Jessica Brown

The most meta thing about this hours-long peek into the worst vignettes of humanity is how many people flocked online to rave about its "genius." The writers/directors are pretty clearly mocking the vast majority of the worst personality traits in existence and doing it in the most uncomfortable way possible. It's intentionally designed to not only capture the worst type of attention, but capitalize on it. The characters are unrealistically tone deaf caricatures, to the point I felt unmotivated to invest in their relationship or storyline. Every scene is trying very hard to be awkward, difficult, painful, and gross. Aggressively, and on purpose. Over and over and over again. The viewer seemingly isn't really supposed to like watching a single moment of this entire show. Thus the entire series becomes a test: do you want emotional bleach after watching it, or do you fall further down the rabbit hole of pretending intentionally-induced discomfort is worth ten hours of your time? You not turning it off is the ultimate punch line. "Genius" in the sense that most viewers appear to not realize they're the joke, but otherwise unwatchable if you want to be entertained. Emma Stone is captivating in everything, but her role seems to be to portray any amount of social awareness and feminism as exaggerated and forced. Moments that feel almost cartoonish are painted as artistic glimpses into cringe. This seems like just a bunch of men writing yet another series/film that's designed to be intentionally uncomfortable, with an extra layer of irony as they laugh at the lack of self-reflection in most viewers.