The Indignity and Pleasure of Beginning Over After a Breakup
Should you’ve watched a Netflix authentic prior to now few years, you would possibly acknowledge the comic Michelle Buteau because the platform’s punchiest voice of motive. 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? Have a look at you along with your fairly tooth and shit.” In Randall Park and Ali Wong’s At all times Be My Possibly, launched a couple of month later, Buteau performed Veronica, the very pregnant and really humorous assistant to Wong’s celeb restaurateur, Sasha. And since 2020, Buteau has hosted The Circle, a chaotic Huge Brother–esque actuality sequence on which contributors work together solely by way 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 heart 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 girl, a thin mannequin model of me,” as she tells a good friend. Mavis swiftly leaves Jacque (Taylor Selé), transferring out of their trendy Manhattan dwelling and right into a cramped Brooklyn house the place her bed room doesn’t have a door and her roommate doesn’t have boundaries. Loosely based mostly 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 good friend” 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 sequence, Buteau showcases a variety that extends past the smart 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 heart, jokingly or in any other case. It might need been tempting, for instance, to put in writing Mavis as a girl whose heartbreak instantly turns into bulletproof armor in opposition to her dishonest ex’s apologetic overtures—or, given Buteau’s real-life profession, as a humorist who turns her scenario into fodder for a killer comedy routine. However Survival of the Thickest, which Buteau co-created with Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, offers Mavis area to make dangerous choices—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 hold it transferring and hold my vegetation watered,” Mavis additionally flounders in her new post-Jacque life. She trusts an internet site referred to as roommatefinder.web 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, “Should you had been my lady, the entire bed room can be the Vatican, and also you’d be my Olivia Pope.”
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In that sense, Survival of the Thickest covers well-trod territory. So long as folks have been getting their hearts damaged, they’ve been making TV about choosing up the items afterward. Sequence corresponding to New Lady, 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 accomplice’s actions. Romantic betrayal doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Nonetheless assured Mavis may be, she’s not resistant to 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 should be my drumstick-emoji physique. It’s meaty on high, 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 adjustments. “You realize what folks say. If somebody cheats on Halle Berry, they’re like, ‘Oh my God, how that man cheat on Halle Berry?’” she tells her good friend Khalil (Tone Bell) as the 2 pack up her belongings. “But when somebody cheats on somebody like me, a thick lady, with downside 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 any individual 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 sequence—and an all too uncommon on-screen instance of a presumably straight man and girl who usually are not constructing towards romance. Mavis’s pragmatic good friend Marley (a splendidly forged Tasha Smith) additionally affords the lead much-needed perspective on relationship, basically taking up the function that Buteau would have in a unique sequence. 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.
Jocelyn Prescod / Netflix
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 for the plus-size lingerie line she’s set to launch. Most of Mavis’s styling scenes are a delight to look at—Buteau imbues the character with a palpable pleasure about her private {and professional} mandate. There’s an exquisite earnestness to how she talks concerning the work, which makes situations {of professional} stress really feel pivotal even once they’re in settings as foolish as a marriage organized for 2 canine. “That is my fucking calling; that is my objective,” 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 lots into this season’s eight-episode run. Typically, that feels applicable—the interval after an enormous breakup actually can really feel like all the things is going on all of sudden. 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 very noticeable given how brief the sequence 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 suave when drawing consideration to simply how a lot Mavis is making an attempt to steadiness. The sequence doesn’t have to do all the things to be nice—it simply must hold Buteau’s allure at its heart.
