Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Jen Maravegias | TV | June 3, 2026
Into each generation a new show about 20-somethings trying to understand adulthood is born. Except for this generation. I think Mindy Kaling’s new Hulu show, Not Suitable for Work, is probably the sixth or seventh attempt to nail down the angst of Gen Zers entering adulthood, RIP Grand Crew.
Kaling’s most recent show, The Sex Lives of College Girls, ended last year. She’s continuing to reinvent that wheel with Not Suitable for Work. It is essentially Friends, but set in a more ethnically representative New York where people of color exist and are main characters.
Not Suitable for Work is probably more akin to FX’s Adults than anything else though. According to Hulu’s logline, Adults is “A group of twenty-somethings in New York trying to be good people.” Not Suitable for Work is described as “Five work-obsessed 20-somethings strive for professional success in Manhattan.”
These two pictures are exactly the same. The characters in Not Suitable for Work are also struggling to be good people. Are twenty-somethings always inherently struggling with that? Probably! Or they should be. But, and maybe it’s the time we’re living in, the white male characters in Not Suitable for Work are kind of odious, and I’m not sure I have any desire to watch them evolve as humans.
After watching the first three episodes on Hulu, I can tell Josh (La Brea’s Jack Martin), the privileged beneficiary of television industry nepotism, and Davis (Will Angus), that bro you know who talks about women and sex like it’s owed to them, are getting redemption arcs for their bad behavior. The main female characters, Abby (Avantika Vandanapu, Tarot), and AJ (Dickenson’s Ella Hunt) are struggling with workplace romance. Nicholas Duvernay’s (The White Lotus) character, Kel, is the one going through all of the outwardly emotional growing pains of “finding himself.” He dropped out of med school to pursue an acting career without telling his overbearing parents.
In their apartment building, the boys live across the hall from the girls. Davis and AJ work together, and he has a crush on her. It’s complicated by the fact that Josh and AJ slept together in a one-night stand in college. And by AJ’s crush on her ultra finance bro boss, Bill (Running Point and Insecure’s Jay Ellis.)
Josh is trying to break into broadcast journalism (which seems weird for 2026) by stealing the PA job at his father’s network from a well-deserving intern. Abby is toiling for a celebrity stylist (Constance Wu) and trying not to fall in love with one of their clients (The Gilded Age’s Harry Richardson).
They’re all trying to be amazing at their jobs and amazing at life! Of course, they fail at things. But it’s funny! I guess? I don’t think this show is doing for Gen Z what its members would like it to. These characters are terrible representatives of the generation, not unlike the way the characters on Friends were a terrible representation of Gen X. Blind to their insufferable privilege until they’re confronted by it. And then they perform one act of selflessness, and they are reformed in the eyes of everyone around them. Josh crashes a work outing he wasn’t invited to, hoping he can charm his reluctant coworkers into liking him. But he ends up basically bribing people to like him. That doesn’t make him a good person. It makes him suspect.
It’s 2026; shouldn’t we have evolved beyond this pretense by now? Shouldn’t our sense of humor have moved on by now? Mindy Kaling is 46 years old; shouldn’t she have moved on by now? Or is she going to keep writing broad comedy for the generation behind her until her kids tell her to knock it off?
My free idea for Mindy is that she should Not Suitable for Work’s recurring actors: Victor Garber, Greg Germann, Judy Gold, Bhavesh Patel, Ego Nwodim, Constance Wu, and Jay Ellis, and write them a workplace comedy about having to deal with the main characters from this show. It would do gangbusters. You’re welcome.
I don’t hate Not Suitable for Work as much as I hated Velma. It’s not that offensively bad. But it’s not making any must-see lists either. I don’t begrudge Kaling her flowers for being a very talented writer when she wants to be. But Not Suitable for Work is mired in worn-out tropes and clichéd characters.
For a more interesting take on young people scrapping to get by in New York, Survival of the Thickest returns to Netflix for its final season on July 2nd.
The first three episodes of Not Suitable for Work are available on Hulu, with new episodes dropping on Tuesdays for the rest of June.
