This Fool (2022)

Story lines focused on the cousins’ love lives can feel a little too familiar; the female characters could use some more depth. But when the show is in its sweet spot, with Julio and Luis and sometimes Payne busting each other’s chops and getting in their own way, it’s as funny as anything you’re likely to watch in this cursed year for comedy.

I found myself streaming the whole season in a day, in part just to find out where the second season was heading. Because the second episode made that even less clear, somehow. Eventually, several of the characters you’d come to know and love from the first season to make their way back into the lives of Julio and Luis.

That show’s [Comedy Central's Corporate] acerbic energy is on display in This Fool, which reaches greater heights with chaotic yet compassionate takes on Julio, Luis, and their South L.A. community. Which is all to say: This Fool is this quite good—and it’s time everyone knew it.

The relative tightness of This Fool’s central dynamic is one of its chief strengths, particularly for a ten-episode season.

This is a winning portrait of two guys in South Central L.A. with opposing life philosophies who find they each have something to learn from the other.

The series is blessed with a firm grasp of who these characters are and what makes them tick.

By keeping its world relatively small, This Fool quickly figures out all the things that are amusing about it. It’s frequently silly, very occasionally sweet, and promising enough that I hope Hulu lets Estrada and company make more.

[This Fool works] hard to find strong dynamics between all members of the cast, a good and correct instinct for a fledgling comedy finding its way.

Perhaps it’s just more uneven than corny, more awkward than ha-ha, as smart as it is obvious, as oblivious as it is comfortable, taking real issues of modern L.A.—gun violence, gang culture—and setting them as backdrop thematic annoyances to be casually riffed on, as Bradley Newell might rap on a Sublime track. Once the show settles, though, it finds a groove akin to the Chicano Batman theme that opens each episode.