I Love That for You

It’s not an easy thing to use your own terrifying experiences with mortality to feed the engines of comedy and pain, but Bayer is sharing that through Joanna and the authenticity of her experience makes all the difference in shaping character into a flawed human that we want to root for even when she’s done a very bad thing.

It’s a lot — a workplace sitcom, a satire of home shopping, a coming-of-age comedy, a pathos-filled portrait of lost soul, a rom-com (as Joanna develops a crush on coworker), and more. But it works for me, especially since the cast is so good.

Enjoy hearing the pitch. Bayer sells it with gusto. Shannon embraces it with heart. And Lewis kills it will excellence. Just when you thought you didn’t need another addictive series, “I Love That For You” steps in and tells you supplies are limited.

The show approaches these themes [what it means when companies commodify and exploit employees’ personal stories and Joanna’s stunted-by-childhood-cancer inner life] with a deft subtlety but it’s enough to ground it and make the cringe comedy more palatable.

Watching Joanna is like watching a bad improviser get picked from the crowd to go on stage with Second City, but Bayer knows exactly how to balance the go-for-it resilience of Joanna with her crippling uncertainty in the moment. It’s a real showcase for her.

While the show is no big deal, it handles the psychological and farcical ramifications of Joanna’s dilemma with a sensitivity that gives the sitcom setups an emotional kick you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Some of this has to do with Bayer’s performance — she nails Joanna’s blend of arrogance and abashment with an ace sketch comic’s facility.