'Casual' Review: A Quiet Comedy You Should Check Out
I’m leery of recommending a TV show that didn’t really kick in for me until the third or fourth episode, but I think you should give the new Hulu sitcom Casual a shot. It features terrific performances, starting with star Michaela Watkins, and if it doesn’t offer big laughs… oh, boy, I’m really going to have to make a case for this, aren’t I?
Casual is about Watkins’s Val, an L.A. therapist going through a divorce. She and her teen daughter, Laura (Tara Lynn Barr), are living with Val’s brother, Alex (Tommy Dewey), co-founder of a dating site called Snooger. Each of this trio is facing problems connecting with people they’re attracted to; each is too smart for her or his own emotional good. They try one-night-stands and they try adopting a puppy, but they usually end up a little sad and seeking each other’s comfort. They’re a wounded but loyal little family unit.
As created by Zander Lehmann and produced by Jason Reitman, who directed the first two episodes, Casual is both slick and prickly, snarky and thoughtful. It takes a risk in making Alex such a self-absorbed smuggie in the pilot — he’s a turn-off until he steadily reveals the melancholy, wounded, yet intelligent and resilient fellow he becomes, approximately by the third or fourth episode.
Val, hurt by the divorce, a good mom if a tad too permissive for my taste (she’s had Laura “on the pill since she was 12” and takes her daughter’s Brazilian wax recommendations, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned), is thoroughly engaging as a 39 year-old woman who is baffled by her own bafflement. Watkins’s superb performance suggests that Val must be wondering: how can I be a good therapist, yet so clueless about starting new relationships?
Casual — the title refers directly to casual sex, and obliquely to the rhythm of this show — is similar in its, ah, casual approach to traditional jokes and punchlines to other shows including Netflix’s Transparent, FX’s Married, NBC’s About A Boy, and HBO’s Togetherness. It does no good to come to Casual hoping you’ll be snorting Diet Coke out of your nose in merriment; this show wants to go for something more nuanced, but without being pretentious or ironic or hip.
Dewey, who’s been all over TV in recent years and perhaps most recognizable as a boyfriend in The Mindy Project, takes what could have been a repellent role and makes it three-dimensionally affecting. And if the subplots involving Laura feel a little disconnected from the rest of the show, well, following a kid to high school to chronicle her crushes and insecurities is always a wrench in any show that’s otherwise devoted to adult crushes and insecurities.
Beautifully crafted and excellently acted, Casual is well worth checking out, to see if its mood and rhythms fall in sync with yours.
Casual premieres on Hulu on Wednesday; a new episode will post each Wednesday.
