Andy Warhol was decades ahead of influencer culture when he allegedly quipped that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” But he was a prescient guy. Actually, Warhol would dig the influencers, who seek fame for the sake of fame and often get paid handsomely for doing so. Turn on the camera, talk about how awesome something is, and call it an honest day’s work. Bonus points if you’re a pretty person.
Influencers got a wicked movie send-up with 2017’s “Ingrid Goes West,” in which Audrey Plaza’s title character gets discharged from a psych ward and heads to Los Angeles, where she stalks/befriends an Instagram star (Elizabeth Olsen). Now the influence scene is the focus of a new HBO comedy series, “I Love LA,” which gets bonus points by making fine use of the Randy Newman song and for being whip-smart and consistently funny. It’s one of those shows capable of holding two potentially contradictory ideas in its head at once: Los Angeles is a land of vapid, crumpled dreams and runaway egos, and yet it’s still kind of a wonderful place to eat great food, see and be seen, and wear a plunging halter top year-round.
It’s also proof that a show focused on some pretty shallow and selfish characters can be quite lively, if that shallowness and selfishness is the comedic point and those characters are written with a sharp, shimmering voice. That voice belongs to Rachel Sennott, who created the series and also stars as Maia. She’s a low-level talent manager trying to find a foothold in the shark-infested waters of show business after going West from New York.
Maia has her crew of besties, including Alani (True Whitaker), the daughter of a successful filmmaker, who likes to party and spend money (and spend money on partying), and Charlie (Jordan Firstman), a lovelorn stylist. Her boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson) is the token normie who cares less about being fabulous than being a good Spanish teacher. Maia’s life is both empty and unstable.
Into that life blows her old friend Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), a human hurricane and New York-based influencer who steals expensive handbags and upends everything like a 21st-century screwball comedy heroine. Maia resents Tallulah’s destructive narcissism and relative success, which was achieved on the other side of the country. She also loves her like a sister. So, of course, she decides to take her on as a client.
Bawdy and libidinous — the first episode starts with Maia and Dylan having sex during an earthquake (yes, the earth did indeed move) — “I Love LA” is also keenly self-aware, with a clarity of tone that never lets up. That doesn’t mean you’ll like that tone (though I did); it does mean that the show seems to know exactly what it’s doing, and flows like it was conceived and executed with little compromise. It never dawdles or feels bloated; the eight 30-minute episodes are crisp and tight, two adjectives that too rarely apply to TV these days. It goes down like a spicy Gen Z comedic statement; watch for inevitable think pieces comparing it to HBO’s millennial “Girls” and Gen X “Sex and the City,” transplanted to the city of eternal sunshine.
Everyone in the cast pulls their weight, including a Boston native in a guest spot that I’m not allowed to mention. The leads collectively embrace shamelessness even as they lampoon it. Firstman actually played an influencer (named Jordan Firstman) in the scabrous indie film “Rotting in the Sun”; here he’s more of a scenester, an apparently superficial guy looking for the next thrill. But in Firstman’s hands, Charlie gradually reveals unlikely depths. He can convey as much with a lonely sigh as a sardonic smirk. He can also pull off wearing a tank top emblazoned with the question “Can I quiz you about ocean facts?”
For such a quick first season, “I Love LA” manages to work in an impressive amount of character development. This includes Maia, who grows a little less sympathetic with each episode; and Tallulah, who charts an almost inverse path as she finds something resembling love with a red-hot restaurateur (Moses Ingram, conveying a sly, sleepy charm).
Sennott’s greatest trick here is getting us to like these people, toxic self-absorption and all. This is her tribe of internet natives, and on a surface level it’s also her life; she too decamped from New York to Los Angeles after college, shuddered for a while, but learned to love L.A. (and make a couple of strong dark film comedies, “Shiva Baby” and “Bottoms,” with her NYU classmate Emma Seligman). She is all of 30 years old. So yeah, it’s OK to hate her a little. Which doesn’t make her show any less funny.
I LOVE LA
Created by Rachel Sennott. Starring Sennott, Odessa A’zion, Josh Hutcherson, True Whitaker, Jordan Firstman, Leighton Meester and Moses Ingram. HBO and HBO Max at 10:30 p.m. Nov. 2
Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.
