(courtesy IMP Awards)
The great joy of Loot, not just in the first three episodes of its third season but in the first two superlative seasons too, is that it is just so damn funny.
Not just funny bog standard ordinary but cleverly inspired, oneliner-quoting funny, the kind of sitcom that comes with so many brilliantly snappy lines that you have to ten-seconds back the episode you’re watching just to glory in the witty wordplay.
Now you might think it’s a given that a sitcom would be funny but as a great deal of uninspired dross out there in TV land shows us, not all sitcoms are created humourously weekly and not all are Loot, the product of Alan Yang (Parks and Recreation and The Good Place) and Matt Hubbard (Parks and Recreation, Forever) and starring the incomparable Maya Rudolph.
It’s well nigh impossible not to walk away from these three episodes giggling about the assistant to Rudolph’s central character, billionaire Molly Wells, Nicholas (Joel Kim Booster) observing at an ageing nudist colony that its like a “porn parody of Cocoon” or also Nicholas (he has so many of the good lines) wondering if Molly and he should have written “SOS” instead of “UH OH!” on the sand after their plane “crashes” to which Molly responds “Oh no. This is much more us”.
While Loot doesn’t stick every quip-heavy landing, it lands more than the average sitcom, with its strike rate enhanced by the fact that it continues to work hard to play to its characters’ many and varied idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses.
While some of the characters such as the director of Molly’s foundation Sofia Salinas (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez) and dim, doll-loving foundation employee, Ainsley (Stephanie Styles) are running a real risk of getting caught in one-note cardboard cutout territory – though each gets small moments that add just enough emotional depth to broaden the scope of their characters – by and large Loot employs its characters well, assigning each of them lines that ring true but which are also hilarious as hell.
What continues to impress is how Loot balances the satirical aspects of its plotting – Molly has committed to give away all her fortune and the show has a ball making fun of the oligarchic cancer infecting western society and indeed the world – with its more loopy aspects of its plotting such as Ainsley employing creepy dolls to keep running the foundation while everyone else is somewhere in the Indian Ocean (all is explained in the opening episode) or eccentric Rhonda (Meagen Fay) deciding to stay out with the nudist colony the gang encounter in the first episode.
Given the timeliness of its messaging, with billionaires in the US especially well and truly on the nose, Loot could have turned into a preachy sitcom than drains itself of its comedy magic and often batsh*t craziness by getting a tad too polemic.
But rather than preach from a gold-coated pedestal, surrounded the waters of Evian and Cristal, Loot happily lets the billionaires effectively skewer themselves while also allowing to stake out her point of difference as a member of that very exclusive club that doesn’t want to hoard her ridiculous wealth but to use it to do some good.
Lots and lots of good in fact; laudable though that is, the billionaires don’t like her upsetting their highly indulgent apple cart and think that a deep fake video of Molly being very un-philanthropist-like will ruin her reputation in a world that has grown wearily accustomed to billionaire’s behaving badly.
But rather cleverly, rather than attacking this head-on, Loot uses the third episode of its third season, which is funny but likely the weakest of the opening set, when Molly is given a humanitarian award by a UK billionaire of highly dubious morality, to strike back by mailing its high-minded, deeply moral colours to the mast.
That kind of serious messaging, and Molly really takes on the way so many billionaires can accommodate a wide variety of abhorrent practices as long as they whitewash them with “good deeds”, could sink without a stone but the show manages to stick the boot in without losing its goofily OTT sense of fun, proof that you can make a point and still raise more than a few smiles and quite a number of outright laughs.
Another clever move by the show in this season is to also humanise Molly by have her finally get together with her devoted employee, Arthur (Nat Faxon) who is many things Molly is not on the surface at least – an attempt by Nicholas to make him more upmarket, fashion-wise at least, goes hilariously wrong and is used to illustrate that outside trappings can only go so far – but who is, it seems, her soulmate in so many others.
There’s no doubt the two will hit quite a few speed bumps as they date and settle into their relationship – check the trailer out for a very funny rustic weekend that quickly becomes anything but – but by giving Molly an endearing everyman boyfriend with a heart of gold, Loot neatly balances Molly’s more out-there super rich person moments with her sincerity of purpose (she honestly believes in the work of her foundation) and the fact that while Nicholas thinks she is too precious to handle the real world, and that Arthur needs a thick binder of OTT tips just to date her, that Molly is more grounded than many people think.
It’s delicate balancing act because a lot of the fun of Loot comes from how weirdly out of touch many of Molly’s lifestyle trappings are with the very people she’s trying to help and with her employees who are really now her closest friends, but somehow the show seems to be keeping its eye on the rich mine of billionaire wackiness while pushing Molly, and indeed, all the characters forward, ever forward, and staying brilliantly and wonderfully funny as it does it.
Loot streams on AppleTV+