“Saturday Night Live” sketches are sometimes funny, and so is this series; that’s part of what makes the experience so frustrating. Dennings has proven herself capable of rising above lackluster material on several occasions—she’s a highlight in the first two “Thor” films, as one example—but “Dollface” wedges her somewhere between endearing smartass and emotionally stunted 30-something without ever allowing her to really be either. She’s got the odd great moment, but mostly the madness just revolves around her. Song, Mitchell, and Povitsky all fare better, and could probably be great in the version of the show they’re giving us; Song is in a straightforward sitcom, Mitchell in a grounded dramedy with heightened language, and Povitsky is basically playing a hybrid from her characters in “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Alone Together,” both better shows with specific points of view. They are endearing, wildly charismatic, and very funny respectively, and it all adds up to very little. But the lament for the talent wasted here extends to the show’s writers, Weiss included—every so often you encounter a flash of what this show could be, usually in the form of a biting one-liner or one of those wild swings, and it makes the hollowness of it all that much less acceptable.
Conceptually, it’s all big but empty, stating and restating its points with gleeful self-satisfaction but without bothering to really explore. Its characters are all traits and no truth, and as such, Jules and company bop around aimlessly to whatever “life as a girl, am I right?” scenario that’s up next without ever making choices that feel recognizably human. Even the basic details feel off, as though created by some sort of automated scenario generator: Jules rents a fully furnished “old lady apartment” that’s painstakingly art-directed but somehow devoid of personality, old or otherwise; a spat between friends pits bloody marys against mimosas, centered on the belief that free spirits drink bloody marys and rich, together people drink mimosas, because they’re made with champagne. (If someone is making you mimosas with real champagne, they are wasting their champagne.) And the all-important friendships simply exist—a state that wouldn’t be such a problem if the show were interested in exploring whether or not these people should be friends, which it is not.
That last point ties into the most damning of "Dollface"'s stumbles: Those women don’t even really seem to like each other, let alone love each other, and “Dollface” doesn’t seem to love them, either. “I think I’m definitely feminish,” Jules says at one point, and if it could speak (perhaps in the voice of a Cat Lady), the show would probably say the same. It claims, in a late-arriving episode, that feminism can’t be defined; one assumes the point it’s trying to make is that it’s not one-size-fits-all. But disdain for women isn’t feminish, internalized misogyny isn’t funny, and reducing your central characters to sketches without allowing them to be more at the same time isn’t a good way to make TV, feminist or otherwise. This is a great cast of women, trapped in a series made by a bunch of obviously talented people who will almost certainly go on to make smart, funny, daring, bold things. This isn’t one of them. Dump it at the Cat Lady bus station and be on your way.
Eight episodes screened for review.
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