Laid (2024)

At times, the show tries too hard to be evocative, like during a mind-boggling finale cameo or when Ruby claims “I’m queerer than I thought” without ever addressing what that means for her sexuality. Thankfully, these missteps are easy to forgive because Laid coasts on charm and Hsu’s delightfully distressed performance.

Laid mainly works as a comedic showcase for the talents of Stephanie Hsu. .... It’s in the plotting that things start to slip, but only a little.

“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 Like 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.

The series is a terrific showcase not only for Hsu, but for Mamet. .... There are some narrative stumbles along the way, though. .... Still, there are enough strong moments sprinkled throughout these eight episodes — various montages of the friends trying and failing to warn Ruby’s exes what’s coming, separate cameos by John Early and Kate Berlant — to make it an appealing holiday binge.

Stephanie Hsu’s dynamic lead performance is the main attraction of Laid, but the quest to figure out why Ruby’s lovers are dying and what this all means to her romantic life will be a funny and interesting journey to take with her.

“Laid” is fun, but you don’t want it to end for all the wrong reasons: The closer the show drifts to a solution, the less you want to hear it.

But however frustrating the series can be — and some will not find it frustrating at all — Khan and Bradford write funny dialogue, and Hsu and Mamet are very, very funny delivering it. (Others are good too, especially Angarano and Hyland.) All episodes premiere at once for easy bingeing — and it is, indeed, easy to binge.

In the end, the familiarity of Laid becomes more of an asset than its high concept. There’s something delightful about the balance the show strikes between repeating comfort-food clichés and subtly subverting them.

Yes, it has a rough spots (a bit involving Hsu singing in a car goes on way too long) but it rights itself every time because of the comedic and dramatic chops of Hsu and others in this talented cast.

Though it could’ve benefitted with a few more episodes to develop its characters further, Laid is a fun comedy that will make the heart warm.

All in all, “Laid” is lightweight almost to a fault; the life-or-death stakes of Ruby’s inadvertent sexual killing spree don’t quite land in a show with the same kind of lightness as “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23” (which Khan and McKenna collaborated on before this). This goes double when the show actually tries to land on some answers for Ruby’s predicament. .... As a reflection on the ways our baggage keeps us from truly building new relationships, “Laid” is far more interesting.

Laid feels incomplete in some ways, and you might not catch that initially. Hsu's performance is bright, and her star power is often enough to distract. Still, the more I thought about the show and its ending, the more frustrated I became with what felt like wasted time on certain plots over others and a lead-up to an intentionally ambiguous ending.

The resulting series has a lot of fun with its premise, boosted even further by the affectionate repartee between stars Stephanie Hsu and Zosia Mamet. But the more that central idea is treated as a thing to be understood in functional terms and not just as a colorful metaphor, the less interested I became. By the time the show reached its over-explained final episodes, I was more than ready for a tight, finite conclusion. Instead, Laid sets itself up for possibly the least narratively necessary second season in recent years.

Once Ruby exhibits actual personal growth and Hsu gets to capably play it, the stakes and story deepen around her, and the show even finds legs as an ensemble outside of the main two leads. If there is a second season — and the ending certainly requests as much — a little generosity for Ruby and her crew could go a long way.

It’s the nervous, shuddering electricity in dialogue that Hsu and Mamet deliver pitch-perfectly, capturing a strain of younger Millennial/elder Gen Z vanity you either find to be endlessly pleasing or totally exhausting.