I Love That for You is an American comedy series distributed by Paramount and available to stream on Paramount+. The series was created by Vanessa Bayer and Jeremy Beiler. The series centres around the main character, played by Bayer, Joanna Gold, a survivor of childhood cancer, now an aspiring shopping channel host. In the apparently cut-throat industry of shopping channel networks, Joanna finds herself making questionable choices to get ahead in the game.
The character of Joanna Gold is a very exaggerated goofball character, and upon starting the series, it’s hard not to think of Saturday Night Live. Joanna’s character maintains her puerility throughout, which is made more endurable by the storylines of the other characters.
Such characters include Jackie Stilton [Molly Shannon], the host who has been at Special Value Network the longest and sells a manner tchotchkes and tinctures. Jackie is the deuteragonist of the series, and Shannon brings a lot of life to the frivolous but endearing character.
The CEO and founder of SVN is Patricia Cochran [Jenifer Lewis], a no-nonsense, businesswoman who juxtaposes Joanna almost completely. Among the other hosts are Beth Ann [Ayden Mayeri], the resident “mean girl”, Perry [Johnno Wilson] who sells cookery related products, and Patricia’s assistant, Darcy [Matt Rogers]. The series also stars Paul James as Jordan, who is clearly the most coherent and rational character by far.
Although the premise of I Love That for You is fairly within the realm of gallows humour, it doesn’t stop the show from exploring a surreal sort of silliness reminiscent of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or Great News, although I believe the former to be an exemplary work of comedic stylings.
In sum, I Love That for You is an easy to watch series with cartoonish characters that largely manage to sustain some semblance of development. There’s room for improvement tonally, and the production itself is sometimes questionable, but overall it’s fun, entertaining, and occasionally pensive.
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