Life and Beth

Amy Schumer's new Hulu series 'Life & Beth' follows a woman in her 30s as she navigates understanding her past, present, and future.

This article, "who is Beth," contains spoilers regarding Hulu's Life & Beth season 1. Read the review of Season 1. Amy Schumer plays Beth. An almost.

When she finally reconnects with Liz, she recommends that she let go of all the bad things her mother put her through. Finally, she throws another funeral reception so she can have one that her mother deserves. The experience makes her want to make better life decisions. Beth then meets John (played by Michael Cera), a farmer with a refreshing way about him. Beth also has a mother, Jane, and has a complicated relationship. It’s a pivotal role for the show and potentially for Schumer’s career.

A review of 'Life & Beth,' a new Hulu comedy series created by and starring Amy Schumer as a woman who returns home following the death of her mother (Laura ...

This is hardly a flaw in Life & Beth; finding love by way of a rural-themed return to preindustrialized paradise is a classic feature of that Finding Yourself by Going Home romance genre. We can only dream that this kicks off a wave of prestige streaming adaptations of other familiar romance stories that will be as robust and well funded as the endless parade of anti-hero darkness. The other notable element of Life & Beth is its relationship with Schumer’s own life and the way that autofiction and a specific conceit of authenticity color Beth’s story. In Life & Beth, Schumer’s life is not Beth’s life, but there are obvious parallels, most especially in Cera’s character, John. Although neither Beth nor John give it a name, John is written with qualities that echo Schumer’s real-life husband, Chris, a chef who grew up on a Martha’s Vineyard farm and who is on the autism spectrum. Likewise, we watch Beth laugh happily while she dunks a bunch of Swiss chard into a galvanized tub of water, and we know that this is what an authentic experience looks like. Beth meets someone who does not fit into her own vision of a guy she’d like to be with, a taciturn farmer played by Michael Cera, and then, inevitably, they are drawn to each other.

Amy Schumer is reclaiming the spotlight. The rare female comedian to land on Hollywood's A-list, she dominated the mid-2010s with the groundbreaking sketch ...

Back in her childhood home, she dips into diaries that reveal a kid marinating in the shame of her parents’ divorce, the family’s money problems, and her own developing body. A lot of the time, they’re right. Too often in the age of content churn, series go into production with undercooked premises and scripts crying out for another—if not a first—round of revisions. Beth’s family is no help: her mom (Laura Benanti) has no boundaries; her dad (Michael Rapaport) is, for all practical purposes, out of the picture; and she only calls her angry younger sister, Ann (Susannah Flood), when she wants to complain about them. It takes an unanticipated tragedy for Beth to stop sleepwalking and start reconsidering who she is and what she wants out of life. To her high school friends in Long Island, who refer to “the city” in tones of hushed reverence, this is what success looks like.

Hulu's 'Life & Beth,' starring Amy Schumer and Michael Cera, is a show in three acts.

It takes too long for “Life & Beth” to nudge its lead into the next phase of her life that actually drives the show. That doesn’t need to be the case for every episode; in fact, it would be unbelievable if Beth and John got along that well, anyway. His forthright, abbreviated way of talking immediately clashes with the winding, self-deprecating style Schumer’s Beth adopts, but in a way that somehow complements it. The second act sends her to her hometown on Long Island, where she meets and falls for John (Michael Cera), a vineyard farmer whose lifestyle and blunt charm shows her the possibility of a different kind of life. Eye-catching casting choices buttress Beth’s story, including 42 year-old Laura Benanti as Beth’s mother (which makes way more sense in flashbacks than in the present day), a surprisingly brittle Michael Rappaport as Schumer’s semi-grifter father, and even David Byrne as her doddering doctor. The final act, unfolding over the season’s last two episodes, has Beth confront her own mortality and dive deeper into the childhood that made her want to get so far away from Long Island in the first place.

Jonathan Groff, the Broadway, film and TV actor who's also a Lancaster County native, appears in the new Hulu series "Life & Beth," starring actor, ...

The Hulu show sees the comic and actress put her more criticized self in the past.

Regardless, Life and Beth shows that Amy Schumer isn’t letting that narrative define her — and the more intentional she is in that journey, the better. Beth is fleshed out in all of her own vulnerability and nuance, and with her own set of unlikable and likable qualities. And for all of Schumer’s growth, there is still room for improvement: there is an effort to include more voices besides her own, but as soon as actors like Yamaneika Saunders, Susannah Flood, and Lavar Walker provide scenes with the levity and texture they’re capable of, the story moves back to the show’s namesake. By letting Beth draw from Amy’s less known experiences instead of relying on the brand she’s been associated with, we finally get to see the comic and actress take her time to make a character feel real. As her star rose, her work became more and more insular and self-referential, until we got to the self-absorbed fever pitch of 2015’s Trainwreck and her standup specials Live from the Apollo and The Leather Special, which came out around the same time. Hulu’s Life and Beth, a mumblecore-esque show, is perhaps Schumer at both her most self-aware, and most endearing — a worthy comeback just ahead of her Oscar-hosting gig later this month.

With Hulu's "Life & Beth," Amy Schumer wanted to examine her teens, "when these big moments happen for you that can traumatize you or change you..."

"And we wanted him there to make sure that we were making the farming look accurate." Similarly, Cera says Beth is attracted to John's tendency to be "very direct and honest." At the time, "you just keep movin’, keep growing up, and you know the things that happened to you," she says. There is no mention of John having autism in "Life & Beth," but Schumer says "he's most likely on the spectrum." And telling Beth, "If you put in just a little bit of effort, you are such a pretty girl." "A lot about me personally was reflected, but then I took liberties with the other characters," she says.

Read TVLine's recap of Hulu's 'Life & Beth' series premiere, then grade the new Amy Schumer comedy!

At least Matt is kind of sweet when Beth returns home and finds that he ordered her Sour Patch Kids since their bodega doesn’t sell them anymore. Mom requests a special coffee order in lieu of alcohol from the sales clerk (Abbott Elementary scene-stealer Janelle James in a guest role!), before asking the other woman where she’s from (and Queens is not the answer she was anticipating). Then mom lays into Beth, questioning her life choices and her job. Despite that, Beth is being considered for a promotion to East Coast Sales Manager, which comes with a $100,000 salary, no health insurance (!) and three days in Naples… Florida.