Laid: Season One

January 17, 2025 6:43 PM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Everyone Stephanie Hsu has ever slept with is dying, one by one. In the order she slept with them. And Zosia Mamet is here to help crack the case. (With cameos from John Early, playing himself, and Simu Liu, not playing himself.)

(Airing on Peacock, at least in the US, but I was squirreled a copy.)

posted by nobody (4 comments total)

This isn't quite a recommendation, but it's a breezy enough watch without being -- I thought -- too frothy. Feels like it could have fit in as an early [not airing on HBO] Max Original. Some people might really, really like it, so it seemed worth a post.

The genres in play are true crime-ish + romantic comedy-ish + straight/dark-comedy + cringe-comedy + [_______], but the show seems to have a bit of a tortured time deciding how it wants to treat the romantic comedy tropes. Reject them? Yearn for them? Scoff at them? Try to have its cake and eat it too by undermining them while embracing them? It's a little muddled.

Requires multiple layers of suspension of disbelief, including, unfortunately, suspension of moral disbelief toward the end, as the ethical calculus gets more than a little twisted in the service of, I assumed, where it wants to head with the plot.

But I liked the final setup for a Season 2, if it gets a renewal.
posted by nobody at 6:44 PM on January 17

Currently, Peacock has only the first episode available without a subscription. It was fun enough, though I think it could have done better with a bit more trimming/editing/tightening-up. The funeral section, especially, went on wayyyyyyyyy too long, even though it was a setup for another death. It really bogged things down.

The opening scene was kinda fun, as I was sitting there thinking “Wait. Isn’t that Finneas?”
posted by Thorzdad at 5:41 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]

I mostly enjoyed this, though admittedly I would probably watch anything with Stephanie Hsu, and I am a sucker for stories about problematic women trying to be better. I thought the main cast were all great, and as a fan of The Expanse, I really enjoyed one particular guest star who had the big reveal at the very end.

Since they left some major storylines hanging, I'm happy that they chose to resolve what felt like the most important relationship on the show.

Other thoughts: with as much screentime/discussion The Greatest Showman got, I was honestly surprised to discover that it's not streaming on Peacock and part of some cross-network synergy that is all the rage these days.

I was not a fan of their solution at the end. I thought that

[spoiler]

they were going to transfer the hex to the dog (after receiving some assurances that the dog had been spayed and had never mated with another dog to avoid bumming out dog lovers with the prospect of dogs dropping dead). Barring that, they could have tried to find an asexual virgin who was willing to take on the hex voluntarily. I think that maybe the reveal from Ruby's dad suggests that the deaths weren't caused by the hex, but by something else, maybe a family curse? But they didn't know that when they did the transfer, so I don't think that really lets them off the hook, morally. At any rate, it's a decidedly weird way to handle this when we're being sold the idea that Ruby is trying to be better, and the people surrounding her have been demanding that from her as well.

posted by creepygirl at 11:01 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]

I like your version! (And, yeah, I figured they'd head to a convent. That instead they cycle through other much less benign options -- and land on the one they landed on -- felt kind of morally bizarre.)

And your Greatest Showman comment reminded me: the paid promotion for [I forget which car company] was so prominent and so shameless. I think that whole scene with the clothes steamer was to lampshade how the product placement agreement must have demanded an impeccably wrinkle-free shirt?
posted by nobody at 4:38 AM on January 30 [1 favorite]