Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Feel Good’ On Netflix, Where Mae Martin Is A Struggling Stand-Up With A New Relationship And Addiction Issues

It feels like we’re in a golden age of confessional comedies from members of the LGBTQIA+ community, which are either mostly fictional (Everything’s Gonna Be Okay) or semi-autobiographical (Special, Work In Progress). Mae Martin’s new series, Feel Good, is a little different in that Martin, a Canadian stand-up plying her trade in London, is trying to figure out if her new relationship is real or an addiction. Read on for more…

FEEL GOOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see Mae Martin, backpack firmly on her back, walking to her gig at a comedy club.

The Gist: Mae (Mae Martin) is a struggling stand-up comedian in London, where she moved from Canada a few years ago. One night she goes to one of her regular clubs to do a set and her friend Nick (Tobi Bamtefa) tells her that a woman in the front row has been to her last three shows and has been the only one to laugh at all her jokes.

Mae is nervous to introduce herself to this woman, but that gets taken care of when the woman, Georgina (Charlotte Ritchie) buys her a drink. This is after George (her nickname) endures a boring conversation with a boring co-worker of her friend Binky (Ophelia Lovibond), who’s trying to set her up.

Mae and George have an awkward “first date” in the club that night, and all indications are good when Mae waves off a lift home from Nick, at whose house she’s couch-surfing. Despite not being attracted to a woman before, George jumps right in, and the two of them kiss and have sex that first night.

We then see a montage of their relationship accelerating from early dates to domestic bliss within weeks. The montage ends with Mae moving in, a mere three months after the two of them met. Mae is really into the relationship, saying that George is the most beautiful woman she’s ever been with and calling her things like “Mary Poppins” and “Princess Diana.” George loves Mae but wonders a bit about Mae’s intensity. George has her own issues: As much as she loves Mae, she isn’t ready to introduce her to her friends, especially the haughty Binky.

On move-in day, Mae has a Skype call with her mother Linda (Lisa Kudrow) and father Malcolm (Adrian Lukis), and when Linda blurts out a question about whether Mae has found an NA meeting, George overhears it. She’s obviously alarmed that Mae hasn’t mentioned that she’s an addict during their time together. She implores Mae to find an NA meeting, even though Mae herself thinks she doesn’t need it, as her addiction issues were a long time ago. What Mae isn’t realizing, though, is that she’s becoming addicted to something else — George.

When she goes to a meeting, she’s alarmed that there is no coffee, just deviled eggs, and she walks out. A woman named Maggie (Sophie Thompson) follows her out and tells her she has no use for those meetings, either. They go to a cafe and talk; Maggie talks fast and explains that she “has no time for drugs,” basically doing everything she can to keep herself sober. She seems manic, but what she’s doing is distracting herself. She even tries to teach the barista at the cafe how to pull a proper cup of espresso.

Now Maggie is Mae’s “sponsor,” despite the fact that Mae isn’t going to meetings. How will this help her relationship with George?

Our Take: Feel Good is a semi-sorta-kinda autobiographical comedy, created by Martin along with Joe Hampson. It’s designed to be an intimate portrait of a struggling comedian trying to deal with her addiction issues while negotiating a new relationship. We’ve seen a similar theme with Abby McEnany’s fantastic Showtime series Work In Progress, but while McEnany was dealing with her identity and depression while exploring a relationship with a trans man, Mae Martin’s issues have more to do with addiction, both to drugs and to other things.

That’s likely why Mae seems nothing but intense in the first episode. She’s so into her relationship with George that she’s neglected to get to know George well or even tell her about her addiction issues. It’s a wonder why George has decided to stay in it, given all the red flags Mae has put up. But knowing that Mae’s world will expand a bit, as she and Maggie continue going in and out of NA meetings, and Maggie deals with her estranged daughter Lava (Ritu Arya). And she’s going to struggle to figure out how to have a real relationship with George that feels less like infatuation and more like two people in love.

The last thing I mentioned will be helped along by the chemistry Martin and Ritchie have; in the first episode, it feels like it strikes the right tone, with Ritchie being committed to Mae but still feeling her way around her first same-sex relationship. Mae, on the other hand, has that slightly manic feel of someone who has substituted one addiction for another, more harmful one. Once she spends time with Maggie she may realize the error of her ways and calm down, considering Maggie makes Mae look zen by comparison. The writing for the first episode was smart enough for me to think that Martin and Hampson will figure this out along the way.

Sex and Skin: Not much, aside from Mae and George in bed together.

Parting Shot: After spilling her guts to George, Mae tries to get George to tell her about her friends, to which George replies, “Why don’t you go down on me?” Then, in bed, Mae gets a ton of texts from Maggie, that say things like “FUCK MEETINGS!”. She then tries to go to sleep, but she likely won’t.

Sleeper Star: Phil Burgers plays Phil, George’s flatmate that is out of the fat, bearded lazy roommate school we’ve seen in other comedies of late. He’s an American actor, and the idea is that George looks to him for advice as her relationship with Mae continues, despite the fact that they’ve barely spoken to each other since he moved in. He might be a fun character who takes the perspective of the viewer, or he might be the cliche “fat dumb roommate.” It could go either way at this point.

Most Pilot-y Line: We adore Lisa Kudrow, but not sure why she’s putting on a Jewish grandmother-esque accent for Linda. Is she trying to sound Canadian?

Our Call: STREAM IT. As Mae figures out how to better deal with her addiction issues, Feel Good will get better and better, which is why we’re looking forward to seeing the rest of the first season, despite a bit of a flat first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Feel Good On Netflix