Loot

Loot is a very watchable, and funny-enough show. But we just want a Maya Rudolph series to really make its star a tour de force.

The framing of the show fundamentally limits how far Molly gets pushed out of her comfort zone. Even as Loot starts to more seriously consider the tension between her self-perception and billionaire status, some key steps get missed along the way in her growth. The resulting ideas feel too surface level.

Trying to wedge the elevated, stagey banter of a network single-cam into a show that borrows heavily from a shiny Apple TV+ in-house aesthetic only invites more dissonance than it’s worth. The result is a show as stuck between worlds as Molly is.

In its first season, Loot doesn’t quite get there. But with the reset promised by its finale, maybe the show will have a chance down the line.

Loot is afraid to let Molly be anything but well intentioned, afraid to make the point that no amount of philanthropy can solve systemic problems caused by capitalism, and afraid to offend anyone. It adds up to a “Rich people can be good, actually — please don’t eat them” framing that makes this season feel fundamentally frictionless. The finale’s last 15 or so minutes should have been where Loot started.

That first half-hour is action packed. ... And then “Loot,” for the most part, goes off a cliff, the pleasures of the first episode feeling more and more like the setup for a joke that never arrives. Satire takes a holiday, replaced by tired workplace comedy, unconvincing romantic comedy and a level of sentimentality that’s beyond even what the show’s creators, Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, could have gotten away with when they worked on “Parks and Recreation.”