‘The Z-Suite’ Review: Lauren Graham Gets Stranded in Tubi’s Tiresome Generation Gap Comedy

Millennials, the generational punching bag of TV’s past decade, are the big winners in Tubi’s new original comedy The Z-Suite.

Over the four episodes sent to critics, the M-word is scarcely mentioned and its members basically invisible — which is something of a best-case scenario from a series that exhibits pervasive contempt for all of its characters.

A drably facile workplace sitcom in which Gen Xers are from Mars, Gen Zers are from a different part of Mars and basically nobody is from Earth because everybody is written like a laugh-free stereotypical TV eccentric, The Z-Suite strands several beloved television stars — Lauren Graham and Mark McKinney in particular — and slows the momentum Tubi built last year with acquisitions/co-productions like Big Mood and Boarders.

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Set at a prestigious “ad agency” in “New York City” (nothing in The Z-Suite is authentic enough to warrant the removal of those quotation marks) the series stars Graham as the firm’s leader, a decorated and tightly wound executive assisted by Doug (Nico Santos), who is gay and likes Christmas miniatures and has no tertiary characteristics.

Graham’s Monica has been at the top of the game for a while, but she’s losing her connection to the younger demographic, as illustrated by how dismissive she is toward the agency’s junior staffers — including social media manager Kriska (Madison Shamoun) and her besties Clem (Anna Bezahler) and Elliot (Spencer Stevenson), who work in capacities that are unspecified, perhaps because they lack evident skills.

The disregard is entirely justified. The Gen Z staffers are entitled, easily distracted, never come into the office and talk like somebody read a “Learn Gen Z Slang” explainer five years ago. (I thought repeatedly of an AM radio commercial for Adopt US Kids in which grown-ups are taught “current” teen lingo like “totes” and “on fleek.” The ad is generally well-meaning, but takes a bit of my soul each time I hear it.)

The disregard is reciprocated, and equally justified in the other direction. Monica and Doug are completely out of touch with young people and make fun of them using stereotypes identical to the ones Boomer bosses applied to Gen X workers 30 years ago and Gen X bosses applied to millennials 10 years ago. Time may or may not be a flat circle, but recirculation of clichés absolutely is.

Anyway, Monica and Doug’s big new campaign is a disaster, so the agency’s owner fires the pair and puts the Gen Z team in charge for … reasons. You either accept that this is a thing that might make sense through sitcom logic or you don’t, because the narrative can’t find any way to make it plausible on even the most basic level. Despite having no qualifications, these 20somethings are assigned to a Super Bowl spot for a client (McKinney) with a demanding Gen Z daughter.

My instinct when I heard the basic premise was that The Z-Suite was going to be about Gen X executives figuring out how to deal with upstart Gen Z colleagues. That would have been somewhat predictable, but I didn’t anticipate that the reason this isn’t that show is because nobody here is capable of learning anything from anybody, and nobody is worthy of being learned from.

Instead, after the pilot, the comedy falls into a structure in which the Gen Z characters are being morons in their office environment, and the Gen X characters are entirely separately being morons while trying to regain employment. Rather than an A-story and various secondary plotlines, each episode of The Z-Suite features a pair of disconnected A-stories with no momentum to speak of.

Especially in the first two half-hours, the comedy is a race to the bottom regarding which character is going to be the most annoying. It’s a complicated competition since no one in The Z-Suite has many positive attributes. Nobody is smart. Nobody has ingenuity. Nobody is funny. Nobody is kind.

For a while, the “advantage” in this contest goes to Stevenson’s Elliot, who is so oblivious to the world around him that he literally smashes into glass doors in a way that isn’t particularly amusing. It’s a crown that Evan Marsh’s “Minnesota Matt,” a socially inept walking HR violation with nothing to explain his ongoing employment, rushes in to grab. Sadly, Graham’s Monica is a real early contender as well. She’s constantly referring to her various successes, without anybody figuring out how to write a character who sounds capable of having had previous successes.

Honestly, the “most annoying” title could go to almost anybody with the possible exception of Dani Kind’s Annabelle, an executive assistant who doubles as the only person to realize that everybody else is horrible.

So the series is populated by badly conceived characters played by actors who have clearly been directed to perform at irritating volume, and every one of its sets look cheap and underpopulated. But I’m a generous sort, and The Z-Suite isn’t a total disaster.

There is some small improvement after the first two installments, especially when it comes to Monica. She finds something resembling a personality and has multiple brief monologues that, while not at all funny, give the impression of emanating from a human being. Stevenson’s Elliot remains oblivious, but stops walking into walls. Bezahler’s Clem remains a loosely adhering buzzword delivery system, but you stop wondering how he manages to successfully get out of bed each morning. Richard Waugh, who plays Office Grumpy Old Guy Bill, gave a line-reading that I chuckled at, though I no longer remember what it was.

I still wonder how much of the show could have been fixed if Kriska, named only so that old people can be confused by her name because Gen Z people have silly names, doncha know, had any kind of voice at all. The flatness that isn’t Shamoun’s fault, exactly.

I’d add that as little as The Z-Suite understands about advertising or human beings, it makes one fairly astute observation. This may be the first sitcom of the post-WFH era to recognize that if companies are forcing people to return to offices regularly after nearly five years of remote or hybrid labor, those employees may not have a concrete grasp of the social contract of professional behavior. A show that could capture that burgeoning anarchy with 75 percent fewer clichés could really be onto something.

As for this series, its most relatable aspect is that if this were my workplace, I wouldn’t want to go to there either.