Peter Fisher Season 2 of FX’s “Adults”— which premiered in late August — depicts a group of five friends hanging out in their shared house in Queens. There’s the relatively sane Samir, holding the group together (Malik Elassal), the thwarted careerist Billie (Lucy Freyer), the agent-of-chaos diva Issa (Amita Rao), the relentlessly social dry wit Anton (Owen Thiele) …
And then there’s Paul Baker, the most recent addition to the friend group, played by Jack Innanen. Paul Baker, always referred to by his first and last names, is a walking, talking sunbeam. Congenitally optimistic without being saccharine, Paul Baker was, in Season 2, the nexus of a love triangle in which his character felt torn between his girlfriend, Rao’s Issa, and his husband, Thiele’s Anton. (It’s complicated.) Part of what fueled the ups and downs was the sense that Paul Baker is genially open to whatever life might throw at him — a personality type engineered to drive the acting-out Issa and the neurotic Anton to distraction. Innanen’s striking looks —featuring an instantly recognizable mustache he agonizes over potentially shaving — and street-style prowess have done much the same for “Adults” fans.
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