Hulu’s ‘Up Here’ Tells a Y2K-Era Love Story, in Song: TV Review
Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic It’s an interesting, telling choice that “Up Here,” Hulu’s new musical sitcom starring Mae Whitman and Carlos Valdes, is set in 1999. Not merely is the turn of the century, according to the roughly 20-year nostalgia cycle, currently in vogue, but the particular sort of moment the Y2K era was lends texture and meaning to the story “Up Here” tells. Assaying a time just before the social web allowed loners to find one another, “Up Here” presents a winning and lovely pair of oddballs singing their hearts out, in disbelief at having found one another. Here, Whitman plays Lindsay, who was lectured in childhood to shield her spiky and odd side from peers in order to be liked. “You show people the nice parts, because believe me, that’s all that people want to see,” her mother (Katie Finneran) tells her; grown up, she’s terrified to show vulnerability at all.