• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 6 hours ago

A new sitcom coming this weekend to HBO Max is the second one this year that comes across as “Friends” with a hard R-rating.

This one has the unimaginative title “I Love L.A.” Inevitably, Randy Newman’s 1983 song of the same name is heard in Episode One as two young women take a sunny drive to the beach, smoking a joint and shrieking, as all young women do in movies and TV shows like this one.

They seem to be loving L.A., but the scene and the scenery do little to persuade the rest of us that living in Los Angeles is something to love. 

Indeed, Randy Newman’s song has often been interpreted as satirical, and that may be why the title was adopted for the show.

“I Love L.A.,” the TV show, centers on a 27-year-old woman from New York who is trying to make it in Los Angeles, where she works at a small, relatively new, start-up marketing company, although what this company actually does was not quite clear to me in the first episode I previewed on Wednesday.

At one point in Episode One of “I Love L.A.,” the woman, whose name is Maia (played by Rachel Sennott, above photo), declares that she hates L.A., but then a moment later it seems like she loves it. 

Over the years, Randy Newman, now 81, has positioned his song as ambiguous in its love or hatred for Los Angeles, and the phrase is likely meant to be taken the same way in the TV show.

In any case, Maia has two close friends, a woman and a gay man, and a boyfriend. She also has an old friend from New York whom she recognizes as toxic for her.

“I Love L.A.” is specifically designed for the members of a younger generations who obsess constantly about themselves.

They are the people who, like, say “like” about every other word or so in conversations with, like, their friends. They are also obsessed with the word “obsessed.”

This show’s only resemblance to “Friends” is that it too deals with a group of 20-something friends experiencing their first decade of adulthood together.

“Friends” took place in Manhattan. “I Love L.A.” takes place in southern California.

Another show from earlier this year -- titled “Adults” and streaming on Hulu -- is basically the same thing as “I Love L.A.,” only the group of friends in “Adults” live in Queens, which is part of New York City.

“Friends” was a product of its time and place -- the 1990s and early 2000s on NBC, an old network. 

The show had charm, some mild comedy and characters people liked. Some of them may have felt that they might like to live the same lives as Monica, Ross, Chandler, Phoebe, Joey and Rachel.

However, “Adults” and “I Love L.A.” are also products of their time -- the year 2025 on streaming, where the kind of raunch the two shows traffic in is par for the course.

But unlike the friends of “Friends,” no one in their right mind would want to trade places with any of the characters in “Adults” or “I Love L.A.”

And as far as charm on TV is concerned, that ship has sailed.

“I Love L.A.” starts streaming on Sunday, November 2, on HBO Max.