Television’s next sitcom trend is beginning to take shape. With the release of new shows like “Adults,” “I Love LA” and, now, Mindy Kaling’s “Not Suitable for Work,” comedy has begun to shift back toward ensemble casts navigating the uncertainties of early adulthood. With witty dialogue and hilarious drama, Kaling’s newest series, which released June 2 on Hulu, proves this era of sitcoms is here to stay.
“Not Suitable for Work” follows five 20-something singles living across the hall from each other in New York City’s Murray Hill, a neighborhood on the east side of Manhattan. Throughout the first season’s eight episodes, the group of friends face numerous challenges, such as difficult bosses and intimidating high school girls, as they try to navigate their careers and love lives.
With Kaling as lead writer, it was no surprise that the dialogue and plot of Season 1 was a hit.
I found that Kaling's most recent sitcoms, “Never Have I Ever” and “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” excelled with the high school and young adult audiences because, along with the excellent work of the show leads, the writing was able to glimpse into the humor of the ages they were trying to emulate.
In “Not Suitable for Work,” Kaling ages her characters up once again, which sees its main cast as recent graduates newly entering the work force. The writing once again demonstrates Kaling's ability to tap into the humor and worries of a younger generation.
The downside of this is that sometimes that “younger generation” that Kaling was trying to channel, especially in her jokes, was geared toward a much younger audience than I think was originally intended. Case and point: Episode 3, “The Philadelphia Thirst Monster.”
The episode revolves around a chaotic dinner party in which main character AJ (Ella Hunt) discovers that her neighbor Josh (Jack Martin) once nicknamed her the “Philadelphia Thirst Monster” after they hooked up in college. From the title alone I knew that I was going to have some challenges with this episode. I thought that that nickname felt too young and too Generation Alpha for characters older than I to say. And I cringed every time a character said it – which trust me, was a lot.
We see this issue of the writing feeling unrealistic come up again when it came to the high school girls one of the main characters, Kel (Nicholas Duvernay), was teaching throughout the first season. One of the main storylines follows Kel as he substitute teaches for an English class, and these teenagers he was trying to win over became an integral part of the plot. The only issue with this is, compared to the high schoolers that Kaling has written in the past, the students at this all-girls private school, specifically Marina (Alyssa Marvin), Sarah (Hampton Persaud) and Beth (Alice Jokela), felt like the overdone stereotype of a scary, incredibly woke teenager.
They drank green juices, were ruthlessly judgmental and treated every class as if it was some morality test. While I ultimately grew to love these three characters and the bond they formed with Kel throughout the series, the beginning was a slow start. It felt almost as if someone had put “teenage clique” into an AI generator and used the first thing that came up.
But, as is the case with any sitcom, while writing is important, a show only works as well as its cast, and thankfully “Not Suitable for Work” excels in that category.
Along with Hunt, Martin and Duvernay, Will Angus and Avantika join the main cast as Davis and Abby respectively. Throughout the show, the chemistry between these core five characters continued to grow as they met and became closer friends.
But the highlight in this cast’s chemistry was the relationship between Josh, Kel and Davis, roommates whose easy banter made for one of the show’s strongest dynamics. As longtime friends, the three men kicked off the show in a fun and lighthearted way that made male friendship feel refreshing and genuine without crossing the line into the kind of “alpha male” culture that so often dominates current media.
While they certainly had their annoying quirks – Davis matched the overconfident personality of a finance bro to a tee, Josh fell into the odd category of being both a nepo baby and overly woke and Kel was made to seem like “being conventionally attractive” was most of his identity – their personalities seemed to consistently fit together perfectly.
Despite its occasional missteps, “Not Suitable for Work” understands that what makes a sitcom worth returning to every week is its ability to create a fun cast of characters audiences want to spend time with. And although Season 2 hasn’t been greenlit by Hulu yet, Kaling’s series proves there is plenty of life left to be lived in the sitcom genre.
