Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Hulu
As the title implied, the first season of Amy Schumer’s semi-autobiographical Hulu dramedy series Life & Beth began with a death and ended with a spiritual rebirth. Following the sudden loss of her mother, Beth (Schumer)—an aimless wine merchant in her late thirties stuck in a committed relationship with a dopey co-worker—reevaluates her seemingly ideal urban life. She breaks up with her partner, moves out of Manhattan and back to her hometown of Long Island, and mentally revisits stories from her traumatic childhood, told via flashbacks featuring a teenaged Beth (Violet Young). Painful encounters with bullies and boys are juxtaposed with scenes from her parents’ rocky relationship and eventual divorce, all inspired by Schumer’s own childhood.
Over the course of the season’s first 10 episodes, Beth slowly but surely learns one of the most valuable coming-of-age lessons: that parents are people with their own flaws and baggage, and though they might never change, it’s possible to love them in spite of the damage they caused. (Only in death can Beth forgive her mother for her boundary-less, post-divorce dating history, which ultimately cost her a childhood best friend.) Amidst her grief, she learns to reconnect with old friends and also quickly falls for forthright, compassionate farmer John (Michael Cera), who helps her to (literally) reconnect with her roots by teaching her the ins and outs of cultivation.
While Schumer’s personal involvement with the material gives the flashbacks in Life & Beth the patina of a well-defined memory piece, complete with plainly authentic characterizations and period detail, the series too often implies a neat causal relationship between childhood incident and adult behavior. There’s also a split-personality effect between the flashbacks and present-day sequences: The former operates almost exclusively in a dramatic minor key, while the latter alternate between that and exaggerated comedy. Sometimes the tonal shifts complement each other, or at least aren’t conspicuous. Other times, it feels like two different shows stitched together.