Stream It Or Skip It: ‘How To Die Alone’ On Hulu, A Comedy About A Woman Who Embraces Life After Almost Dying

A pretty well-worn comedy genre of late involves a woman in her late 20s to mid 30s, usually lamenting a relationship gone wrong, who wonders what in the hell the rest of her life is going to be like. This genre definitely depends on the charm of the main character, but also it helps that the main character is surrounded by characters that can carry parts of the story, too. A new comedy streaming on Hulu , created by Natasha Rothwell, has those elements.

‘How to Die Alone’s Natasha Rothwell Teases Her Return To ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3: “Mike White Blew My Mind”

Opening Shot: “Why do I think some people in New York die alone? I think it’s the unrealistic standards that people have,” says a man in a “man on the street”-style interview.

Natasha Rothwell Wants ‘How To Die Alone’ Fans to Fight Over Who Should Be With Mel: Alex or Terrance?

The Gist: Melissa (Natasha Rothwell) works at JFK airport, driving people through the terminal where she works in the golf cart. She knows a lot about the destinations where people are flying to, and gives advice. But she’s afraid to fly.

It’s also her 35th birthday, and is in a bad way. She got an elaborate evite to the destination wedding of her ex-boyfriend Alex (Jocko Sims), who also works at the airport. Her best friend Rory (Conrad Ricamora) tries to make her feel better by saying they’ll slay it at the wedding, but get distraction when someone on their radios says that Lizzo is in the terminal.

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After causing some mayhem speeding over to the gate where the singer supposedly is, Mel takes a smoke break on the tarmac, complaining to her co-worker Terrance (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) about how broke, fat, single and directionless she is. He tells her to bust right through her fears and travel like she wants to.

After Rory blows off their after-work plans to sleep with a frequent traveler he finally got to talk to (and lying about it to her), Mel decides to spend money she doesn’t have at her “happy place”, an IKEA-style store. She puts together an armoire while eating Crab Rangoon and battling the rat that has taken up residence in her apartment. Then the armoire falls on her.

She wakes up in the hospital, finding out she died for three minutes after choking on a dumpling after getting pancaked by the armoire. She’s being discharged, but she can’t find anyone to come pick her up. Mel wonders just what other crap can happen on her birthday when she starts talking to the woman in the next bed. She tells Mel how much better life was when she stopped being afraid of everything and embraced what she wanted to do. Mel finds hope in that… until the woman codes and can’t be revived.

Mel is picked up by her older brother Brian (Bashir Salahuddin), and they have a fight. She goes to a bar and meets Allie (Jaylee Hamidi), a sympathetic bartender. When Mel realizes she was given the dead woman’s personal effects, she goes to the woman’s apartment and sees pictures of just how she grabbed life. She also takes home the woman’s dog.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There are plenty of comedies about women who are feeling lost in their lives, but the one that feels the closest to How To Die Alone is Survival Of The Thickest .

Our Take: Rothwell created How To Die Alone and is the showrunner, along with Vera Santamaria, and the two big things that separate the show from others in this genre are Rothwell herself and the fact that she works at JFK. We’re not 100% sure that the airport scenes are actually shot at JFK, but we do know that it’s a real airport, and the dynamic of the community that works there is something we don’t see all that often.

But, mainly, we just enjoy watching Rothwell. Yes, the first episode finds Mel in a very sad-sacky state, but she gives Mel that bit of wistfulness that makes the character less put-upon and more in the “hopeful but gets in her own way” category. Even she knows that her predicament is something that she put herself in, not something that happened to her due to outside circumstances. It’s always much more relatable when a character knows that they need to be the ones to adjust the way they see the world if that glimmer of hope they carry gets to be realized. It’s actions over fate, and that’s always more appealing.

Even the accident that brought Mel to this realization, while funny, isn’t as fated as one might think, given the fact that she’s building a big, awkward armoire by herself. The part that’s fate is meeting the woman in the bed next to hers, which also helps set her on the way to facing all the impediments she’s put in front of her during her life. There are funny moments in that interaction, but they also happen to be poignant, as well, which is another balance that’s hard to achieve.

We actually like the device where Mel envisions herself in various situations she is witnessing. It not only gives us different looks at Rothwell, but shows off some unexpected talent, like when she envisions seeing herself karaokeing “Creep”.

One thing that Mel might come to appreciate is that she’s got a friend group that’s (mostly) reliable, and we like that she gives people like Mel, Terrence and Allie funny as well as philosophical lines that sound like they may come out of real people’s mouths.

Sex and Skin: We see Rory waking up next to the frequent traveler that he blew of Mel to sleep with.

Parting Shot: Mel uses the dead woman’s credit card to book a trip to Hawaii for Alex’s wedding, and she envisions herself on the tarmac, a plane taking off above her head.

Sleeper Star: Jaylee Hamidi has a lot of potential as Mel’s new friend Allie, mainly because Mel met her at one of her lowest points.

Most Pilot-y Line: The store where Mel buys the armoire is called Ümlaüt, which is funny but a bit on the nose.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Shows like How To Die Alone completely depend on the charm of the star and the cast. And Natasha Rothwell is definitely charming. But she has also built a cast around her that we want to see more of.

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, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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