When you’ve watched a Netflix unique prior to now few years, you may acknowledge the comic Michelle Buteau because the platform’s punchiest voice of cause. Originally of the 2019 breakup comedy Somebody Nice, Buteau’s character delivers a brisk vanity enhance to the movie’s protagonist, whom she encounters as a crying stranger on a subway platform: “Why he received’t attempt? Take a look at you along with your fairly tooth and shit.” In Randall Park and Ali Wong’s All the time Be My Possibly, launched a few month later, Buteau performed Veronica, the very pregnant and really humorous assistant to Wong’s movie star restaurateur, Sasha. And since 2020, Buteau has hosted The Circle, a chaotic Large Brother–esque actuality collection on which contributors work together solely by means of a bespoke social community; she retains the uncanny present surprisingly watchable together with her stream of self-referential commentary.
In her newest involvement with Netflix, Buteau takes middle stage—and this time, she doesn’t have the solutions. Survival of the Thickest, which started streaming final week, stars Buteau as Mavis Beaumont, a plus-size stylist reeling from a breakup kicked off by catching her wealthy photographer boyfriend in mattress with a girl—however “not simply another lady, a thin mannequin model of me,” as she tells a buddy. Mavis rapidly leaves Jacque (Taylor Selé), shifting out of their trendy Manhattan residence and right into a cramped Brooklyn residence the place her bed room doesn’t have a door and her roommate doesn’t have boundaries. Loosely primarily based on Buteau’s 2020 essay assortment of the identical identify, Survival of the Thickest is an effervescent, self-aware story of beginning over that implicitly rejects the confines of the “fats greatest buddy” trope. Although generally uneven, it’s a welcome new entrant amongst reveals that comply with ladies rebuilding their lives, and Buteau shines within the well-deserved highlight.
Because the emotional anchor of the collection, Buteau showcases a spread that extends past the clever retorts which have earned her the nickname “Queen of Quips.” Buteau’s character—whereas hilarious—is relieved of getting to function the present’s ethical middle, jokingly or in any other case. It may need been tempting, for instance, to jot down Mavis as a girl whose heartbreak instantly turns into bulletproof armor towards her dishonest ex’s apologetic overtures—or, given Buteau’s real-life profession, as a slapstick comedian who turns her state of affairs into fodder for a killer comedy routine. However Survival of the Thickest, which Buteau co-created with Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, offers Mavis house to make unhealthy selections—a rarity for any Black-woman character, a lot much less a plus-size 38-year-old daughter of Caribbean immigrants. For each triumphant declaration like “I’ma maintain it shifting and maintain my crops watered,” Mavis additionally flounders in her new post-Jacque life. She trusts an internet site known as roommatefinder.internet as a result of she noticed it on a bus; she has a one-night stand with a person who woos her at a bar by saying, “When you had been my woman, the entire bed room can be the Vatican, and also you’d be my Olivia Pope.”
In that sense, Survival of the Thickest covers well-trod territory. So long as individuals have been getting their hearts damaged, they’ve been making TV about selecting up the items afterward. Sequence similar to New Woman, Dollface, and Grace and Frankie adopted their protagonists after a catalytic breakup. Insecure and The Unimaginable Jessica James turned their consideration to Black ladies messily navigating the thorny transition. That mentioned, Survival of the Thickest is especially attuned to its protagonist’s contradictory emotions about her personal physique and the extent to which they’re formed by a male associate’s actions. Romantic betrayal doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Nonetheless assured Mavis is likely to be, she’s not proof against a lifetime of messaging about what sorts of our bodies are most valued.
Early within the first episode, when Jacque playfully images Mavis and remarks that the digital camera loves her, she says: “Is that proper? Nicely, it have to be my drumstick-emoji physique. It’s meaty on prime, nubby on the underside. Very scrumptious.” However after strolling in on him of their mattress with a mannequin she’d helped fashion, Mavis’s tone modifications. “You understand what individuals say. If somebody cheats on Halle Berry, they’re like, ‘Oh my God, how that man cheat on Halle Berry?’” she tells her buddy Khalil (Tone Bell) as the 2 pack up her belongings. “But when somebody cheats on somebody like me, a thick woman, with drawback areas? They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’”
Khalil rapidly affords some supportive pushback on Mavis’s evaluation: “Okay, cease,” he says gently. “Mave. Cease. Don’t breathe life into that silly-ass narrative. When anyone cheats, that’s them tryna stroke they personal ego.” Due to heartfelt moments like these, Mavis and Khalil’s friendship is a spotlight of the collection—and an all too uncommon on-screen instance of a presumably straight man and lady who should not constructing towards romance. Mavis’s pragmatic buddy Marley (a splendidly forged Tasha Smith) additionally affords the lead much-needed perspective on courting, primarily taking over the function that Buteau would have in a unique collection. However she will get her personal subplot, too, one which sees her questioning the function that males’s approval has performed in her personal relationships.
Following her breakup, Mavis wants her styling profession to buoy her each financially and emotionally. She lands a gig working with a former supermodel named Natasha Karina (Garcelle Beauvais), then with Nicole Byer (as herself), who needs Mavis’s assist with the ultimate seems to be for the plus-size lingerie line she’s set to launch. Most of Mavis’s styling scenes are a delight to observe—Buteau imbues the character with a palpable pleasure about her private {and professional} mandate. There’s an exquisite earnestness to how she talks in regards to the work, which makes cases {of professional} rigidity really feel pivotal even once they’re in settings as foolish as a marriage organized for 2 canines. “That is my fucking calling; that is my function,” she says after assembly Byer. “I wanna work with lovely thickums and make them be ok with themselves and make them really feel trendy and look fly!”
Survival of the Thickest packs so much into this season’s eight-episode run. Generally, that feels acceptable—the interval after a giant breakup definitely can really feel like all the pieces is going on suddenly. However the present sometimes struggles to maintain its many storylines cohesive. An episode that begins with Mavis spending time with Luca, a brand new Italian paramour (Marouane Zotti), for instance, pivots right into a clunky meditation on racism in America by spending a baffling period of time on an altercation with a “Karen.” Whereas racism would undoubtedly form any Black character’s expertise, the narrative diversion is particularly noticeable given how brief the collection runtime is. Spending time with “Karen” means sacrificing time with Luca, Marley, and any of the present’s different pleasant supporting characters. Survival of the Thickest is at its most clever when drawing consideration to simply how a lot Mavis is attempting to steadiness. The collection doesn’t have to do all the pieces to be nice—it simply must maintain Buteau’s appeal at its middle.
