“Dollface” begins with a breakup, when Jeremy (Connor Hines) tells Jules (Kat Dennings), his girlfriend of five years, that he doesn’t love her anymore. Jules is summarily scooped up by a millennial-pink bus driven by an old cat lady (literally, an older woman with a CGI cat face played by Beth Grant). The bus arrives to take her back – “back to hanging out with other women.” What follows is a bumpy, shallow, highly enjoyable return to sisterhood.
Jules struggles to learn the language of Girl Code as she reunites with her college comrades, Type A P.R. maven Madison (Brenda Song) and wise-cracking party girl Stella (Shay Mitchell). Along the way, their threesome folds in Izzy (Esther Povitsky), Jules’s neurotic colleague at the pseudo-empowering wellness firm Woöm, a The-Wing-looking Goop spoof that sells anal crystals and age-defying balms. The foursome’s escapades are mostly absurd – they somersault through quick-witted dialogue while sniffing out a possible Panera Bread murderer or watching a magician kill Jeremy Lawrence – but these capable performers know when to engineer an affecting fake cry.
The cast and material are expertly tailored to (straight, Los Angelean) millennial women, from a “Full House” cast member cameo to Taco Bell and Bumble references. The same women who watched Shay Mitchell and Brenda Song as teens will be delighted to see them drop the F-bomb and take peyote now. It’s difficult to overstate the brilliance of this cast, who coolly delivers lines like, “Oh, shit! Turtle ate a bag of dicks!” (an always pitch-perfect Kat Dennings) and “Supply and demand? More like suck and dick, am I right?” (Shay Mitchell). The core four are bolstered by jaw-dropping guest stars like Macaulay Culkin, Malin Åkerman, and Margot Robbie (one of the show’s executive producers).
Yet for all its hilarious, laser-precise knowledge of modern twenty-something female life, “Dollface” proves that a brilliant TV show about women is not necessarily inherently feminist. It has its (wonderful!) moments, like when a gynecologist enters an examination room and blithely announces, “Sorry I got held up, I was just performing a safe, legal abortion.” Its premise relies on the conceit that “women need each other more than ever.” But at the end of the day, “Dollface” takes a wobbly pro-woman stance. The women of “Dollface” are not immune to feminism-as-consumerism. The cast sports obvious makeup, even in bed or the shower. There is some not-not icky pregnancy test product placement. The show searingly satirizes the exploitative wellness industry as woke makeup culture, then has an old-school feminist (Christina Pickles) declare, “Looking good doesn’t mean I’m any less of a feminist than you are.” (That latter incident takes place at an otherwise brilliantly-rendered women’s march.)
“Dollface” would be better off if it didn’t try so hard to prove its feminist credentials. It’s plenty relatable, refreshing, and hilarious without these flailing attempts. Hulu and creator Jordan Weiss have cultivated something really special here – they just don’t need to hit us over the head with it. [B]
