Season two of a comedy series should be a party. While season one gets stuck with the heavy lifting of world-building and character establishment, the second season is when a comedic premise becomes a joke machine: You can turn one of your leads into Jackie Daytona or have a character join the Blue Man Group , you can add a Minna or have the boss get their foot stuck in a George Foreman grill . So it’s with a heavy heart that I must admit that season two of Loot — Apple TV+’s comedy about a billionaire divorcée’s quest to give away all her money — continues to flatten Molly into a series of empty gowns Maya Rudolph works valiantly to bring to life.
Rudolph simply has too little to play with as a main character: Molly is never communally loathed like Michael Scott, never feared like Selina Meyer, and rarely shows signs of the incompetence that plagued the Bluths. Instead, she’s quickly forgiven for every slight, beloved by her household staff (tell me we’re in a wealthy person’s fantasy without telling me we’re in a wealthy person’s fantasy), and can easily figure out a vacuum cleaner despite not having used one in two decades. It’s hard to understand what kind of hero’s journey Molly is having at this point.
How can you redeem someone who isn’t bad? But what’s truly painful about Loot season two are the glimpses of a better show glimmering just beneath the surface. While its driving focus is Molly’s crush on Arthur (Nat Faxon) — a corny divor.
