MTV’s new series, “Underemployed,” will strike a familiar chord for anyone who remembers ABC’s “thirtysomething.”
Much like its distant TV cousin, “Underemployed” — about a close-knit group of college grads experiencing life in the cold, unfair world — is as subtle as a flying mallet in its angst-y approach.
But while that’s the very thing that made “thirtysomething” so irritatingly smug, what saves “Underemployed” from a similar fate is a fresh-faced, earnest young cast, which works hard to overcome the limitations of this prime-time soap for the twentysomething set.
Tuesday’s series opener introduces us to the “Underemployed” cast just as this group of idealistic bffs are graduating from a Chicago-area university — each confident they’ll reach their life’s goal within a year.
There’s Sophia (Michelle Ang), ready to write The Great American Novel; Daphne (Sarah Habel), who’ll storm the advertising world; the idealistic Lou (Jared Kusnitz), ticketed for graduate school; his girlfriend, Raviva (Inbar Lavi), an acoustic rocker ready to be discovered; and pretty-boy Miles (Diego Boneta), who knows he’ll land that big modeling contract in no time. Good luck.
As we cut to one year later — shocker! — each of the characters’ expectations have been dashed. Sophia works the counter of a boutique cupcake store; Daphne is an unpaid ad-agency intern with a wolfish boss; Lou hands out leaflets in mall parking lots; Miles is a male party stripper/part-time waiter; and Raviva is bartending in an LA club.
As they like to say on those “Grey’s Anatomy” promos, “everything changes” when Raviva shows up, suddenly pregnant, on Lou’s doorstep — forcing the entire gang to accept that life throws a bunch of curves around which they’ll have to navigate.
It remains to be seen if “Underemployed” will have time to spread its dramatic wings and shake off its ham-fisted preachiness — but it’s off to a promising, if predictable, start.