Don’t Trust the B

The new comedy Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, which premiered last night on ABC, may not be the most comedic show on television—zany yes, laugh-out-loud no—but it may well be the newest. And not because the pilot was seen for the first time just a few hours ago. This is one of the more modern network sitcoms of our time, using cross-media inside jokes in a way that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

At first glance, the plot fits the mold of a show about a small town girl lost in the big city (spoilers ahead). Pretty June (Dreama Walker) comes all the way from Indiana only to discover that the mortgage brokerage firm that hired her and paid for her apartment has gone under. Jobless and homeless, she answers a series of wacky roommate-wanted ads before finding what appears to be the perfect place, an unrealistically nice apartment with someone who seems like a great flat-mate. The roommate-seeker, Chloe (Krysten Ritter), even serves snacks. The apartment number, of course, is 23, and, yes, Chloe is indeed a B—- (bitch), concocting a scheme to secure first and last month’s rent and then act like such a lunatic—walking around naked, stealing, invading privacy—that the roommate cuts and runs. Thus begins a brief war in which June retaliates by selling Chloe’s ottoman—a piece of furniture that just so happens to contain a sizable inventory of Chinese energy pills that Chloe sells via the black market. It is through retrieving the ottoman that the two women bond, that Chloe decides to allow June to stay, and that a bizarre and unstable friendship is established, setting up the broader arc for the series.