Why Lady Dynamite only feels like a simulacrum of a Maria Bamford show

If you're a fan of Maria Bamford, there's something just slightly off about her Netflix show. And the reason is clear: It's not really her show.

Lady Dynamite, the Maria Bamford vehicle co-created by South Park's Pam Grady and Arrested Development's Mitch Hurwitz, is back for a second season on Friday. The surreal Netflix show (which boasts talking animals and multiple timelines, each with its own color palette) spent its first season on material familiar to Bamford fans: It covered the comedian's struggles with mental health, her past with her parents, and a psychiatric breakdown similar to one Bamford really experienced in 2011. The show vividly rendered Bamford's devolving mental health in ways viewers experienced too: for instance, several characters, played by different actors, were named "Karen Grisham" for no reason except that the world is needlessly confusing. And her struggle to simulate normalcy led her to develop an alternate "persona," complete with a plummy accent, that her boyfriends preferred over the real deal.

Based on the three episodes made available to critics, the second season is just as zany (if quite a bit happier). But it crystallized for me why the show has, from the start, felt more like a simulacrum of Bamford's comedy than Bamford's comedy itself. Yes, this is yet another semi-autobiographical show about a beloved comedian. But if you're a slightly obsessive fan of Bamford's (as I am), there's something just slightly off about it. The material is right, but the rhythms and choices sometimes don't feel like her.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.