Annie’s parents (comic aces Julia Sweeney and Daniel Stern) are supportive but also enduring her father’s cancer treatments in a storyline that, if you’re familiar with West’s work, carries dire implications.
Depicting the emotional toll of living as part of another marginalized population, the moment carries the emotional impact of a coming out scene.īut this isn’t to say that “Shrill” is a single issue show. “You don’t think the whole world isn’t constantly telling me that I’m a fat piece of who doesn’t try hard?” she asks later in a powerful turn from Bryant. The journey builds to a moving fourth episode (written by essayist Samantha Irby) where Annie reaches a catharsis between the uplift of experiencing a body-positive, all-female pool party before weathering casually cruel comments about her body from her boss at a work event. In the first episode, Annie winds up needing an abortion, which doesn’t arrive as a blithely considered decision, but it’s ultimately an empowering one as the show sidesteps the usual swirl of shame that accompanies its usual televised depictions. Television has tentatively begun to better reckon with the experience of different body types - AMC’s anarchic and recently canceled “Dietland,” ABC’s “Downward Dog” (also canceled) and the bare provocations of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” come to mind - but the universal journey toward self-acceptance has never been drawn as sharply as it has been in “Shrill.”īryant, who showed a facility with working outside comedy in Louis CK’s stagey 2016 melodrama “Horace & Pete,” is wonderful here, at first weathering the casual fat-shaming in her day-to-day from her hard-driving editor Gabe (a gleefully sneering John Cameron Mitchell) and an oafish hook-up named Ryan (Luka Jones), who may be a contender for something more.īut as the series goes on, Annie learns to take ownership of her body.
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