Roger & Munchy
Season 1
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
Maia and Tallulah are back to their old ways, much to Dylan and Charlie’s surprise.
Photo: HBO
Every person who moves to Los Angeles in search of success, fame, or whatever unholy mash-up of the two they can get will inevitably mix friendship with business. But what does that actually look like on a day-to-day basis? And how the hell do you draw boundaries? The only real attempt in this episode to describe the difficulty of Maia’s position as Tallulah’s manager comes from Maia’s chirpy co-worker (Lauren Holt, a treat every time). Her analogy of choice is a doozy (“It’s like when I tell guys on the first date that I want a C-section”), but the message is right. Things are different for Maia and Tallulah now, whether they want to admit it or not.
But when Maia takes Tallulah out for coffee, she can barely say, “I want to talk to you about your career,” before making fun of herself. Then, as she tries to launch into a pitch for “getting into the health and fitness space,” her first task instead becomes keeping Tallulah from getting arrested.
When athleisure blonde Paulena (Annalisa Cochrane) looks across the coffee shop and recognizes Tallulah, she makes a huge scene asking for her Balenciaga bag back. Maia’s horrified to realize that the bag was stolen; Tallulah’s mostly just annoyed she got caught. After pouring out all of Tallulah’s earthly possessions — loose cash, thongs, several vapes, Bubble Tape — Paulena takes the bag and flounces off, leaving Tallulah vibrating with rage and Maia quietly panicking. If she wants to make Tallulah marketable to the Midwest (because “that’s when we buy houses!”), she has her work cut out for her.
That night at Alani’s, though, Maia clocks out of professional mode to slip back into the rhythms of best friendship. As they knock back wine and laugh at Paulena’s ugly plastic-jewelry line, Charlie asks Alani what Maia and Tallulah’s deal is, anyway (or in his words: “Why are they being lesbians?”). Alani, as ever, is unfazed. “They’ve always been super codependent,” she shrugs. “In college, there was a year when they only called each other ‘Roger’ and ‘Munchy.’” Charlie doesn’t love this reminder of his friends’ lives before he met them. “Ugh, I hate inside jokes,” he says, rolling his eyes. “It’s like, why not me, involved?”
Meanwhile, Dylan’s spending his evening reading up on WWII, as per normie-teacher boyfriend tradition. Once Drunk Maia gets home, she perches precariously atop his lap and asks if he can “make [the Third Reich] horny.” The fact that this seems to work for Dylan is a real win for the “opposites attract” theory. But they only get a chance to half make out before Tallulah stumbles in, forcing Dylan to scramble to make himself decent as the reunited besties squeal. Suddenly, he’s become the third wheel in his own apartment.
The next day, we join Charlie at work as a stylist for rising pop star Mimi Rush, played by Ayo Edebiri with a British accent, mullet wig, and bleached eyebrows. Blowing vape smoke in Charlie’s face, Mimi reveals that she wants Zendaya to play her mother in a music video. (For as amazing as it’s been to watch Edebiri become America’s Sweetheart, Mimi’s a solid reminder of how fun it is to watch her play such a purely delusional character.) Charlie short-circuits trying to imagine it, “because of … the age … that she is.” Fair, tbh!
Mimi’s assistant clarifies Zendaya hasn’t responded to any of their mood boards, actually. Sensing danger, Charlie doubles down on sucking up. “I’ve heard she does this,” he lies. When employed by a minor celebrity with major insecurity, the move is convincing them that they’re not the problem. He spends the rest of the episode desperately searching for evidence that Zendaya’s a secret monster and not only fails but loses his job once his clumsy digging gets back to Mimi. She makes him return the clothes he’s scored from her closet — in person, until he’s almost naked in the middle of a scene-y Eagle Rock restaurant, where his designer-jacket hookup dies alongside his dignity. RIP.
We also get a window into Alani’s whole deal, and it is … wild. In True Whitaker’s hands, it’s also extremely funny. Not only is her delivery hilarious, but having Forest Whitaker’s daughter play an unabashed Hollywood nepo baby is a sly bit of meta casting that pays off big time here. While picking up a package at her dad’s office, Alani — a.k.a. the company’s absentee “VP of Creative Projects” — horrifies a “Gen-Z Clueless” writers’ room into silence with her high-school stories of L.A. debauchery past. They were ready for anecdotes about making out in convertibles, not “my 28-year-old boyfriend was so annoying about his newborn.” In stark contrast to her friends, Alani’s never experienced shame a day in her life, but she sure has experienced a lot!
Still, this episode’s prize for “Doing the Most” has to go to Paulena. Sure, yes, Tallulah stole her bag. But Paulena’s threat of filing a police report is apparently indicative of her entire ethos, which is dangling nuclear-level threats (e.g., extortion, calling CPS on capable parents, etc) against anyone who won’t give her exactly what she wants. Hoping to keep her from pulling that trigger, Tallulah invites her over for a home-cooked meal with a side of groveling.
It’s not enough. Paulena insists they all do coke with her — including Dylan, who unwittingly gives up a perfect bit of potential blackmail when he reveals that he’s a teacher minutes before snorting her drugs. Not ideal. When it becomes clear that she’s not planning to leave anytime soon, Tallulah and Maia hatch a plan to force her out by fighting fire with fire: faking an absolute fucking meltdown that can scare even the likes of Paulena away.
Unfortunately for Dylan, there’s no time to let him in on it, leaving him completely confused when Maia turns her faux fury on him for allegedly staring at Paulena’s tits. “When I jerk off, I literally think about you!” he sputters. “When I look for porn, I look for girls who look like you!” Maia, embracing her chaotic character, shatters a plate of food, grabs a kitchen knife, and screams, “You watch PORN? Should I kill myself on Instagram Live or TikTok Live?!?!”
That’s Tallulah’s cue. As Maia wails in the background, she tells Paulena that she’ll probably go to jail if Maia kills herself after taking her drugs. Paulena panics and gets the hell out of there in record time. Dylan can only look on in shock as Maia and Tallulah celebrate — too soon, as it turns out.
Paulena’s almost in an Uber before she makes a last-minute decision to “make a poor addict’s day” and give Tallulah the Balenciaga bag. Instead, when she gets back to the apartment, she overhears Maia and Tallulah laughing about how dumb she is. Livid — and, lest we forget, high out of her mind — Paulena leaves, records a scathing video naming Tallulah as a bag thief, and posts it. Nuclear option thus deployed, all she has to do is sit back and let her followers tear Tallulah’s reputation into shreds.
• Another bit of very good nepo casting that I somehow missed the first time around: Odessa A’zion is, indeed, Pamela Adlon’s kid. Should I have known the second she opened her mouth and that rasp fell out? Probably! But here we are.
• Even more so than the pilot, this episode has a ton of great one-liners. For instance:
“You don’t want to be, like, 35 and posting to your Depop account.”
“I think you don’t understand because you don’t have a brain for film. You have a brain for clothes … and being gay.”
“She stays up all night and breaks all the mirrors in the house! She calls it ‘bad luck patrol.’”
“You were boho. I made you cunt.”
If I missed any, here’s your open invite to add and/or correct me in the comments. Have at it!
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