{"id":162587,"date":"2025-12-01T11:28:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T11:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/162587\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T11:28:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T11:28:04","slug":"season-1-episode-5-they-cant-all-be-jeremys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/162587\/","title":{"rendered":"season 1, episode 5, “They Can’t All Be Jeremys”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If last week\u2019s I Love LA<\/a> was all about positing that this specific subset of Gen Z Angelenos might have no way of understanding genuine intimacy between two people without a transactional exchange, \u201cThey Can\u2019t All Be Jeremys\u201d just assumes that\u2019s the baseline everyone here is operating under. It\u2019s hard to be real, let alone find authentic chemistry with another, when you\u2019re chasing Kia deals, viral fame, or, worse, just the approval of your boss.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long suggested I Love LA is, at its heart, quite a conventional sitcom that\u2019s simply dressed up as the kind of female-led TV we all grew to love a decade or so ago like Broad City, Insecure, and Girls. And really, all you have to do is look at its subplots: What is Dylan (Josh Hutcherson) and Maia (Rachel Sennott) going to dinner with Maia\u2019s boss if not the kind of storyline you\u2019d catch on, say, Bewitched or I Love Lucy? Sure, the work Maia does is aggressively contemporary (the start of the episode finds her in full Glengarry Glen Ross-mode as she negotiates a killer social posting deal for Tallulah, clearly impressing Alyssa of Alyssa 180), but everything around her seems stuck either in old-school sitcomland or embalmed in a kind of mid-2010s era way of crafting comedies.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I do think we\u2019re seeing an inkling of what I Love LA has to say, which is that ambitious, aggressively online, jaded youths can be their own worst enemies\u2014especially every time they come in contact with \u201cnormies\u201d around them. Cases in point:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tallulah and Tessa\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, the chef and the influencer are still dating. And it\u2019s clear Tessa (Moses Ingram) is the kind of calming energy Tallulah needs. I mean, she feels so at home that they\u2019re chatting all things Hannah Montana while still in bed. Only Tallulah has a big day ahead, as Maia getting her a Kia sponsored post means she has to learn how to drive. Thankfully, she\u2019s shacking up with Alani, who\u2019s been driving for what feels like forever.<\/p>\n

Alani and Garrett<\/p>\n

And on that ride they get to assess what\u2019s happening between Alani (True Whitaker) and her new fuckboi Garrett. Ditzy Alani wants more, and thankfully Tallulah is a skilled sexter (and negger). While they drive around L.A., she manages to get Garrett not only to send a dick pic but to commit to having a date the next day, all because Tallulah made Alani play it cool and aloof. Boys\u2026so easy to read, no?<\/p>\n

Charlie and Landry\u2019s bros<\/p>\n

Charlie has nabbed a chance at dressing Landry, and he\u2019s not about to waste that shot. Why he chooses to show him an archive Westwood is beyond me (I\u2019m thinking Landry is a bit of a Benson Boone type?), but the young Christian boy is so nice and so charming that he was never not going to give Charlie the job. More than that, he\u2019s eager to make Charlie one of his boys. Yes, he walks around with the kind of entourage worthy of its own HBO show. Only, as Charlie soon learns, these are friends who are there for one another no matter what.<\/p>\n

Yes, they\u2019re all each other\u2019s accountability partners: Whenever any of them is even thinking of sinning (like, say, looking at porn), they text one another and get the support they need. It\u2019s all too Pollyanna for Charlie and a bit ludicrous altogether. But that\u2019s because Charlie\u2019s been schooled in the art of aloof indifference: His friends show affection by making fun of him, belittling him, and sarcastically dragging him. It\u2019s how, in turn, he\u2019s learned to show kinship. It\u2019s why this weird world of boys who cheer him on is so foreign to him.<\/p>\n

When he\u2019s up to join them all for a morning jog and he throws up in front them, having been up all night doing drugs, he braces himself for the playful bullying: \u201cSay it, \u2018Fuck this fag. Fuck Charlie!\u2019\u201d he eggs them on. Instead, though, Landry stays behind with him and lets him know they\u2019re all there for him, a lesson in kindness Charlie begins to internalize. Later, when his boys are all about to zip around in ATVs (without him because he\u2019s precious cargo), he tries to use that kind of language with Alani, dispensing with his mean one-liners and telling her, instead, how much he loves her. Maybe there is a different way of relating to the world that\u2019s not caustic and blunted by irony and doesn\u2019t sacrifice care for the whims of your career. Which brings me to\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maia and Dylan<\/p>\n

I know: You\u2019re probably thinking I should match Maia with her boss, Alyssa, and her husband, Jeremy (who gives the episode its title). As it\u2019s becoming clearer with every episode, Maia\u2019s whole world keeps pulling her away from trusty, dependable Dylan. He skips influencer parties and apparently gladly agrees to threesomes without him; he bakes cookies for his students and comes up with songs to discourage littering. He\u2019s as solid a boyfriend as anyone\u2019s able to get in L.A., so it makes sense that this would basically alienate these partners from one another.<\/p>\n

When the two arrive at Alyssa and Jeremy\u2019s home, Maia is intent on impressing her boss. She\u2019s wearing a lovely perfume, a nicely-fitted dress, and is more than happy to play up her charm to make sure she has an in with Alyssa that\u2019ll get her into a Forbes photo shoot at the end of the month. She\u2019s heard so much about Jeremy that she\u2019s a little concerned, and her nerves start showing right away, especially when she sees Dylan is not quite the conversationalist Alyssa would prefer. (Why is he bringing up that Nazi book he\u2019s reading again?)<\/p>\n

But then, the evening very quickly goes south: Jeremy suffers from migraines (prompted by loud sounds, like Maia\u2019s voice, and harsh smells, like Maia\u2019s perfume) and so he has to excuse himself, which leaves the young couple needing to entertain Alyssa and cobble together the grilled dinner they were promised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dylan steps up, of course, making a delicious steak Alyssa nevertheless finds some issues with (she\u2019s clearly drunker and drunker as the night goes on, airing her disappointment about not having Jeremy upstairs with them all), and it would all be quite okay as a wash of an evening were it not for what Maia finds as she exits the bathroom: Jeremy\u2026jerking off to porn\u2026while standing, unaware he could be seen across the glassed french doors in their bedroom. It\u2019s awkward and odd and further proof that the picture-perfect world of Alyssa and Jeremy is all a show, even as Maia finds she\u2019s now been nudged to think of Dylan as a kind of disposable boyfriend her boss thinks she should dump.<\/p>\n

By the time they\u2019re back home and Dylan is clearly articulating his life philosophy (\u201cwe work to live\u201d), Maia starts to realize they might not be as aligned as she\u2019d thought. Not that she has time to process that because she soon sees a news post about Lucas Landry having died in an ATV accident. Talk about a cliff-hanger!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 Was that intro scene, with Dylan and Maia talking gun control and self-defense that pivoted into a moment where Maia loses her cell phone only to then be threatened with an actual (unseen, off-camera) gun, strike anyone else as a bit too YouTube sketch comedy circa 2018?
\n\u2022 Is Odessa A\u2019zion running circles around I Love LA, both elevating the material she\u2019s given and, perhaps, unintentionally illuminating the ways in which the show cannot seem to keep up with her effortless charm, cutting wit, and all around talent? Perhaps.
\n\u2022 There are so many thrifted\/ironic tees to keep up with this episode, including Tallulah wearing a Wi Spa one and Garret sporting a Viper Room shirt. But kudos goes to Charlie\u2019s Cher tweet tee (\u201cWhats going on with mycareer\u201d).\u00a0
\n\u2022 Do we think Dylan will ever finish reading The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich?
\n\u2022 Will Alani ever share a totally non-bananas story from her upbringing that doesn\u2019t involve some shady things her dad\u2019s friends and colleagues did?
\n\u2022 Speaking of, how fitting is it that after sitting in on a meeting all about creating a Clueless reboot, I Love LA stages an update to Cher\u2019s driving fiasco in 2025 with the arguably much more level-headed Tallulah behind the wheel?
\n\u2022 If you enjoyed the Landry\/entourage bits here, may I suggest you seek out Lurker, which offers a probing exploration of fandom and friendship in the L.A. world of online fame.
\n\u2022 This wouldn\u2019t be an HBO show if we didn\u2019t have some full-frontal male nudity, and we finally got some, with Garret\u2019s blink-and-okay-just-pause-and-you-won\u2019t-miss-it dick pic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If last week\u2019s I Love LA was all about positing that this specific subset of Gen Z Angelenos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-162587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}