Photo: Kenny Laubbacher/HBO
There are plenty of reasons to be excited about HBO’s latest comedy series, I Love LA. It’s from the brain of Rachel Sennott, and the trailer includes a montage of two characters shopping while high in Erewhon and drive-by flashing the Church of Scientology. The show just premiered on November 2, with seven more episodes airing weekly, and the first episode alone sets us up with the concept: Maia (Sennott) is an aspiring PR maven whose best friend turned frenemy, Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), comes to town to wreak havoc on her life. But my favorite part of it all? My childhood obsession with Josh Hutcherson, who plays Maia’s boyfriend, Dylan, is about to pay off.
For as long as I can remember, Hutcherson has starred in films as the sweet boy next door: He broke our hearts in Little Manhattan and Bridge to Terabithia, then mended them with his portrayal of Peeta Mellark in the Hunger Games series. While many girls were Team Edward, I was firmly Team Peeta. I could not care less about a pale vampire; what I wanted was an artsy little blond who was obsessed with me. Peeta’s loyal and kind demeanor wooed me from the first page of the novel, but it was Hutcherson’s onscreen portrayal that really captured my heart. Anyone could’ve played him, but to me, Hutcherson was him. The midnight premiere in 2012 was one of the best nights of my life: I gathered all my friends — and my pillowcase with Peeta’s face on it, which I had been sleeping on for months — chugged a Frappuccino, and sobbed as the credits rolled. I saw the movie two more times in theaters that week alone.
Now that I’m an adult, I know that not everyone shared my same obsession with Hutcherson back in the day. But I hope that when people see I Love LA, they’ll finally see where I’ve been coming from. As Dylan, he’s a devoted Spanish teacher who has a picture of his girlfriend as his iPhone’s wallpaper. In Maia’s life, he’s the only person close to her who’s not connected to the entertainment industry, and he is also potentially the only one who can keep her grounded. Some gems of dialogue include “You look like a baby” (a compliment about Maia’s birthday post on Instagram); “Every year, you become more and more yourself — and you’re skinnier now, which I know you love”; “Baby, it’s because she’s insecure”; and “That’s a lot of drugs for a Tuesday. I have class mañana, so I can’t” (in the face of a mountain of coke). Dylan even tells Maia he’s okay with her having a threesome (with some small stipulations, but still: I’ve never been more in love with a fictional TV boyfriend and wanted him to be mine).
Photo: Kenny Laubbacher/HBO
In a USA Today review of the series, Dylan is described as “the only halfway tolerable character” but that he also “lacks much in the way of personality other than loving Maia and sometimes reading nerdy history books.” Sorry, is that not the perfect personality for a boyfriend in his late 20s? I don’t want them to have any more hobbies than that. He’s easygoing, constantly encouraging a frantic Maia. When he shows her two shirt options to wear to her birthday dinner and she says “neither,” he shakes his head in agreement. He agrees to a last-minute dinner party to get Maia out of a bind — without a single complaint, except that it might not be his best work. (“I normally have more time to prepare,” he says, a kitchen towel slung across his shoulder.) When there are not enough seats on the couch, he happily sits on the floor. As Maia fakes a jealous freak-out to get rid of an unwanted houseguest, Dylan earnestly says, “I only think about you when I jerk off. Then when I do watch porn, I look for girls that look like you.” In that moment, I did catch myself swooning.
To see Hutcherson enter the raunchy world of Sennott, who co-wrote Bottoms, feels like my middle-school crush on him has finally grown into adulthood with me. If you don’t believe me, just know that the first three minutes of the premiere have done more for me than all the sexy Peeta and Katniss fanfic I used to read as a sixth-grader. Sex during an earthquake? Wattpad could never come up with that.
