Molly sits on the floor, crying and eating candy. She is wearing a luxurious yet silly-looking robe, surrounded by huge, colorful candy containers. On the floor next to her is an old, grainy picture of herself and her ex-husband, a tech genius and multi-billionaire, who left her in favor of a young worker. The divorce agreement passed into her hands tens of billions of dollars and a host of assets and companies, but no amount of money is enough to mend the broken heart.
The phone rings. On the line is Sofia, the director of a charity named after Molly. For the past seven years the foundation has worked resolutely to help improve the lives of the less able in South Los Angeles, but Molly did not remember its existence at all. Mutual disregard was comfortable and easy as long as Molly played her part in the agreement between them – that is, behaved nicely and kept a low profile – but now Molly spends all her time at parties and drugs, and the leaks she makes immediately reach the media. In short, what if Mackenzie Bezos, Jeff’s ex-wife, would act like a student on Spring Break. Molly is not satisfied with a change of direction and decides that she wants to become an active part of this charity, to move from hedonism to activism.
The pilot of L-Loot, the new Apple TV Plus series starring SNL outgoing Maya Rudolph, looks like a melancholy comedic drama with a heart of gold. We enter Molly’s crazy world precisely in very unfunny moments – her last days with her beloved partner, and the first without him. But as soon as the Charity Foundation enters the story it turns out that the direction is at all a sitcom workplace with an ensemble of characters, and not the show of Molly the Malayan. So wait, why did you not say that before?
Molly’s mirror character is Sophia (Michaela J. Rodriguez, “Pose”), the comically serious fund manager, and there is also a potential new partner in the form of the reckless accountant Arthur (Nate Paxson). The thieves of the show are Howard (Ron Fox), a distant and geeky cousin of Molly, and her spoiled personal assistant Nicholas (Joel Kim Booster) – separately but also together, when a few episodes in they begin to develop surprising and cute friendships. All of these side characters, and more characters with less screen time, are fun to watch and arouse curiosity, as they clearly have character and traits beyond “the divorcee who is also an awkward dad,” “the scary CEO” or “the cute one who loves Dragon Ball.”
As the series goes more towards the sitcom, Loot works better, but it seems to be a bit slower to go all the way. At least in the first half of the season, Molly remains the center and the axis around which all the characters move. It’s weird on a mathematical level – because if the idea is that Molly needs to connect to the outside world, why everyone always deals only with it – and upsets the drama-comedy balance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHY4uVMysG4
And it’s not that Rudolph is not good here, she’s probably always good, but as the main character there’s something a little frustrating about Molly. On the one hand we hurt her pain, certainly when her ex-husband is played by the tirelessly charming Adam Scott. On the other hand, she is rich and detached who does not remember how ordinary people live and certainly does not understand the consequences of her behavior on the visibility of the foundation. The more we are invested in it emotionally it is less funny, and vice versa. If she was allowed to be the bit-psychic investor who makes trouble and only then are we told how sad and miserable she is, the emotional and comic effect would have been stronger.
In its heyday, Molly is reminiscent of Moira Rose from Shits Creek, or one of the countless times the Kardashians have tried to look like ordinary people and failed. In fact, it’s another problem. We’ve seen so much content about freaky rich in recent years that we’ve probably exhausted a bit. If you really want a complicated character that has been emptied from the inside out after marrying a successful startupist, you can settle for Anne Hathaway in “WeCrashed”, and you don’t even have to replace a streaming service.
“Loot” is now available on Apple TV Plus, a new episode every Friday