Alone Together

There’d be no hope for the future were every millennial this way. But as voices of a hopefully very small subset of their generation, Povitsky and Aflalo are funny enough in spots to make a go of it as two oddly self-aware non-starters.

Alone Together skates very close to being too annoying, but never loses its appeal because of the writing, of course, but also because Povitsky and Aflalo are fully credible at all times--not just in their spot-on performances and comic timing, but also in how they look and move.

Fresh, funny and fearless, Alone Together introduces two new voices whose exploits are far more relatable than some recent past series about young people (cough, cough, “Girls,” cough, cough).

The two have so much loathing for themselves, Alone Together can be downright depressing. Just the quality you don’t want from a sitcom. You might end up hating yourself--for wasting your time.

Esther and Benji are both fractionally employed and complain frequently about their miserable finances, their singledom and their lousy lots in life. What they mostly do, though, is compulsively talk about food and shame. Esther mentions a need to feel “skinny and pretty” twice in the first two minutes of the show. ... It’s a theme that quickly moves from quirky to genuinely disordered in ways that the show does not seem to notice.

A interesting intriguing mixed series that is more than just a collection of of-the-moment sketches, it falls short. The characters are hard to invest in, the relationship is really hard to invest in, and the show offers no narrative propulsion aside from their cutesy, vulgar dynamic. This feels like an amateur effort from two comedians on their way to producing better work.