Discovering that everyone you’ve ever slept with is turning up dead sounds like a horrifically traumatic experience, so the new Peacock comedy series “Laid” faces a tough balancing act just from its initial premise. Creators Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna find the right tone of morbid humor to make “Laid” one of the most consistently funny shows released this year. If you have a dark sense of humor like I do, you’ll find plenty to laugh at in this clever, snarky show.
All eight episodes of “Laid” are streaming now on Peacock.
Loosely adapting a two-season Australian series, Khan and McKenna also bring plenty of emotion to “Laid,” especially in the second half of its eight-episode first season, although the humor is more effective than the eventual sentimentality or the inconsistent efforts at creating a supernatural mythology.
It’s more entertaining when trainwreck party planner Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) has no idea why her exes are all suddenly dying, and she and her true crime-obsessed roommate and best friend AJ (Zosia Mamet) are glibly touring through her romantic past.
‘Laid’ is a welcome showcase for Stephanie Hsu
Although she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Hsu hasn’t had quite the career bump that might be expected following such an honor, and especially not in a way that showcases both her comedic and dramatic skills. “Laid” provides her with exactly that sort of role as Ruby, whose personal life is a total mess even before her exes start to drop dead.
“You’re the worst person I’ve ever met,” says bar trivia host Richie (Michael Angarano), one of Ruby’s numerous past flings, when she tells him about the curse she’s inadvertently passed on to him. Richie turns out to be the one person exempt from Ruby’s kiss of death, for reasons that neither of them understand, and he becomes a central cast member in the second half of the season, joining AJ in investigating the mysterious cause and devastating effects of Ruby’s affliction.
Hsu makes a person who would casually be labeled “the worst” into an endearing presence, even when Ruby is blatantly disregarding other people’s feelings. Death aside, “Laid” is a show about an aimless woman in her 30s realizing that she needs to stop being so selfish if she wants to find the idealized romantic love that she claims to dream about. To that end, she fixates on Isaac (Tommy Martinez), a handsome and friendly new client who’s throwing an anniversary party for his long-married parents.
Ruby’s burgeoning romance with Isaac is less interesting than her bizarre encounters with her various past hook-ups, who often die in amusingly gruesome ways. As she proved in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Hsu can convincingly mix offbeat humor with genuine emotion, but the love triangle involving Ruby, Isaac and Richie remains a bit half-baked, even if there are a handful of sweet moments.
‘Laid’ gets funnier when it gets weirder
Part of the problem with the potential love story is that Isaac is such a perfect prospective boyfriend that he’s a little bland, and the insecure, sometimes abrasive Richie seems like a better fit for Ruby, who exhibits those same qualities. Likewise, the callous gallows humor between Ruby and AJ is a lot more enjoyable than the rift that develops between them in the later episodes, which shifts their focus to repairing their friendship.
Khan and McKenna recruit an impressive roster of guest stars as Ruby’s mostly short-lived exes, including Josh Segarra, Simu Liu, Alexandra Shipp and alt-comedy staple John Early, playing an amusingly narcissistic version of himself. David Denman gives a pitch-perfect deadpan performance as a weary, casually sexist police detective who begrudgingly takes on Ruby’s case, in a dryly comic satire of police inaction and bias.
Denman’s cop is set up to be an important character only to fade into the background, and other guest stars including Kate Berlant and Chloe Fineman similarly make brief impressions that seem designed primarily to pay off in hypothetical later seasons.
‘Laid’ is overstuffed with plot but full of potential
Ruby’s robust sex life means that she has plenty of past partners to revisit over the course of the season, and “Laid” never shames her for her healthy sex drive, even when it’s literally killing people. Khan and McKenna burn through a lot of plot as well as a lot of exes in the season’s eight episodes, introducing multiple avenues to explore in determining what’s causing Ruby’s dilemma.
The short episodes fly by, and there’s rarely a lull in the absurdist humor, even during heavier moments. The season ends just as Ruby, AJ and Richie seem to be making some progress on the mysterious forces behind the deaths, and while it’s a little frustrating to leave off with more questions, it also makes the prospect of another season intriguing.
Whatever ridiculous mystical scenario haunts Ruby’s love life next, “Laid” will be able to make it something worth laughing at.
All eight episodes of “Laid” are streaming now on Peacock.
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