FX’s New Sitcom ‘Adults’ Is A Very Good, Very Silly Time

The cold open of FX’s new sitcom Adults shows its cast of adorable twentysomethings in a subway cuddle puddle, relying on each other to keep track of their keys and bag and bragging about getting discounts via suggestive Instagram DMs with the Papa John’s . Later in the episode, one of the housemates tries to get her way by putting on a flirtatious persona called “Titty Baby”; another doesn’t have a checking or know his Social Security number. Yet, despite a cast of characters I should find extremely grating, Adults is a hangout show I really enjoyed hanging out with.

Like all the best shows in this sitcom sub-category, Adults — which premieres next Wednesday on FX before dropping its whole eight-episode season on Hulu the following day — barely has a premise. Samir (Malik Elassal) lives in his childhood home in “the shit taint of Queens.” His retired parents are touring the national parks, so it’s unclear whether they know three of his best friends are living there rent-free. Over the six episodes (of eight) provided to critics, we gain a loose understanding of everyone’s deal. Issa (Amita Rao) may be living off an allowance from the parents she doesn’t want to it are rich. Anton (Owen Thiele, who also had a recurring role in Overcompensating) has an office job of some kind, but one he seems able to do from the kitchen table with his camera off; whatever it is, it gives him plenty of time to become best friends with every person he meets. Billie (Lucy Freyer) is a lifelong overachiever who, when her life hits a rough patch, bucks herself up with frequent visits to her former high school. Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) is a late addition to the group; I don’t know exactly how he and Issa would define their relationship, so let’s just say if this were set 10 years ago she’d be his girlfriend, which is why she’s aggressively petitioning Samir — including as “Titty Baby” — to let Paul Baker move in with them. Samir is the one who really should learn how banking works. 

The show was co-created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, whose first professional credit was as writing partners on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (the show’s youngest ever, according to their official bio), but who really got their start with a viral speech they delivered together at Yale’s commencement ceremony in 2018.

There’s probably no way to do a jokey graduation speech that isn’t cringe, but had I known about this one, I probably wouldn’t have volunteered to take on a show from the people who elicited these laughs — guffaws, even — from Hillary Clinton. Similarly, when FX announced last summer that Kronengold and Shaw’s first sitcom would be called Snowflakes, I was comfortable writing it off: I’m good with pitch-black comedies that regard all their characters with contempt (like Curb Your Enthusiasm or Veep), but “snowflake” has been so thoroughly co-opted that I assumed the title was warning me against a reactionary take on Zoomers.

Fortunately, someone had a better idea, and as a title, Adults strikes the perfect note for the show it belongs to: It feels a little ironic, a little sheepish and only defensive until the slightest pushback makes it cave. Its first episode revolves around an extremely 2020s premise: Kyle (Will Ropp), the group’s most annoying peripheral friend, has gone viral for a personal essay about getting groped at work by a Boomer higher up the reporting chain. What responsibility does everyone have to Kyle when he’s kind of irritating most of the time? (“‘Safe from Nepal earthquake,’ look. He’s in Bushwick!”) If, as Billie casually shrugs, most guys don’t even know when they’ve crossed the line of consent, could that be true of Samir? And can Billie ride a few veiled references to “the climate” around sexual harassment to a promotion at work? Kyle is rallying through his supposed trauma — literally, by headlining a rally — so what might read like crass opportunism is just this week’s activity for a group of people with basically good intentions and nothing more important to occupy them. Later episodes bring an emergency for Billie that her medical proxy, Samir, is poorly equipped to handle; Anton finding out one of his hundreds of treasured friends is wanted for multiple stabbings; and Issa and Anton spinning out when their shared therapist suddenly dies. 

For a show from untested sitcom writers, Adults has impressive confidence in the big swings it takes. The cold open dares you to turn it off when Issa spots a guy jerking off on their subway train and responds by putting her own hand down her pants and yelling at him in an effort to shame him; it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, but she can convince herself she’s on the side of justice. When the third episode reveals the stabber terrorizing the neighborhood, Samir’s father texts him to look in a particular closet, which is when he finds out there’s been a shotgun in the house this whole time, and sends him and Paul Baker on a mission to try to sell it back to a gun store and apply the proceeds to an altruistic cause; Paul Baker’s attempts to charm a clerk who may or may not want to hook up with him are hilariously awkward. Only in the 2020s could a whole storyline revolve around Anton, Issa and Paul Baker constructing a whole backstory for the hot guy they think they’ve AirTagged on Anton’s behalf, while the audience knows this exceptionally chic-seeming prospect is actually a rat who’s been carrying the AirTag all over town. 

The show’s self-assurance is also evident in the absurdist elements it occasionally introduces. At Kyle’s rally, for instance, he tries to pull rank with Issa by showing her his “victim card” in a lanyard around his neck; she tops it by showing hers: woman, sex worker and child of immigrants. When Samir goes to the bank to try to acquire a check to pay a plumber and its to the teller that he doesn’t know his SSN, she hands him a form that asks, “Are you a fucking idiot?” (The answer is obviously yes, but I appreciate the show making it clear that they know that.)

Squeamish viewers may need to know that one way Adults portrays its characters’ codependent closeness is with across-the-board physical intimacy. In the series premiere cold open, everyone harangues Samir about fixing the water heater, but he protests that he likes “the group smell.” When Billie is taking too long on the toilet — trying to poop, by the way, as Issa stands about a foot away, shaving Samir’s armpit — Anton storms in and announces that he’s going to pee in the space between her crotch and the seat. When it sounds like Anton is bringing a guy home, all his housemates spring into action, arranging his bed and collecting the sex toys from the dishwasher (“We said separate loads!”). 

This is a commune that functions on total honesty, from the formal process by which new rules are established — like don’t leave your used condoms on the lid of the garbage can and also in the toilet — to the convention of the “mind wipe,” by which a humiliating disclosure is made only on the condition that its recipient will immediately wipe their mind of the knowledge. The people who live like this are certainly not “snowflakes”; for this kind of thing, you’d have to be stronger than the troops.

I have to knock this show for being the latest to try to skate on using the “r” slur by having another character in the scene scold that it’s not acceptable — see also Overcompensating. The show is also positioning Billie and Samir to be endgame, and while it’s definitely slow-playing it, I’m still not as interested in them pairing up as the show’s producers would probably want me to be. But otherwise, Adults is a very good, very silly time. Already, I’m almost as obsessed with these characters as they are with each other.