Some readers may be old enough to remember when every network was actively trying to find the next “Friends,” hiring often random collections of unknown young performers and throwing them into comic hijinks together. The result was a wave of awful television with a few standouts (long live “Happy Endings”) and a form that quickly burned out. It’s hard to watch beautiful idiots live better lives than you do in the name of forced situation comedy. Network TV largely gave way to “more serious” cable TV post-“Friends,” meaning the end of the subgenre of twentysomething buddy comedies (although one could argue that the mega-hit “The Big Bang Theory” worked from a similar template).
All of this makes FX’s “Adults” feel almost like a throwback, a show that recalls the big city energy of Ross & Rachel but with a dark, modern sense of humor built around things that Joey could never understand, like AirTags, online dating, and Ketamine. As with most of these shows, the success of “Adults” comes down to casting: By the end of the six episodes sent to press, the five main characters had won me over enough that I was willing to go on their admittedly idiotic journeys with them into adulthood. Sometimes being a grown-up can be remarkably dumb.
“Do you remember when the plan on a Saturday was just “Park”?”
This funny question sums up the thrust of “Adults,” a show about people who have to balance paying medical bills with wanting to ride the seesaw again. Stuck between the hazy days of college social life and actual responsibility, the characters of “Adults” are sincerely likable, which is really half the battle on a show like this. We’re willing to accept stupid behavior if we also have reasons to root for and like the characters participating in it.
“Adults” is about five friends living in the same house, the family home of a sweet guy named Samir (Malik Elassal), jobless and hapless in a way that makes him easy to relate to. He’s joined by lifelong buddies Billie (Lucy Freyer), Anton (Owen Thiele), Issa (Amita Rao), and Issa’s boyfriend Paul Baker (Jack Innanen). Most of the plotting revolves around finding work or love, and how these characters so commonly mess up both.
Samir has a job interview for a desk gig that goes memorably awry before pivoting to food delivery work, only to end up partying with the teens who keep ordering beer from him. Billie tries to use a cancel culture moment to get ahead, only to watch her life cascade into a series of medical bills before a funny arc involving a fling with a former teacher, played by Charlie Cox. Unlike a lot of “Friends” rip-offs, plots often roll from one episode into the next, employing a structure that’s reminiscent of FX comedy giant “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in how episodes have standalone lunacy weaved into season-long recurring jokes (like Charlie’s waitress obsession in early seasons, for example). There’s also a willingness to go a step or two too far to get a laugh that’s “Sunny”-esque.
Of course, everyone on “Adults” would look at the “Sunny” gang as ancient, and creators Ben Kronengold & Rebecca Shaw do have a habit of falling back on the language of the current twenty-something generation in a manner that can feel forced. The show is often at its best when it remembers that being in your twenties wasn’t easy for Millennials or Gen X-ers either—the little beats like not knowing what the word “waft” means or not fitting in with a new friend group of someone you’re dating work better than when it feels like the writers are using a TikTok FYP for punchlines. And the writers also have a habit of taking their plotting one notch too far, such as in the weakest episode sent to press, wherein three of the characters act legitimately insane around a potential criminal.
What makes me think that “Adults” is going to last is how much it gets easier to overlook the writing flaws as the characters and their performers engender more goodwill with each episode. Casting makes such a difference in a project like “Adults,” and all five of the leads bring their own comic energy in a way that distinguishes them without stealing focus or throwing off the rhythm of the entire piece. It’s truly hard to pick a standout, a title that I would say shifts over these six episodes from Rao to Elassal to Thiele to Freyer as they get plotting that plays to their strengths. There’s a saying that a comedy is only as good as its weakest player, and there really isn’t one here. Even with the inherent growing pains in a comedy about people figuring out who they are, it feels like the sometimes-mediocre writing will rise to meet the talent of the cast. It’s gonna be fun to watch this one grow up.
Six episodes screened for review. Premieres on FX on May 28th with episodes on Hulu the next day.
