One of the unsung entertainment stories of the past few years is Apple TV+’s quiet move to the front of the streaming-service pack. Previously an afterthought due to the artistic dominance of Netflix and HBO, Apple has gradually taken its place as the essential venue for intriguing new movies and shows. Were its offerings limited to quirky original films like Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks (2020) and the new Cooper Raiff flick Cha Cha Real Smooth, the service might still warrant a place among viewers’ monthly renewals. Yet so compelling is Apple’s TV list these days that this critic, for one, can barely keep up.
Emmy darlings Ted Lasso and Severance have been covered in this magazine already and need no further comment (except “watch them”). Equally intriguing are such gripping-but-flawed productions as Pachinko and Tehran, international dramas that render their worlds so vividly that one is inclined to overlook their errors of pacing and tone. However, for my money, Apple’s best shows are its unclassifiable misfits, among them the hugely weird (and entirely dissimilar) limited series WeCrashed and The Essex Serpent. Though neither show is perfect, each comes close. Just as important, each exhibits a specificity and precision that is very nearly a form of bravery.
To say, then, that I was excited for Loot, the new Maya Rudolph vehicle by Parks and Recreation alumni Matt Hubbard and Alan Yang, is something of an understatement. Rudolph, the actress responsible for Saturday Night Live’s devastating Kamala Harris lampoon, is as close to a sure thing as television comedy has had for the past half-decade. (See, for example, her fantastic turn as Judge Gen on NBC’s The Good Place.) Slated to join her on the new program was comedy veteran Nat Faxon, who did hilarious work earlier this year on HBO’s pirate farce Our Flag Means Death. To be sure, acting talent alone is no guarantee that a show will land, especially since humor relies so heavily on smart writing. Nevertheless, wasn’t Loot’s association with the finest streaming service a solid predictor of its quality?
In a word, no. Though Loot’s performances are indeed good, the show as a whole is too broad and unambiguous to be memorable. A joke factory with inconsistent output, it misses as often as it hits and leaves the viewer with the sense that much more could have been achieved.
Loot stars Rudolph as Molly Novak, a tech executive’s wife who becomes the third-wealthiest woman in America after an episode-one divorce. Like many a nouveau riche before her, Molly needs a project to fill days that would otherwise be wasted beside her infinity pool. Happily, and to her rather funny astonishment, our heroine soon discovers that she owns a charitable foundation already. Led by the unsmiling Sofia (Michaela Jae Rodriguez), this outfit provides grist for the mill of the series’s fish-out-of-water and odd-couple storylines.
To the extent that such time-honored comedy dynamics are un-screw-up-able, Loot proceeds cleverly enough. A spoiled woman-child who regrets forgoing “preventative Botox,” Molly regales an “unhoused” charity audience with the maxim “Home is where my wine fridge is.” Sofia, for her part, is so grim-faced a girlboss that she literally times the small talk at the beginning of staff meetings. From this union of unequals come exchanges that, while not exactly the bleeding edge of hilarity, are at least mildly amusing. Reprimanded by Sofia for her fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs, Molly wires an impromptu 10 grand to Greenpeace. (“That should even it out, right?”) Warned that giving a lap dance to a random stranger reflects badly on the organization, she insists that the man in question looked very much like Sting.
Filling out Loot’s cast is a collection of supporting players who fall on various sides of the Molly-Sofia divide. Firmly in the former’s territory is Nicholas (Joel Kim Booster), a butler-cum-crony who advocates the guilt-free enjoyment of cash. Goofy IT guy Howard (Ron Funches) may be Molly’s cousin, but he knows better than to disregard Sofia’s rules. Perhaps the show’s most interesting secondary character is Faxon’s Arthur, a drab accountant who develops a friendship-slash-flirtation with Molly. Played with likable self-effacement by the sketch comedy alum, Arthur is a three-dimensional human being in a series that errs far too often on the side of caricature.
For examples of that particular blunder, one need look no further than Loot’s portrayal of its protagonist’s wealth. Despondent in the wake of her husband’s infidelity, Molly sates her grief in her mansion’s “Candy Room,” a space as well stocked as any professional confectionery. Aboard her luxury yacht, she sets aside the “smallest pool” for the exclusive use of her dogs. Among the quirks of prestige television is its hesitance to depict affluence without resorting to baroque fantasies (Succession) or half-funny cartoon gags (Made for Love). While such representations clearly can work, they lean toward obviousness. To overcome them requires a level of skill that is definitively not on display in Apple’s latest.
Nor, it must be said, do the series’s politics do it any favors. Underneath Loot’s Oscar-and-Felix routine is an ideological substratum as predictable as it is unyielding. Because Sofia serves as a stand-in for black activism at large, there is a limit to how much Hubbard and Yang can require her to change. Yes, Molly will find her place in the organization, but she will do so by conforming to Sofia’s values far more often than she bends the “wiser” character to her own. The result, foreseeable by any viewer with a pulse, is an unbalanced compromise: Molly learns basic humanity and self-denial — Sofia learns, occasionally, to chill.
In light of all this thematic dullness, leave it to the supporting cast to keep things fresh, an achievement that saves Loot from disaster while producing more than one hearty chuckle. The best such line? Cousin Howard’s “I’m living the American dream,” said in explaining his hilariously unearned position. “Be related to a rich person.”
Graham Hillard is managing editor of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.
