YMMV / Starved

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The fact that it was a sitcom centered on the main characters having eating disorders made it controversial even before it premiered, ultimately turning a lot of people off. The fact that all of the main actors actually had eating disorders at some point in real life,^note Eric Schaeffer (Sam), who created the show, is in recovery for alcohol and drug addiction and describes himself as having "anorexic thinking," and drew on his own experiences with eating disorders and the experiences of other people he knew in creating scenarios for the series. Laura Benanti (Billie) spent three years fighting anorexia while she danced on Broadway. Del Pentecost (Dan), who weighed 310 pounds at the time of filming, contributed stories from his own life to the series, including the scene in which Dan weighs himself on a postal scale because he is too heavy for a conventional bathroom scale. Sterling K. Brown (Adam) was fat as a child and describes himself as being "haunted by the 'fat kid mentality'." and the producers only discovered that after the casting process was completed, did not help matters.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Sam has both low self-esteem and self-absorption in spades, but when he makes an egregious mistake in a relationship (which he often does), is he aware? Or is he just so blind to the feelings of the women that he dates that he's genuinely baffled when his relationships cease?
• Jerkass Woobie: Sam. He's horrible to everyone around him, and has incredibly unrealistic standards for women, but you can't help but feel sorry for him. He's pathetic beyond belief.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Billie is played by Laura Benanti. Yes, the same one who plays Alura and Astra in Supergirl and Melania Trump in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
  • Adam is played by Sterling K. Brown, before he became famous for playing Christopher Darden in The People v. O. J. Simpson and Randall Pearson in This Is Us.