I recently sung the praises of Larry David’s 23-year-old daughter Cazzie David in our I Like This Bitch’s Life series, the result of hours spent creeping through her perfectly curated Instagram feed. But as it turns out, Cazzie is just as well versed in the intricacies of insta-envy and online image maintenance as her stalkers (ahem) are, and her new comedy web series Eighty-Sixed is all about how social media amplifies these distinctly millennial concerns (you can watch the first four short episodes on YouTube now).
Cazzie plays Remi, an anxious, self-absorbed misanthrope with a penchant for eye-rolls and wry put-downs, self-medicating her recent breakup with google searches (“How is Demi Moore doing post Ashton Kutcher?” she types feverishly, swaddled in her duvet cover. “How is Stacy Keibler doing?”). The first four episodes see Remi committing the sort of awkward transgressions of social etiquette that might have appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm if Larry had been young in the age of Snapchat and Tinder. In one episode, she tries to force her friends to upload a photo of her at a party (“If I upload it, it looks desperate and like I want him to know I’m going out”) but is stymied because her best friend’s Instagram is “only food pics.” Later, she gets into an altercation with another party guest after unplugging his iPhone to put on her own music (to try and kill the vibe so her friends will want to leave).
Much like Larry, Cazzie displays an obstinate refusal to modulate her behavior in response to the people around her (in one instance, continuing to silently enjoy her ice-cream cone when a friend mentions her mother has a tumor), and frequently coins new neologisms to articulate her unique neuroses, from “city pants” (pants you should never wear to sit on someone else’s bed) to “solidarity cones” (because when your friend goes through a breakup and orders an ice-cream cone, it’s rude to order a cup).
Genetic inheritance aside, it’s easy to imagine HBO execs’ ears pricking up at Cazzie David’s name as they look to fill the Hannah Horvath–shaped void in viewers’ hearts. Her brittle, deadpan charisma is innately watchable, and there are few full-length shows successfully mining the complex norms and pressures of social-media etiquette through a comedic lens. “There are a lot of hashtag and selfie jokes, but not a lot of satirizing the humiliation and obsession behind it in a realistic way,” David told Complex about her desire to provide a realistic depiction of how her peers use social media. “It’s so funny how social media was just this fun thing and now it’s this monster that consumes so many millennial lives. You know every person under 30 was anxious this weekend that they weren’t going to get a good Coachella Instagram.” (I’m sure hers would have been great, though).
Watch the first episode below: