Childhood cancer survivor Joanna Gold (Vanessa Bayer) is still living a forcibly sheltered life with her parents in Cleveland when she auditions for and gets her dream job as a presenter/hawker on shopping channel SVN. A new life in Pennsylvania beckons, among the stars she grew obsessed with during the treatment that isolated her as a child. Alas, on her first day her product is switched at the last moment to a rancid pillow mist whose smell catches her off guard. Her expression is enough to get her fired by magisterially ruthless (“Don’t just walk up to her as if you’re a human being on the same level!”) CEO Patricia (Jenifer Lewis). What is a girl to do but play the sympathy card and pretend her childhood cancer has come back?
On paper, this Paramount+ sitcom is a tough sell. But, overall, it works. There might not be abundant belly laughs (though there are often great throwaway lines, such as assistant Darcy begging the CEO for time off to attend Graydon Carter’s barn warming on Martha’s Vineyard), but Bayer – on whose own story Joanna’s is based – keeps our sympathy throughout. Joanna clearly has star quality gone awry, warped by her early isolation into an irrepressible awkwardness that is equally endearing and cringemaking. When asked how she’s doing by a colleague she replies: “I’m hashtag-living, I’m hashtag-I’m-loving-it, ba-dum-pum-pum, yeah! Let’s all go down to the Micky D’s and get some cheesebuuuugaaaahs!” It takes forever. It is exquisite agony, but her appeal keeps you rooting for her. Possibly only a performer of Bayer’s precision ebullience could pull it off.
Joanna’s ruse works, and the show is off to the races. Naturally, her lie ties her in ever greater knots, especially when Patricia demands that it become part of her public story – because the ticker showing her sales rises vertiginously every time Joanna mentions cancer while shilling pleather joggers.
And of course it taints all the relationships she forms with the SVN “family”. It’s particularly true of the growing friendship with her idol Jackie Stilton (Molly Shannon, bringing all her brilliant spiky energy to the part), who is celebrating 30 years as SVN’s biggest-selling star but beginning to feel the rub of a life spent in artifice – even starting to wish she could change her hairstyle. She and Joanna’s friendship is a lovely study in how much authenticity needs to be “real”. Jackie really did feel like a friend to Joanna through the screen, from her hospital room. She still wears the bracelet she bought “from her” to remind her that she can get through bad times. Jackie undoubtedly has helped some of the people in whose living rooms she has been a presence for so many years. And she is genuinely grateful for their hand in her success. Does it matter that she was always servicing SVN’s bottom line too?
The satire on shopping channels and consumerism is nicely done, but the behind-the-scenes bitchery is even more fun. Beth Ann (Ayden Mayeri), who is a model of passive aggression (“Don’t worry about shitting the bed in the meeting this morning!”) may not know that you don’t have to take a tampon out to pee, but is the first to become suspicious of Joanna’s cancer claim. Darcy (Matt Rogers) doesn’t care one way or the other as long as she shows him due respect. And gentle Jordan (Paul James) is set fair to become a rather touching love interest, adding to the tender streak that runs through this otherwise frenetic show.
