Associate Monitor Assessment: Netflix Rom-Com With Arden Cho Wants Extra Chew

Essentially the most irritating flip in any romantic comedy is when the main woman and/or man turns into a jerk. It’s an important second — essential, even — but it surely’s at all times the hump you need to endure in an effort to get to the half the place everybody learns their lesson, embraces their fact, and kisses their sizzling crush to the triumphant swell of an impossibly catchy pop track that can nonetheless fade from reminiscence by the point the credit roll. With out that annoying blip of stress, that payoff received’t be half as candy — or, fact be instructed, half as earned.

Such is the conundrum dealing with “Partner Track,” Netflix’s frothy new comedy primarily based on Helen Wan’s novel about legal professionals combating tooth and nail to turn into associate, if solely they might cease getting distracted by one another. Ingrid (Arden Cho) is the agency’s decided golden woman, particularly as a result of she’s at all times keen to work additional time and do all the things her mercurial boss (Matthew Rauch) tells her, irrespective of how morally questionable. As she tells us within the pilot’s peppy opening narration, she selected to enter Mergers and Acquisitions as a result of that’s what all the perfect company legal professionals do. That she’s usually compromising her values or throwing pals like Rachel (Alexandra Turshen) and Tyler (Bradley Gibson) below the bus to climb the corporate ladder is, she causes, an inevitable hazard of the job.

This might make for an fascinating battle, particularly when paired with Ingrid struggling to reconcile her ambition with the the agency’s full bungling of a racist incident involving her greatest, frattiest competitors (Nolan Gerard Funk) halfway via the season. Ingrid’s frustration at being the workplace’s token Asian American lady when all she needs is to be regarded as a lawyer, interval, offers the present a few of its greatest and most insightful materials. Attending to that time, although, means wading via the primary few episodes, which have sufficient hassle shifting past “hi there, fellow children” dialogue that some curious viewers may’ve already tapped out.

Ingrid’s flaws at work may be simpler to take if her romantic life not less than had sufficient fizz to maintain the present afloat. However right here, too, “Associate Monitor” falls brief, throwing rote dialogue masquerading as “steamy banter” at a love triangle with none warmth. On the one hand, there’s besotted wealthy man Nick (Rob Heaps), the seemingly excellent match for Ingrid who nonetheless, as TikTok would put it, offers her “the ick.” On the opposite is Jeff Murphy (Dominic Sherwood), the ostensibly dashing London switch. Jeff apparently crossed paths with Ingrid years earlier at a marriage in a manner that’s had her fantasizing about him ever since. However it’s arduous to purchase that when Cho and Sherwood have so little chemistry that even the present’s ample use of horny slo-mo can’t promote the sexual stress the pairing so desperately wants. If it weren’t for the scripts insisting that Ingrid and Jeff are endgame, in actual fact, it might be simpler to consider that she may be destined for an additional type of opposites-attract romance with Z (Desmond Chiam), a shopper’s son whose beliefs hold clashing with the agency’s lack thereof, and with whom Ingrid has the most important spark even of their temporary scenes collectively.

It’s a disgrace that a lot of the present by no means fairly gels, given the potential laden in its premise, characters, and supporting ensemble. Turshen, Gibson and Funk are particularly good as their characters stumble and get extra screentime away from Ingrid — which is, maybe, indicative of how a lot time Ingrid spends being one of many least compelling elements of her personal present. If “Associate Monitor” have been a 95 minute film, it might’ve needed to make sharper edits in its story and meandering dialogue. It’d’ve discovered a bouncier rhythm to take it from one scene to the following. However with 10 episodes to fill, “Associate Monitor” spends manner too lengthy exhibiting Ingrid caught in immoral quagmires to make her eventual redemption all that satisfying.

“Associate Monitor” is now out there to stream on Netflix.