In “How to Die Alone,” creator-star Natasha Rothwell (“Insecure,” “Saturday Night Live”) plays Melissa, or Mel, described by Hulu, where it premieres Friday, as “a broke, fat, Black JFK airport employee who’s never been in love and forgotten how to dream.”
Her size doesn’t really enter into it — there’s no indication that she’s heavy because she’s unhappy or unhappy because she’s heavy — but she does seem to be stuck in place, 35 and with no love life and no prospects beyond driving passengers around JFK in one of those motorized carts. She hasn’t moved on since ending a relationship two years earlier with her handsome boss, Alex (Jocko Sims), “the only man that ever got me,” a decision she now regrets.
This is a self-realization story hung on a romantic comedy — to begin with, it takes place in an airport, the most rom-commy of all rom-com settings. What’s more, Alex is about to get married, and Mel has been invited to the Hawaii-set wedding, likely in the knowledge that she won’t attend, as she can’t afford the ticket and, metaphorically significant, is afraid to fly. That it doesn’t necessarily go where that set-up suggests is to Rothwell’s credit.
The show, which has something of the air of an extended indie film, is a spectrum of styles, from slapstick to straight drama, with person-on-the-street interviews introducing each episode. It can be sentimental to the point of corn, though it is smart enough to undercut the corn with a subsequent dose of chaos. Stylistic eruptions interrupt the production — video effects, dancing, the world freezing in place around Mel, an onscreen meter to illustrate Mel’s Percocet wearing off. Occasions are found for Rothwell to sing, which she does very prettily.
Mel is living on a series of maxed-out credit cards, though not, one would say, living high. Abandoned on her birthday by her friend Rory (Conrad Ricamora), whose father is “president” of the airport and whose only occupation seems to be distracting Mel from her work, she goes shopping at an Ikea parody called Ümlaüt (on which the designers have lavished some loving care). When furniture she’s just assembled unsurprisingly falls over on her, causing her to choke on some takeout crab rangoon (“real crab, because I paid extra for it on my birthday”) she “dies” for three minutes and returns to consciousness in a hospital room, with comedy doctors at her feet and elderly Elise (Jackie Richardson) in the next bed. Elise, a quasi-magical wise woman, will deliver the sermonette that will haunt and drive Mel through the season.
“There are three kinds of death,” Elise says. “Physical death, we all know and write poems about; then there’s the kind when people stop caring about you; and the worst kind is when you stop caring for yourself.”
“I used to be just like you,” she tells Mel, whom she has somehow analyzed in a snap, “holding my tongue, scared of everything. Now, when my life flashes before my eyes, at least I’ll see something.” And, advising Mel to go out and do what scares her, she expires.
When the hospital mistakenly sends Mel home with Elise’s possessions, she visits the woman’s empty, neat, book-filled apartment and comes away with some photographs, a credit credit card and a dog. These will prove important.
Though Alex is continually on her mind — and there are some nicely written scenes between Mel and Alex, whose friendliness you are free, like Mel, to interpret as flirtatious — the romantic thread of the story is its least vital aspect; even Mel’s journey to self-acceptance runs along a predictable, if ultimately affecting, course. But what keeps “How to Die Alone” aloft are its side stories and well-realized secondary characters.
These include Mel’s married brother Brian (the great Bashir Salahuddin, of “South Side” and his own “Sherman’s Showcase”); Allie (Jaylee Hamidi), the bartender who befriends Mel after she gets out of the hospital and to whom she complains of not being seen and wanting to be seen; and especially the ground crew with whom she grabs an occasional cigarette — Shaun (Arkie Kandola) and Deshawn (Christopher Powell), the show’s Shakespearean clowns, droll alt-comedy legend H. Jon Benjamin as a sort of mystic guru of flight; and Terrance (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), its other handsome man, who does actually see Mel, though she does not see him seeing her.
Obviously, Mel is her own worst enemy — that’s the point — and apart from a critical mother (“Saturday Night Live” vet Ellen Cleghorne) and a jealous coworker (Michelle McLeod), almost her only enemies. Though she feels friendless, she has both a dedicated group of friends who will go out of their way for her and an ability to talk to strangers (in Spanish and ASL too). That, to be sure, is no cure for depression, but “How to Die Alone,” though certainly not free from conflict, is a genial series, full of people being sweet. It’s more inspirational than not.
