FX’s latest comedy series, Adults, is painfully unwatchable and unfunny. The series features the familiar dynamic of four best friends—Billie (Lucy Freyer), Issa (Amita Rao), Anton (Owen Thiele), and Samir (Malik Elassal)—along with a plus one, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen). They all live in Samir’s childhood home, navigating the complexities of friendship, work, and life in New York City. Throughout the season, Adults feels like a poor imitation of Friends. It also bears strong similarities to Prime’s Overcompensating, particularly regarding the lack of diversity and tokenism, with only one or two friends of color.
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Ironically, it’s not the lack of diversity that makes the show unwatchable; while that certainly doesn’t help, it’s the choice of themes that undermines the show from the start. Episode 1 touches on the #MeToo movement but takes a different angle, centering on a male victim, Kyle, who is sexually assaulted by his boss. The episode begins with a man masturbating on the train while the group decides on dinner. Issa becomes upset by this and starts masturbating as well—in front of everyone, despite her friends advising her against it. The entire scene is disturbing and bizarre, and adds no value to the story.
The group hears Kyle’s story on social media the next morning, and they have strange reactions, especially Anton, who responds by saying that Kyle had a ‘molested’ look and explaining that they couldn’t just care about Kyle’s molestation, especially since he isn’t Brendan Fraser. The group instantly gasps, laughs, and tells him he shouldn’t say that. Anton apologizes casually before leaving the room. Ick!
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Additionally, Samir’s storyline is disgusting. After hearing about Kyle, he questions whether he has ever sexually assaulted or harmed a woman. Billie reassures him that he hasn’t, and that most men don’t realize when they’ve crossed the line. Ultimately, it felt like a weak excuse and deeply misogynistic for a woman to be the person saying this. It’s especially weird when you consider that Billie’s whole storyline revolves around her weaponizing being a woman in the workplace because she wants a promotion.
However, Samir ends up taking her advice too seriously and calls his exes to meet and ask them if he has ever harmed them (without mentioning his agenda). He reaches out to his first ex, Carly (Rachel Marsh), who laughs and says that someone as sweet as Samir wouldn’t do something like that. However, she follows up with a story about a time they hooked up when she was blacked out drunk, which he knew meant she couldn’t consent that night. Samir instantly grows uneasy as Carly laughs and makes a joke that he sexually assaulted her. When Samir tells the group, they decide it’s not a ‘cancellable’ offense, and they won’t move out because they were both drunk that night. Gross!
Samir then reaches out to another ex, who calls him out for inviting her over to make himself feel better about what he did. She also follows up by asking for Carly’s number because she no longer trusts him. Of course, the show never addresses this again, and he soon meets a girl named Lea. Lea (Gabi Samels) is your typical stuck-up, conservative right-winger—she tells Samir that she heard about him and Carly and that people are “too sensitive” now. Another tasteless joke follows when she says “you’ve gotta sign a contract when engaging in sex with people nowadays.” He oddly goes along with it and runs off to have sex with her in the bathroom. A long, exhausting conversation takes place, and the two never actually have sex because her strange sexual comments about him doing things to her were off-putting. Samir suddenly receives a text from Carly—the woman he sexually assaulted—as Lea pulls her pants down. He decides he doesn’t want to sleep with Lea anymore because Carly’s okay with what happened between them and wants to hang out again.
In short, Kyle’s assault is used merely as a plot device as the friend group exploits his trauma for their selfish purposes. We could further discuss what’s wrong with this show, but it’s worth noting that the pilot ruins the entire series with its highly offensive, overly edgy humor and establishes an unsettling tone for the rest of the season. This group also consists of individuals who are often terrible and lack depth, never learning from their mistakes. Not to mention, the show’s portrayal of New York felt very unseasoned.
Overall, let’s collectively pretend we never watched this!
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