Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dollface’ On Hulu, Where Kat Dennings Tries To Hang Out With Other Women After A Bad Break-Up

Everyone knows one of those people, no matter what their gender, that completely entrench themselves in their romantic relationships, to the neglect of friendships. Dollface is told from the perspective of one of those people, who is suddenly single and scared to death of having to hang out with other women again. Read on for more…

DOLLFACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A panning shot of groups of women friends having brunch outside a Los Angeles restaurant. We then see a woman with her boyfriend. She asks if she can have a bite of his huevos rancheros, and he says, “I don’t love you anymore!”

The Gist: Just like that, Jules (Kat Dennings) is single again. Her boyfriend of five years, Jeremy (Connor Hines) dumps her, and on the ride back from brunch, he says that what they’ve been through for the past 5 years would happen like 6 more times if they were married and he didn’t want to put her through that. The problem, though, is that Jules was so thoroughly entrenched in the relationship that she has to figure out how to hang out with other women again.

Jules’ imagination starts going wild as she imagines herself boarding a bus full of jilted women and driven by a literal cat lady (Beth Grant). They pass “guys’ girls,” who are all dressed in football jerseys and saying they love wings. One woman gets off at Rebound Town. When she gets to the depot, she’s the only one who doesn’t have friends to meet her. The dispatcher tells her that all of her friendships have “expired” due to neglect.

Back in the real world, she goes to visit her college friend Madison Maxwell (Brenda Song), an intense PR rep who doesn’t want to even hear it from Jules, considering Jules abandoned their friendship as soon as her relationship started. Madison’s view is that women need to stick together, more so than ever, and Jules didn’t return the loyalty Madison gave her back then. Jules, though was never comfortable in groups of women, and don’t understand their rituals.

Madison tells her to go visit their other buddy, Stella Cole (Shay Mitchell), who is more forgiving. She encourages Jules to put herself out there and do something that makes her uncomfortable. She does that, getting an invite to her company’s launch for a “cleansing crystal” for the anus (She works at a company called Woom, of course). She’s still not completely comfortable in a group of women, especially when Stella and Madison immediately bond with the “Allisons”, a group of “cool” women from work. But one of the Allisons drunkenly confides in Jules that her real name is Izzy (Esther Povitsky) and that she’s been living a lie because she felt she had to fit in.

When Stella goes missing, getting into a van with an old guy (who turns out to be Dave Coulier), Madison and Jules finally rekindle their friendship, especially after Jeremy finds Jules collecting trash — “I clean when I’m stressed!” she tells people — and calls her his demeaning nickname for her: “Dollface.”

Our Take: Dollface is the vision of Jordan Weiss, who wrote all the episodes, and it starts off with a bang, with the imagery of the bus and the cat lady. But then, it becomes yet another millennial quipfest that just becomes a boring series of gags and not anything resembling a cohesive story.

We’re not sure why TV writers haven’t been able to capture the funny, down-to-earth charm of Dennings. Dollface comes a lot closer than 2 Broke Girls ever did, but Weiss seems to want to lean more heavily on Dennings’ drollness rather than the humanity and caring she showed in movies like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Jules has potential to be a three-dimensional character, but for now she’s just that person you know that completely disconnects when they get into a relationship. The only other characteristic we know about her is that she cleans when she’s stressed.

There’s a “women need to stick together” message that’s sledgehammered in the first episode, with more than one character expressing that sentiment instead of, you know, just showing their loyalty. It’s the curse of a first-time writer — one that’s being helped by a veteran showrunner like Ira Ungerleider (Friends), but still a rookie EP — trying to explain their premise via talking rather than via the characters themselves.

We don’t really know why Jules is uncomfortable around other women and we’re not sure why Madison and Stella are so willing to let her back into their confidence so quickly. Madison and Stella don’t feel like more than sketches, save for the moment when Madison tells Jules that, despite the gap in their friendship, she still wanted to call Jules when her mother died.

The idea that Jules’ imagination gets in her way is inspired, but after the cat scene, we only see one other real example in the first episode. We don’t want the entire show to take place in Jules’ head, but there could be a better balance between fantasy and reality. Otherwise, the gags about native words for “anus” an other quick-hit gags about the Goop-esque Woom will get old in a hurry.

Sex and Skin: Jules finds Stella at an artistic photo shoot where guys are naked and posing as furniture. We see butts but their fronts are in strategic slings.

Parting Shot: Jules looks at the pics from the party and gets happy that she’s reconnected with her friends. We see Madison go to bed in the “You Aruba Me The Right Way” shirt she and Jules both bought on a trip during college. Madison claimed she threw it out years ago.

Sleeper Star: Povitsky has always been more low-key funny in shows like Alone Together, but here he’s more hyper-funny as Izzy, and it works well.

Most Pilot-y Line: Two gags don’t make much sense: The one where Jules doesn’t understand why women go to the bathroom together, and one where Madison and Stella greet the Allisons like they’re old friends and they tell Jules they just met. Neither seems realistic, and the second one makes us side with Jules as to why she doesn’t like hanging out with other women. Even in our society where every interaction is “for the ‘Gram”, that bit seemed completely phony.

Our Call: SKIP IT. As charming as Dennings is, it feels like she’s doing a different show than the rest of the people in Dollface. The show is not a great use of what is otherwise a strong cast.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Dollface on Hulu