“Laid,” on Peacock, follows a party planner named Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) whose previous sexual partners start dying. At first it seems like unlucky coincidence, but the pattern quickly emerges, and suddenly the number of deaths in Ruby’s wake is getting pretty distressing. Her bestie and roommate, A.J. (Zosia Mamet), makes a crazy wall, labeled “Ruby’s Sex Timeline,” and a morbid, prickly “High Fidelity” is afoot.
Is there a serial killer in their midst? A supernatural force at play? Or, as one character suggests, is this just what it means to be in your 30s?
The show is based on an Australian series and was adapted for American television by Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna. “Laid” bubbles over with pop-culture asides, Billy Crystal’s oeuvre and A.J.’s obsession with Amanda Knox. Cameos include Kate Berlant, John Early, Chloe Fineman and Simu Liu.
“Laid” is its smartest, funniest and most biting when Ruby is chasing down all her previous partners, many of whom are not happy to see or hear from her. “You’re the worst person I’ve ever met,” says one. “And I host trivia.” Ruby and A.J. have a snappy shorthand and nicknames for the suitors of yesteryear, and the show gets some fun mileage from enumerating exactly what acts Ruby did and did not do with various partners.
Where “Laid” eventually falters, toward the end of its eight-episode season, is in the contrast between its breezy-bitchy shenanigans and the fact that 18 people in Ruby’s orbit have died in the span of a few weeks. Its dark sense of humor and arch whimsy are no match for the deflating, uninspired earnestness of lines like “If you really want to move forward, you have to deal with the pain of your past” and “actually try and clear up some of that trauma.” Similarly, Ruby’s love interest, Isaac (Tommy Martinez), feels ancillary and undeveloped, the blankest of all the characters.
The show does better when it’s more detached, more blasé, more acerbic, raunchier. “Laid” reminds me of dozens of other shows — all of which are shows I love, like “Lovesick,” “Jane the Virgin,” “Search Party,” “Hindsight” and “Dead to Me.” It is biting in ways that feel special and gossipy, and unlike with lesser kooky mystery shows, its characters’ smarts and forthrightness are what move the story forward. Wit and charm: They might get you laid, and they definitely get you “Laid.”
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