Given the above, the characters in I Love LA are painfully familiar. Whether it’s the Balenciaga bag and declined Monzo charge or the affinity for vague self-help affirmations and the soundbite dialogue, in I Love LA, Sennott has captured the Zillennial condition in all of its dead-eyed, Stories-watching glory.
I am, of course, biased. Everyone wants to be in on the joke, and as a 27-year-old who works in fashion and occasionally wears Tabis, I like to think of myself as the target audience for the Dilara Findikoglu references and Wildflower phone cases. I, too, have a graveyard of dead vapes by my bed and love going for over-priced, dimly lit dinners, so to see it played out on the screen—arguably for the first time—affirms the campy absurdity woven into it all.
Photo: Kenny Laubbacher/HBO
Recently, I’ve found myself doubling down on the Zillennial literature: Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love, Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth, and Honor Levy’s My First Book, all of which felt a little too close to home. The anxiety-inducing accounts of evenings spent among self-proclaimed artists and thinkers in Dubno’s novel in particular felt eerily accurate, disgustingly relatable, and made me want to delete social media and block anyone with an Eames chair or a Red Scare Patreon subscription.
On the flipside, I Love LA hasn’t had the same effect. Maybe it’s the light-hearted tone, or maybe it’s because it’s set in LA, which isn’t a serious place, but the series has left me feeling weirdly affectionate towards these car-crash characters, bringing to mind culturally essential shows like Absolutely Fabulous. Sennott’s LA natives may be delusional and shallow, but I have a soft spot for their tacky, overblown ways, in the same way I do for Harvey Nicks-obsessive Edina and Stoli-swinging Patsy. The world is a bleak and scary place these days, and personally, I’d rather indulge in a bit of absurdity when possible, rather than reflect on how adrift, aimless, and generally screwed us Zillenials are.
