Freeform’s Single Drunk Female dives into the world of alcoholism, and what it’s like when you’re trying to find yourself.

WHAT IS SINGLE DRUNK FEMALE?

SINGLE DRUNK FEMALE – Freeform’s “Single Drunk Female” stars Ally Sheedy as Carol Fink, Rebecca Henderson as Olivia Elliot, Sasha Compere as Brit Monclair, Sofia Black-D’Elia as Samantha Fink, Lily Mae Harrington as Felicia O’Brien, and Garrick Bernard as James Chambers. (Freeform/Koury Angelo)

The new series from Freeform tells the story of Samantha Fink (Sofia Black-D’Elia), who has a very public firing at a New York media company. In order to avoid jail time, Samantha has to sober up and finds herself living back home with her mother (Ally Sheedy). Samantha now finds herself trying to restart her life by working at the local grocery store, and going to AA. However, she continuously runs into multiple triggers that helped her start drinking in the first place. Samantha sets out to try and move past her worst self and figure out her best self.

MAKING THE TOUGH SUBJECT MATTER DIGESTIBLE 

I found Single Drunk Female to be a very easy and palatable watch. When trying to tackle the heavy subject matter, such as alcoholism, you can go too dark and heavy or too light. I find this series has a great balance of both landing it in an easily digestible area. 

Black-D’Elia has a lot of heavy lifting to do, taking someone who is truly unlikable and making you feel for her. Along every step of Samantha’s journey, there’s hope and understanding, with a side of sandpaper and she delivers flawlessly. The majority of side characters are well fleshed out from her overbearing (and most likely alcoholic herself) mother, Carol, to her bestie Felicia (Lily Mae Harrington). Everyone needs a BFF like Felicia. She is loyal, accepting, hilarious, outgoing, and will always be the life of the party. 

Unlike Samantha’s ex-BFF Brit (Sasha Compère). While Compère does her best portraying someone you’re supposed to dislike, I find the writing lets her down. We’re supposed to feel for a character we know nothing about other than what we’re told – she used to be Samantha’s BFF and is now dating her ex. I don’t know what world they live in, but that’s no friend of mine…depending on how it went down. However, we get zero backstories about any of the characters other than words and one episode about her friend from AA. 

HOW TO GO FROM GOOD TO GREAT!

While I enjoyed watching Single Drunk Female I do find it to be very surface level. The series is lacking in the substance and backstory department. It’s difficult to root for, dislike, or feel for characters you really know nothing about besides what’s on the service and hearsay. Samantha is on a journey of amends. Amends for what? Being terrible? I want to see how she was so terrible. 

We do get this great backstory for James (Garrick Bernard), but for no one else. There’s too much history, too many storylines going on for things to be said to me. I need to see what happened and how much Samantha needs to make up for.

“Single Drunk Female” premieres with back-to-back episodes on THURSDAY, JAN. 20, starting at 10 p.m. After its premiere, the series will air new episodes Thursdays at 10:30 p.m., available the next day on Hulu. Stay tuned to That Hashtag Show for more reviews!