YMMV / How Not to Live Your Life

• Crosses the Line Twice: Don and Jason go to a fancy dress party dressed as Murtaugh and Riggs. Yes, in that order.
• Growing the Beard: The first series received mixed reviews from critics, citing the female lead didn't have much of a personality but generally liking the humour. Things improved in the second series with the introduction of Samantha and upgrading Mrs. Treacher from recurring character to main cast.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Don's Posh Weekend", the entire character of Felicity, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a posh woman with a very active sexual life, looks like a test run for Waller-Bridge's most famous character, Fleabag. She even gets introduced at a museum, laughing at Don's joke about a mannequin not having a penis, which in hindsight looks like it's Foreshadowing the famous "wall of penises" exhibition scene in Fleabag. Made more hilarious by the fact that pictures of Waller-Bridge in dominatrix-looking lingerie from the episode were unearthed around the time she appeared in Broadchurch as a prim-and-proper attorney, highlighting the stark contrast in characters; nowadays, it looks like it would be right around the alley for Fleabag.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The reveal that Eddie was planning to murder Don means that his only real friendship (lets call it that) was all a lie and his death would probably have gone unnoticed or unsolved due to Don not being well-liked.
• Ho Yay:
  • Quite a bit between Don and Eddie. They've even been naked in a hottub together.
  • Karl's father has a habit of making double entendres that show an obsession with male genitals.
  • Don imagines shutting up a loudmouth on his mobile phone by shoving the phone up his rectum. Cut back to reality and Don's staring at the loudmouth with a look that says "I want to penetrate your arse".
  • Noel Fielding's cameo starts with him staring at Don's penis while he's urinating.
  • Don wakes up one morning with Mrs Treacher in bed next to him. He freaks out at the thought of getting drunk enough to sleep with her, then Treacher tells him nothing happened between them, which jogs Don's memory. Turns out he didn't do anything with Mrs Treacher because he was too busy making out with a little man dressed as a devil, to his relief.
• Informed Wrongness: Eddie is trying to persuade Don to give Sam a chance, but she started her visit with criticizing everything Don's dead grandma owned and feels entitled to boss him around in his own house, not to mention introducing herself barging into the house invited by only the not-even-employee, indignantly that the flabbergasted homeowner isn't dressed for accepting guests (so what if he likes cooking naked, when he is alone in his own home?), and in the end she decides to move in, not caring about the homeowner's consent, despite his scandalous crime having kissed her after she very clearly stated her attraction to him.
• Retroactive Recognition: In "Don's Posh Weekend", yes, that is Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Felicity the dominatrix, before achieving stardom with Crashing, Fleabag, and creating Killing Eve.
• Squick:
  • Don having his colon cleaned.
  • The Christmas special has Mrs Treacher taking a dump in the bath, walking around the house naked and getting three men into an orgy with her.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The Series 1 finale. Don was going to have dinner with Abby after she'd split from Karl. To his disappointment, Karl arrives and patches things up with Abby. In order to save what little face he has, Don loudly pretends that two of his friends have arrived, had dinner and left before Karl and Abby could meet them. Not only did Don not get the girl, but that moment makes it extremely clear just how alone he really is.
  • The Christmas Special pushes it even further, showing Don either spending it alone or with random strangers. Since he has no living relatives, it succeeds at making him sympathetic in spite of his personality.