Critic Reviews

The Come Up doesn’t look like it’s going to be a particularly deep show, and anyone who’s older than the cast members have seen this kind of show many times. But it’s fun to see how the “youngs” in 2022 see the big city.

Freeform is airing four episodes of The Come Up tonight. That and the show's curious late-summer timing suggests a lack of faith on the part of the network. Despite excellent casting, that lack of faith seems justified.

The Come Up might be too boring to properly hate. Much like Gossip Girl—another show about hot, young NYC socialites—it has all the engineered inclusivity of HBO Max’s reboot, but with none of the OMFG factor that made the original series so fun to watch.

The experiment yields a weirdly empty, inert show with little insight to offer into youth culture today.