“My vagina is killing people.”
As pithy summations for TV series go, that line from the new Peacock comedy Laid is pretty tough to beat. The series, created by Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna, and starring Stephanie Hsu and Zosia Mamet, has a particularly high-concept premise: Ruby (Hsu), who has compiled a long and messy sexual history without ever finding a relationship that works, discovers that everyone she has ever slept with is dying. Because it’s happening to these men and women in the order in which they had sex with Ruby, and because the causes of death are so varied — gunshot, hit-and-run, cancer, a foul ball to the head — it’s clear this isn’t an STD, or something else with a mundane explanation. So Ruby and her true crime-loving bestie AJ (Mamet) have to set up a sexual murder board to figure out what’s happening, and whether they can stop it before death comes for Ruby’s most recent partners.
Khan’s two most recent sitcoms, NBC’s Young Rock and ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, were warm-hearted period pieces focusing on kids and families. Laid is much more in the vein of the first series she created, and the previous one where she collaborated with Bradford McKenna: Don’t Trust the B—– in Apt. 23, a short-lived ABC comedy from the early 2010s starring Krysten Ritter as a young woman with “the morals of a pirate” whose best friend was James Van Der Beek (played, of course, by James Van Der Beek). Even beyond the idea that an actual curse has befallen Ruby — or has befallen everyone with the bad luck (or judgment?) to have hooked up with her — Laid operates in an exaggerated version of reality where genuine human emotion has to jostle for space with cartoon plot logic. And Ruby herself is written as an immature narcissist who would be unbearable to watch if she wasn’t played by as fundamentally charming an actor as Everything Everywhere All At Once alum Hsu.
There’s a scene in the first episode, for instance, where Ruby winds up in a car with the parents and most recent girlfriend of one of her dead exes. The parents are wracked with grief, and under the mistaken impression that Ruby brought tremendous joy into their son’s life, while the girlfriend knows the truth but can’t say anything about it in this fraught context. Any person with even a modicum of self-awareness or shame would recognize the dynamics at play and try to respect the delicate emotions of everyone else in the car. Ruby, though, can’t stop herself from loudly singing along to Paul Simon’s “Graceland” when it comes on the car radio. The scene is a classic example of the comedy of discomfort, lasting so long that it starts out funny, becomes mortifying, then gradually turns funny again because Ruby just won’t stop — and because Hsu is playing it as if Ruby just loves the darned song and has no idea whatsoever that she’s upsetting the rest of the car.
Mamet as AJ, breaking down the sex-murder board.
James Dittiger/PEACOCK
The series is a terrific showcase not only for Hsu, but for Mamet. Mamet is essentially playing a variation on her character from The Flight Attendant: the steadfast and focused best friend who’s better equipped to solve the mystery than our heroine. But AJ is a more fundamentally comic character, who gets so excited to have a massive case like this that she almost immediately loses sight of the fact that actual people are dying. The writers also write her true crime obsession from a place of obvious love and sympathy: There’s a running gag about Amanda Knox with a great unexpected payoff, as well as an amusing riff about the clunkily-titled Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. As has been the case going back at least to her run on Girls as Shoshana, Mamet walks away with every scene she’s in. It’s long past time she gets her own TV vehicle, but she’s pretty splendid in this.
There are some narrative stumbles along the way, though. Part of the pressure to crack the case has as much to do with Ruby’s massive crush on her event-planning client Isaac (Tommy Martinez), who she can’t even try to sleep with until she’s sure it won’t lead to an untimely, gruesome death. Their scenes together are meant to be a commentary on the unrealistic nature of romantic comedies, yet more often than not they play as an attempt at the genuine article, making them an awkward fit with the black comedy surrounding them. Pretty much every other past and present love interest (including Finneas O’Connell — yes, that one — as a hookup so unsuccessful, Ruby later compares it to “like a brother and a sister fucking”) is more interesting, and particularly Michael Angarano as the sarcastic Richie, who has somehow been spared the curse, and who sees through Ruby’s BS much more quickly than the other men in her life. And the premise feels just barely sustainable for a single season, yet a cliffhanger in the finale attempts to elongate it past the point of interest.
Still, there are enough strong moments sprinkled throughout these eight episodes — various montages of the friends trying and failing to warn Ruby’s exes what’s coming, separate cameos by John Early and Kate Berlant — to make it an appealing holiday binge, and one far less likely to lead to tragic consequences than Ruby’s sexual bingeing.
All eight episodes of Laid are now streaming on Peacock. I’ve seen the whole season.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
