returning with a much-improved second season.
Billed as Gen Z’s answer to Friends, Adults debuted last year alongside two other hyped comedies also attempting to reach younger audiences, HBO’s influencer-skewering I Love LA and Amazon Prime Video’s campus comedy Overcompensating.
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Enjoyable but uneven, all three didn’t quite capture the zeitgeist as hoped – each trying too hard with nonsensical scenes, cameos and references all desperate to be clipped for TikTok. But Adults, to me, kept getting the most in its own way, more focused on gaining attention than making jokes.
Take the pilot’s opening scene on the subway, where the hyper-confident Issa (Amita Rao) confronts a man masturbating on the subway by shoving her own hand down her pants. “Is this the world you want?” she screams.
No, not really. And, seemingly, Adults’ creators Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold (former writers on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show) agree, releasing a prequel special a few months before season two that now retroactively sits on Disney+ as season one’s first episode. Focusing on how Adults’ ensemble of five 20-somethings came to live together rent-free in a Queens sharehouse, the new pilot re-centres the show on friendship, realising that’s the draw a Gen Z Friends needs.
Largely unknown prior to Adults, the show’s core cast – comedians Amita Rao and Malik Elassal, Australian Lucy Freyer, TikTok heartthrob Jack Innanen and podcaster-actor Owen Thiele – are excellent comedic actors.
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Season two gets out of the way to let each one shine, dialling back big stunts for heightened-but-relatable moments, such as Billie (Freyer) treating the club like a competition during a quarter-life crisis (“I’m unemployed. I’m not cool. If I’m not young any more, then what am I even?”). Meanwhile, the gang catch the sweet, sensitive Paul Baker (Innanen) code-switching into frat bro with other friends, and the bubbly Anton (Thiele) can’t help but revert to a demon whenever near his sister (Raven Symone, one of many well-utilised guest stars).
No longer trying to prove how relevant, cool and unique it is, Adults is a much more assured, funny and charming comedy – a lesson we all learn at some point in our 20s.
Adults (season two) is now streaming on Disney+.
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