“No one loves you like your mom. And no one hurts you like your mom.” This is the ultimate realization that comes at the end of Amy Schumer’s latest series, Life & Beth. And, although the title is patently uninspired, it’s arguably the best thing Schumer has offered in her entire career. Quite possibly because it isn’t making such a conscious effort to “be funny.” Instead, Schumer tries her hand at a wryer wit and a more blatant interspersal of drama.
With the first episode, “The Sign” (yes, named in honor of Ace of Base), we’re briefly made to believe it’s going to be more garden-variety depictions of millennial mediocrity and existential dread. For the first scene starts out with a series of flashbacks from Beth’s (Schumer) adolescence before we see present-day Beth staring into the camera and soothing, “It’s so easy. Effortless. People trust you. And everything that led you to this moment. Your instincts, your taste—the taste—because it tastes good.” At this point, she could be talking about anything, until the camera pans out to reveal two people in front of her that she’s drinking wine with. She then says, “I mean this wine is just so drinkable, right?” It’s in this moment that we get our first glimpse of Beth’s middling profession: wine rep. And it’s also in this scene that we’re made aware just how much this job—like many—relies on pretending to give a shit. On being a “people person.” Kowtowing to egos by listening to faux braggadocious stories all in the name of making a living.
Beth, like many who are “barreling toward forty” (as she puts it), has accepted this fate. Mostly. Yet some part of her—the teen girl inside, if you will—can’t help but keep thinking she was made for something beyond this. Because yes, believe it or not, there’s more to “success” than merely moving to New York City and just living there. Which might be “enough” for other Long Islanders, but not for Beth.
Perhaps that’s why Schumer is calculated in her decision to play M.I.A.’s “Y.A.L.A.” after the opening scene—a song that rebuts the concept of Y.O.L.O. (you only live once) via the Hindu philosophy: you always live again. Even in the same life, if you play your cards correctly. This is part of why the song explores the notion of how “doing the same shit” “again and again and again” feeds into the concept of history repeating through reincarnation (and the supposed according karma that comes with it). But Beth is starting to see that repeating her old patterns—ones established firmly in her youth—is the very source of all her agony.
In Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it’s said that the illusion of being an “adult” is masked by one’s exterior body. But on the inside, they’re still just the same child that they always were. This is the exact case with Beth, who can see flashes of her past in the present based on particular triggers.
As we delve deeper into an average “day in the life,” we see Beth enter her quintessentially depressing Midtown office where a motivational poster reads: “Love the Wine You’re With” (along with a map of the “Jersey Shore Wine Region”). It’s a telling mantra that plays up the impression we’ve already gotten of just how much Beth has settled in her life. Even with a “New York eight” like Matt (Kevin Kane), her boyfriend (who she chooses to call “partner” purely because she feels too old for the word “boyfriend”) of six years. The one that’s much too friendly with her mother, Jane (Laura Benanti). Jane, likewise, declares she would overtly favor Matt in any breakup scenario. This said to Beth when she joins her mother on a shopping excursion—far more of an attempt at bonding than Beth’s younger sister, Ann (Susannah Poole), would ever deign to do. She’s not nearly as forgiving for their childhood traumas.
In the dressing room, Jane is unmoved by Beth’s announcement that she’s up for a big promotion, instead countering, “I always thought you would do something… bigger.” Beth questions, “Bigger?” Jane adds, “I mean like… more special. Like volleyball.” A sport that comes up quite a lot after this moment, and will likely never be as prominent in any other pop cultural moment besides She’s All That… or Top Gun. It’s also in this shopping scene that we get an understanding of Jane’s predisposition to sleeping with married men as a means to placate her highly histrionic nature. It’s a character trait that will illuminate so much about Beth’s current mental state as we look further into her past throughout the series.
Including her lack of certainty about much of anything, least of all her blasé job. A prime example being when she says hesitantly, “I think I’m interested” of a job offer that provides “100K a year, still no health insurance.” No wonder she seeks comfort in alcohol and carbs. Indeed, pasta is a major point of interest in the show, not only via the prominently-displayed box of Barilla in Ann’s kitchen, but also in Beth’s mention of it to her doctor as a key component of her “diet.”
The mundanity of her middle-class (by New York standards) existence is further manifested in her often asking with only mild interest, “Do you wanna have sex?” Matt usually declines, a telling sign of how little he’s attracted to her. That this appears to be, more than anything, a “domestic partnership” of convenience. But that type of dynamic is no longer convenient for Beth, especially after a wake-up call that occurs by the end of the first episode.
At a karaoke “meeting” with a client called The Glaser Group, Beth gets a call from Ann, informing her that their mother died in a car accident. As Ann explains it, “She was in a cab, and it was chasing yellow lights or something, and, I don’t know…they got hit.” Ferried to the stage in a daze after this news, Beth gets up to sing “The Sign” with half-hearted enthusiasm before finally leaving in the middle of the song. That she would even bother trying to “people please” by still trying to sing it is yet another testament to the nature of her character. Along with another brief flash into Beth’s past as she’s playing volleyball, with only her mother and her sister watching from the stands. Her absentee, alcoholic father, Leonard (Michael Rapaport), is predictably late.
In the second episode, “We’re Grieving,” Beth deals with going to Long Island for her mother’s funeral, which she feels isn’t adequate enough. Least of all when Matt uses the “reception” (at a bar) as a chance to propose and make it all about him. Disgusted by everything about her life, Beth flees the scene and decides to stay on Long Island for a bit. It’s there, by the third episode, that she encounters the “groundskeeper,” of sorts at a vineyard, John (Michael Cera). He immediately points out that she says sorry a lot before finally agreeing to give her the tour she was promised by Gerald (Jon Glaser). The two strike up a rapport despite John’s bizarre social skills (in keeping with the type of character that made Cera famous, George Michael Bluth), yet just when Beth starts to feel truly comfortable, he cuts the tour short. This leads back into a flashback pertaining to Beth’s first notable slight and rejection from a boy in junior high named Bobby. Beth finds out that he’s actually been “messing around” with another girl named Rose, who he deems more suitable to take to the dance. Just another instance that signaled to her that she wasn’t “worth enough.” Least of all to the boys she liked.
Her “bad luck” with the opposite sex escalates by episode four, “Pancakes,” the title of which turns out to be the nickname guys give to her apparently oversized nipples. Seeing their reaction to her breasts, the sadness that overtakes Beth is clear, but she plays it off like everything’s fine, once again saying “sorry” for flashing them, even though that’s what she was instructed to do with her friends in exchange for beer. Alas, she was only supposed to show them some bra action, not her tits. And yet, by the conclusion of “Pancakes,” Beth has finally come to a kind of resolution about ceasing to treat herself the way she’s allowed so many men to in the past. Including Travis (Jonathan Groff), the hot but dumb guy she goes on a date with despite her mounting attraction to John. It’s Travis who goes too far in his debasement of Beth by insisting that she takes the Plan B pill in front of him after being the one to fuck up with the condom.
After mocking him relentlessly and then saying “fuck you” as she swallows the pill, she walks home and cathartically flashes a pair of garbagemen her “pancakes” in a moment of proud triumph. One that’s quickly taken away when her night segues into early morning in the following episode, “Fair,” and she has to make good on her promise to John to help him with his ass-crack-of-dawn farm work that she only agreed to do because his actual girlfriend, Katie (the flaccid Cazzie David), would never. And since she seems to be all about proving how great she and John would be together, this is the comeuppance Beth gets for attempting to bend over backwards in the hope of actually doing that in his bed. To her delight, however, showing up helps her cause later when she’s at the fair, and the two find themselves “thrown together” again by Fate…or something. Unfortunately, the vibe is ruined when Beth sees her old/ex-best friend, Liz (Rachel Feinstein), whose son was previously terrorizing Beth.
Maybe the emotional torment of seeing Liz (the backstory on their falling out comes later) is what leads her to surrender to boning John on the lawn of some neighbor who turns out to be home, even though John assures Liz that he’s out of town. This causes a flare-up of trust issues with Beth, who freaks out on John before realizing she has to rely on him to literally get out of the woods. The next morning takes place in episode six, “Boat,” when he still invites her over, with Beth’s sister, Ann, joining in and accusing her of being just like their mother for her homewrecking predilection. But at least John isn’t actually married to Katie and, in fact, doesn’t even really seem to like or have that much in common with her.
Despite the boon to her ego when he says he broke up with Katie, Beth isn’t free of the darkness yet, as the activity for the day is going out on John’s boat. Here, again, past trauma infects the present as Beth is reminded of her boating accident as a teenager, caused by her father’s drunkenness. The very accident that made her stop playing volleyball. This time around, however, John is the one who incurs an injury when Ann catches a fish and he ends up getting the hook caught in his finger. Being that they’re on shrooms, the way in which to handle this feels much more daunting than it should. By the time they manage to get to the hospital for the very routine procedure, it’s been made clearer than ever that John and Liz could not be more different. Not just in their backgrounds, but their views on and approaches to life.
We get even more insight into Beth’s fraught upbringing in episode seven, aptly called “Leonard.” In addition to seeing her father’s shysty ways of the past, we also get to see how he’s fared in the present, which isn’t too great considering he’s homeless and spends his days in Washington Square Park (and yes, this does evoke a certain moral question in terms of why Beth and Ann would allow this to stand). Which is where Beth finds him to ask if he’s interested in helping her pull one of his usual gambits on some clients of hers. This being a result of Matt revealing himself to be something of a drug addict, which once more shows Beth that her past is bleeding all over her present in every way, including the type of men she attracts. Still, she takes some responsibility for “driving” Matt to it by remarking, “I just haven’t been able to feel anything for a long time, okay? I can’t.” This is part of what leads her to not only take over wining and dining Matt’s clients that night while he gets through his altered state, but also what prompts her to quit after landing her company an exclusive deal with them. For it is Leonard who also reminds her that sales was never her passion. And, like so many who found themselves a part of the Great Resignation, Beth suddenly apprehends that she has a choice about what she wants to do with her life. With her time. And she decides to do that as episode eight, “Homegoing,” commences. Highlighting once more the divergent personalities of John and Beth, the former is disgusted with her selling techniques at the farmer’s market as she proceeds to lie about products and mark up their prices.
As for John’s social awkwardness, it becomes undeniably noticeable during the homegoing service for her friend Maya’s (Yamaneika Saunders) grandfather, during which John texts flagrantly, talks loudly and keeps trying to leave the whole time because it’s going to rain and he wants to check on his precious boat. By the end of it, Beth is so embarrassed and irritated that she finally has to express her anger at the dock. But she also notes, “I’m not even mad at you, I’m mad at myself. It’s not how someone treats you, it’s how you allow yourself to be treated.”
And how she’s allowed herself to be treated is something she has the most time yet to reflect upon while getting an MRI (in the episode of the same name) for what has now become some unignorable back pain that “DJ Trev” (Phil Wang), the technician filling in for the real doctor, believes is likely from her teenage boating accident. As he proceeds to fill her ear canal with the soothing sounds of Khia’s “My Neck, My Back,” Beth flashes back to being in chem with Liz as they discuss an upcoming getaway together at Liz’s “summer house.” That their parents will drive them to, and Beth’s mom will stay at as well.
This is the memory wherein Beth can’t avoid how much her mother was the root cause of so much of her adolescent agony. The kind that formed her defensive, self-loathing predilections for decades to come. So yes, that’s why, at the “redo” of her mother’s funeral, she says, “No one loves you like your mom. And no one hurts you like your mom.” Including when your mom is the main source of your trichotillomania, the hair-pulling compulsion Schumer had in real life. In Beth’s case, perhaps doing it was also a subconscious retaliative response to her mother telling her, “I love when you wear your hair like that. If you put in just a little bit of effort, you’re such a pretty girl.” Well, fuck that, Beth seems to say when she catches Jane seducing Liz’s dad without any shame at what should have been a relaxing mini-break, pulling her hair without any awareness of it as she ushers Liz back to the water so she doesn’t have to encounter the painful sight. Earlier, in “Boat,” Beth had mentioned being made fun of by the kids at school for her hair, but what she failed to say specifically was that it was her wig they snickered at. For eventually, she had to start putting one on after creating a bald spot on her head from so much pulling.
By the end of the series, Beth fathoms that trauma is cyclical. It gets created in one generation and passed down to the next in new and more subversive ways, and Beth has to make peace with the fact that her mother, too, “was a woman, and a little girl before that, with her own heartbreaks.” Ones that made her the wounded person she was, inflicting new and different wounds on her own children. Having finally accepted that, a flourish at the end of her tribute to her mother is the sight of her and her sister as little girls running down the hill. As though free at last from being part of Beth’s more harrowing memories.
