Aug 27, 2026 · 19 min
Adults tests the limits of the friendship sitcom
Adults
The panel asks whether Adults turns familiar young-adult comedy into a meaningful portrait of Gen Z privilege, politics, and community.
- 1Adults borrows the friendship-sitcom format while struggling to establish a distinct generational identity.
- 2Its characters’ economic privilege shifts the story from hardship toward accountability, dependence, and the absence of community.
- 3The uneven season still benefits from strong cast chemistry, especially when its abortion storyline finds a workable comic tone.
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The panel’s discussion of Adults’ abortion storyline, praised for finding comic set pieces within a serious subject, crystallizes the show’s tonal ambitions.
The brief
Ayesha Harris leads Candice Lim and Kiana Fitzgerald through Adults, Hulu’s Queens-set sitcom about young friends living together while navigating sex, politics, and responsibility.
The panel finds the show intensely cringeworthy and tonally uneven, then asks whether its familiar friendship-comedy structure and TikTok marketing add up to a genuinely Gen Z identity.
Adults’ characters can live together without paying rent and rely on family support, prompting a sharper reading: the show is less about hardship than privilege without accountability or community.
Paul Baker’s Canadian visa and fluid sexuality bring politics into the discussion, but the panel finds his storyline predictable and the season’s final tonal shifts abrupt.
The abortion storyline earns praise for its comic set pieces, while the cast’s chemistry ultimately supports the panel’s cautious conclusion that friendship sitcoms still have room to work.
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