June Comedy Binges: Adults & #1 Happy Family USA

Need to delve into some comedy for a bit? Depending on whether you're interested in Gen Z or Muslim families, I've got you covered!

Adults: All the marketing basically posits that this is Friends for Gen Z. Which, fine? As a millennial, I have never felt more like a boomer than when watching this show and shaking my head at how incomprehensibly silly these twentysomethings seem to be. But as with all comedies, the show managed to win me over by Episode 3. There was a line of dialogue that struck me as being so brilliant and hilarious, that I instantly knew the show had found its groove. And once you love the writing on a comedy, you can forgive any number of flaws.

Created by Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the show follows a group of five friends (played by Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao, and Owen Thiele) who live in Queens (very exciting for me, as I also live in Queens, though it was quickly apparent that this show was shot in Toronto, because the subways looked different, booooo). They all live in Samir's (Elassal) childhood home while his parents are off traveling, which is convenient as none of them seem to have jobs that would enable them to really live in NYC otherwise, except for Billie (Freyer) who loses said job pretty quickly. Over the course of eight episodes, the series follows the usual story arcs - there are work anxieties, sexual anxieties, romantic anxieties, and just the general anxiety of being a Gen Zer. The overall impression you get is that being a twentysomething is always the same, where you're perpetually struggling with your career or your love life, and the only thing that makes this Gen Z is that everyone's a little bit queer and everyone's deeply unprofessional. Give this show a chance - I was all set to cross my arms and declare that I was too old for this show, but it really won me over in the end. 

#1 Happy Family USA: Well, we're back to having another war in the Middle East, so I guess watching this show would be pretty timely? Created by Pam Brady and Ramy Youseff, who also voices the main character, this is an adult animated show about a 12-year-old Egyptian boy named Rumi Hussein who lives in New Jersey with his parents and older sister, Mona. The show begins on September 10, 2001, and we get a glimpse into Rumi's life and ordinary teenage struggles with school and family life. Adolescence is painful enough, but then, September 11 happens. And now Rumi's life is upended by the fact that he is a Muslim teenage boy.

The show is very funny but also very astute. In particular, I love how it deals with the ways in which Rumi's parents deal with the aftermath of 9/11. His mother decides she wants to don the hijab and embrace her religion and Muslim community, while his father is desperate to prove that he loves America...to the point of going on Fox News to prove he's "one of the good ones." If that made you groan and then chuckle, welcome to the vibe of this entire show. It's incisive and wonderful, a dark comedy about one of the most painful moments in America's history and the immigrants who suffered because of it. Which sadly is all too relevant today.