Summary
I Love LA ventures into more overt sitcom territory in “Divas Down”, but it still very much continues Maia’s downward spiral.
I Love LA ventures more into overt sitcom territory in Episode 7, “Divas Down”, but what initially seems like a shallower episode is really just another step on the journey of Maia’s self-defeating psychopathy. The cracks were already beginning to show. Here they blossom into all-out chasms, and it might not just be Maia who tumbles into them – she could take her entire inner circle with her.
But the inciting incident is very sitcom-esque. Maia is still on a run of good form when it comes to securing Tallulah – still her only client, which is a big part of the reason why this relationship is breaking down – lucrative brand deals. She’s doing less well in recognising what Tallulah thinks about those deals, which is why she still hasn’t really acknowledged the blowback of the whole Ritz cracker thing. It’s just onto the next one, however Tallulah’s reputation (or mental health) might be suffering.
And the next one is the big one, if Maia is to be believed. A sit-down dinner with a snidey Frenchman, Antoine, could potentially redefine both of their lives, whether Tallulah wants it to or not. But in the midst of their passive-aggressive bickering, Maia accidentally drops a steak knife, which skewers her foot to the floor of Alani’s house. She needs to go to the hospital, but she also needs to get Tallulah to the meeting, and she’s adamant about doing both.
The great irony of this show continues to be that the supposed airhead influencer is possessed of much more obvious humanity than the person pulling her strings. Tallulah is significantly more concerned about getting Maia proper treatment than she is about attending the meeting. And while, to be fair, this position is obviously informed by the recent blowback from the Ritz campaign and the fact she’s trying to focus on her new relationship with Tessa, Tallulah’s career ambitions have never quite matched Maia’s. She just wants to be paid for living the life she wants to live, whereas Maia has grander designs.
Everything in the hospital, which finds Maia pretending to be Jewish to fast-track her treatment since the busy staff are tending to the victims of a Hasidic bus crash, is I Love LA Episode 7 in pure comedy silliness mode. All the richer details live in the back-and-forths between Maia and Tallulah, and especially in the former’s insistence on meeting with Antoine, even after Alyssa tells her that he has cancelled the meeting. As it turns out, he hasn’t; Alyssa simply rearranged the meeting to be with her, about a more on-brand client. A limping, dressed-up Maia catches them in the act, and while she’s right to be annoyed by the perceived betrayal, she can’t see the forest for the trees.
You see, Alyssa is also right. Sure, she has gone behind her protege’s back, but the campaign probably isn’t right for Tallulah’s brand, just like the Ritz one wasn’t, and she’s able to make that judgment call because she has multiple clients, whereas Maia is completely focused on Tallulah exclusively. Maia frames this as though she’s putting her client first, even above the best interests of Alyssa180, but that’s only true because she only has one client.
The reality is that Maia is putting Tallulah’s career above everything because she has attached her own career to Tallulah’s success, and now that Tallulah is realising she might not even want the kind of success that’s being offered to her, Maia is going to have to reckon with what else she has going on in her life beyond her job. Alyssa lets her go for the insubordination, and Dylan storms out because, in all this, Maia completely forgot to attend a dinner with him and his dad (or even tell him she had been hospitalised). She’s left alone and sobbing, confused that nobody else seems to appreciate how much she’s striving to create the “big life” she thought they all wanted for her.
But what’s the point of a big life if you never slow down enough to enjoy it?
