In “The Z-Suite,” premiering Thursday on Tubi, Lauren Graham plays Monica, the award-winning head of a New York advertising agency, who loses her job after an ill-conceived slogan for headphones — “All Vibes Matter” — gets a ton of social media blowback. Deciding that the agency needs to be more in tune with the times, her boss fires Monica and her creative partner, Doug (Nico Santos), and replaces them with the firm’s Gen-Z social media team.
Leading this crew is new Chief Executive Kriska (Madison Shamoun), 24, or “24½,” as she’ll make a point of pointing out. She’s peppy, ambitious and impatient; having worked at the firm, called Atelier, for a grand total of 168 days, including 43 “in the office,” she feels she’s ready for, even due, a promotion. She’s supported, if that’s the word, by Clem (Anna Bezahler), who is sluggish, and Elliot (Spencer Stevenson), distracted by his own flamboyance.
Their appointment, in a real-world business sense, is idiotic — they don’t have any idea how to run things, despite their “literal communication degrees,” and depend heavily on Monica’s former/Kriska’s current secretary, Annabelle (Dani Kind), for guidance.
But this is a sitcom, after all — created by Katie O’Brien (“Teachers”) — with no particular obligation to reality. How did Ted Baxter keep his job as a news anchor in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”? Did Darrin Stevens ever present even a halfway, half-baked idea for a campaign on “Bewitched,” even with Samantha’s help?
We do know that young people are good at social media and that the advertising business is full of bright stars under 30. And we know as well that people who run businesses can make very bad decisions and that people with no perceptible ability find themselves in positions of power.
There has been a good deal of feature and essay writing too about the zoomers in the work world lately — their supposed entitlement, unpunctuality, lack of initiative, lack of social skills, inappropriate dress — and “The Z-Suite,” while not exactly taking sides, does hit these points. (“I have time blindness,” says Elliot, coming in late.) There are reasons, of course, to feel for the poorly paid young in a time when any kind of material stability seems out of reach, and society and the world have never seemed so close to collapse. Self-absorption might just be a defense mechanism.
Spencer Stevenson, Anna Bezahler, center, and Madison Shamoun star as the Gen-Z trio that take over the agency.
(Tubi)
Work, on the other hand, is so important to Monica — her work-life balance is tipped entirely to the former — that she has an exact replica of her office in her apartment. (Doug’s problem is Christmas miniatures; he has apparently wiped himself out collecting them.) While the 20-somethings explore their new playground — armed with a company credit card, Elliot redecorates the office with a churro cart, a ball pit, a slide (“for aesthetic purposes only”) and a llama — Monica, who finds all doors shut to her, is contriving to get back into the game.
Much of the humor comes out of mutual generational disdain. (Thus was it ever.) Each party finds the other incomprehensible — “What is it that people your age like to do, besides correct others?” Monica asks the social media team, while she still has her job — the oldsters mangling the youngsters’ slang, the youngsters’ ignorant of anything they didn’t personally experience, Gen-Z finding Gen-X insensitive, Gen X-finding Gen-Z too sensitive and so on. Though it’s the spine of the show, it’s the most obvious, least interesting aspect, and again, your own age may determine whether you prefer a joke about “geriatric stink” to one about the “ethically made adult sleep sack” Clem wears to a meeting. (“If I get tired, I just lie down.”)
It may just be my own chronological prejudice, but there’s a tiresome quality to the younger characters the show doesn’t quite overcome — although one might also say that this means only that they have played their parts well.
Also at the agency are Evan Marsh as Minnesota Matt, an overeager square not as young as the youngsters or as old as the oldsters, and so reviled by both — it’s a character created mostly to be abused — and Nadine Djoury as HR person Natasha, who worries that the phrase “Oh, God” might “trigger the deists.”
And there’s good guest work from Mark McKinney as an Atelier client who defers to the taste of his 14-year-old daughter, and Rhys Darby as a roguish former colleague now out on his own — his scenes with Graham have a delightful rhythm, and one hopes to see more of him.
But what “The Z-Suite” has going for it most of all is Graham, an actor who, however whimsical the context, comes across as absolutely real and amplifies the realness of the show that surrounds her. She has something of the quiet charisma of a Jean Arthur or Irene Dunne — actors whom all generations should know — and whatever sort of character she’s playing, she’s the person in any scene you’d most want to go over and talk with. As the sudden underdog here — even as a person we’re to take as critically self-involved and going a little crazy — she reads as the protagonist.
With only four episodes available for review, whatever longer game the show is playing — whether lessons will be learned or no lessons will be learned — remains unknown. Perhaps Monica and Kriska will discover that, experience aside, they’re not so different after all. In any case, this being Tubi’s first foray into original scripted content, it’s reasonable to assume that the series won’t end with the season. I’m good with that.