Summary
I Love LA shifts into crisis management mode in “Girl’s Girl”, and while its viewpoint isn’t always consistent, it remains very effectively funny when it wants to be.
I’m not the type to ever be caught in the heart of a scandal – unless there’s a group of people somewhere who really care about lukewarm takes on film and TV – but I’ve always imagined it to be quite like what’s depicted here in Episode 3 of I Love LA. In other words, a bit silly, but of paramount importance to the people living in it. It’s easy for people like me to brush off the idea of an influencer being digitally hounded for one thing or another – just turn your phone off, is the popular refrain – but if being an influencer is who you are, and who your friends are, and if the places you hang out are populated by influencers and the only thing you spend your time doing is influencing, you can sort of see why it might be a big deal.
I can certainly see why it might be a big deal for Maia. Paulena’s TikTok tell-all about Tallulah being a Balenciaga bag-stealer causes a whirlwind of controversy in “Girl’s Girl”, and since she’s now officially Tallulah’s manager, it’s her job to fix it. This is easier said than done, though, since Tallulah isn’t the type to do as she’s told or keep a low profile. In fact, as soon as she finds out about the video – in the middle of receiving an IV infusion of vitamins with Alani – she goes bonkers, starts screaming, and tries to respond to every comment until Alani drops her phone in a vase full of water. I should note that this scene is really good, and that everyone in it, but especially Odessa A’zion, who I’m increasingly struck by, is very good in it.
A lot of this energy comes from there being, technically, nothing that Tallulah can really do about the situation. That responsibility falls to Maia, who immediately recognises it as a make-or-break career crisis despite Alyssa trying to downplay it and leave the details to an experienced crisis management consultant who thinks a simple boilerplate apology will suffice. But there’s no way that Tallulah’s going to go in for an apology, since doing so would be an admission of guilt, and Maia is all about protecting her client’s – and her own! – reputation. Or so she thinks, anyway.
The ways in which Maia chews this over and eventually arrives at a conclusion are kind of stupid, but I think that’s the point. There’s a whole bit about Maia learning from an unlikely source that backing down is a sign of weakness, and the fact she swallows it wholesale implies, at least to me, that she’s not very good at her job. This seems to be confirmed when the solution kind of lands in her lap and she responds by letting Tallulah off the leash, which is a stroke of good fortune more than any kind of mastermind move. It also results in Tallulah losing a brand deal, though potentially gaining another; Alyssa’s “are you sure you know what you’re doing?” text is the bit we’re supposed to be paying attention to, since I don’t think Maia does.
The solution turns out to be that Paulena comes from the Rikers family, as in Rikers Island, and being a scion of a blood-money clan is enough to make Paulena an easy target, since her accusations against Tallulah were framed as though they were coming from a position of moral superiority. Here, I think I Love LA Episode 3 really gets at the idea of influencer culture being a ridiculous charade of empty posturing. Nobody cares that Tallulah’s a thief as long as she isn’t related to people who made their money the wrong way. Until they’re given something else to care about, obviously.
If you ask me, Charlie remains the best character in this show, since he’s the one who seems to consistently operate at the exact level that the rest of it pretends to be above. Here, he’s primarily concerned about being ostracised by the gay community after word of Mimi firing him has gotten around town, ruining his ability to skip the line for coffee, and his solution to this is to use Tallulah’s dinner date as an excuse to be wildly overcompensatory to the server, who he assumes is gay but turns out to be married to a woman. It’s a totally nothing subplot that is very funny all the same. Like Charlie, everyone in L.A. seems to exist exclusively in their own little worlds; he’s just the only one who’s open about it.
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