- Network: SHOWTIME
- Series Premiere Date: Apr 18, 2022
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Critic Reviews
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On paper, this Paramount+ sitcom is a tough sell. But, overall, it works. There might not be abundant belly laughs (though there are often great throwaway lines, such as assistant Darcy begging the CEO for time off to attend Graydon Carter’s barn warming on Martha’s Vineyard), but Bayer – on whose own story Joanna’s is based – keeps our sympathy throughout.
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It feels a little predictable, but the extreme personas of the overdrawn characters keep you locked in.
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[Bayer's] comedy chops here easily remind you of how she shined behind the Weekend Update desk with in-over-their-head characters such as Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy or flailing meteorologist Dawn Lazarus. ... The pilot, directed by Michael Showalter, has an even slower burn than say, Search Party, which he co-created.
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I Love That For You makes for an incomplete and occasionally frustrating portrait of Joanna in the early episodes, but then so does Joanna’s own understanding of herself. With some patience and brutal self-honesty, it could yet evolve into something more.
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Bayer is excellent at playing cartoonishly awkward, which made her a standout in the sketch-comedy confines of Saturday Night Live, but her cringey antics don't quite translate to episodic storytelling. Shannon salvages the underwritten Jackie.
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By the third episode, I had come to the sad conclusion I didn’t want to spend much more time with these people. Not because they’re unlikable, as we’ve seen some great comedies through the years about folks who are mostly awful. (Hello, “Seinfeld.”) It’s because they’re not all that interesting.
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Barely likable supporting characters and a tendency toward juvenile humor make the first two episodes a hard sell. But the show warms up enough in the third episode that we can envision it becoming an amiable workplace comedy, somewhere on the sweetness scale between “30 Rock” and “Ted Lasso.”