Love: Season 1 Review

Friendly fire.

So Love is great. I really enjoyed Love. Perhaps for reasons I never assumed. One of Love’s greatest strengths is its unexpectedness. There’s almost an “audience contempt” vibe, in fact.

Look, it’s called Love. It’s from Judd Apatow. It’s going to be witty and harsh and dig into the ins and outs of relationships. Both the beautiful and ugly parts. But in the end, you’re probably going to assume, at the start, that this is all a show about the two leads getting together. Meeting. Courting. Arguing. Falling apart. Rediscovering each other. The works.

It’s not. And one of the biggest joys I had here was in rooting for the duo of Mickey and Gus to NOT find each other and become a quirky couple. These two are awful. And I mean that respectfully. They are gross in separately, differently, and very real ways. And while there are textbook Apatow qualities to Love – everyone sharing the same profane frankness about sex, masturbatory LA worship, industry-related jobs, etc – no one’s a cut out here. Gus isn’t the “nice guy” (in fact, he’s not that nice at all). Mickey isn’t the “crazy chick” (though we do find out how deep some of issues reside). And like Aziz Ansari’s great Master of None (also on Netflix), which was also about the nebulous topic of friends and relationships, Love creates its own absorbing, touchable universe filled with unexpected upheaval and occasional heart.

Creators Apatow, Lesley Arfin, and Paul Rust – who plays the lead character of on-set tutor/wannabe writer Gus – are both confident and coy in what they’re presenting here. It’s nothing unique to delve into the lives of broken, self-destructive people, but Love still does so without resorting to archetypes or sugar-coating. People can both do wrong to others and be wronged themselves. And leads Rust and Gillian Jacobs (Community) deliver solid, vulnerable performances as two people who – as we slowly learn – shouldn’t be in a relationship with anyone. Though, in the world of Love, an argument can be made that no one should be really. Everyone’s got their own form of turbulence. And everyone can be cruel and kind.

Another thing I greatly appreciated about Love – and this connects, again, to Master of None – is its appreciation of the “episode,” which is sometimes lacking in the streaming/binging-era of TV. And Love even comes with a more serialized, connective quality than Master of None. But it still is able to present very memorable, established chapters. Episodes revolving around a good “hang.” A party. A date. Waiting for a text. Mickey and Gus’ initial “meet cute,” essentially, is the entire second episode. And so it turns out to be a big deal, especially in retrospect, when you realize come the end that these two don’t actually spend that much time together during the season. Mostly, we’re following their separate lives. And the two of them trying to figure out whether or not to make a go of an actual relationship is the glue that binds the show’s two halves.

Paul Rust and Gillian Jacobs in Love.

Kicking it back to Master of None again – or more specifically, to Ansari’s stand-up (sorry to keep dong this) – Love actually scratches at the itch of “text message” follies. Where two people are able to be their best most charming selves person but then have everything quickly fall apart in the aftermath due to the reliance on the almighty text. Or lack thereof. It’s not a new topic, by any stretch, but Love actually highlights just how poor a form of messaging it can be when relied upon as an emotional shield.

Jacobs’ Mickey is almost an extension of her Community character. Or, at least, what Britta morphed into on that show as the years progressed. Loud, but astute. Caring, but sometimes shrill. Prone to impulsivity based on little to no information. As the manager of a satellite radio station, much of Mickey’s story involves a call-in advice “Doctor” (Brett Gelman), her delightful and accommodating new Australian roommate (show standout Claudia O’Doherty), and her ex (comedian Kyle Kinane). Gus’ world, on the flip side, mostly takes place on the set of “Witchita,” a soapy supernatural TV series where he does his best to school young precocious-yet-unhappy star Arya (Iris Apatow) while also trying to get someone on staff to check out his spec script. Eventually, an attractive bit player on the series (Briga Heelan) begins to warm up to him in a way that Mickey seems hesitant to, creating trouble down the pipe.

The ensemble is great. Sure, occasionally they’re there to dish out advice and act as sounding boards, but more often than not they feel like real people who have their own thing going. O’Doherty’s Bertie, specifically, could have easily been nothing more than a smiling joke, but she shines brightly here. And the fifth episode, “The Date,” stands as one of the best of the season, as Mickey misguidedly manipulates Gus and Bertie into a dinner date that, after a texting snafu, turns into a competition between the two to assume the role of the worst dating parter ever.

By the time the series gets around to actually placing Gus and Mickey on their own honest-to-goodness date, we’ve grown accustomed to them being apart (again, the show mostly portrays them apart). And then it takes the whole “you’re your best self when you’re on a first date” cliche and spins it on its head. The whole thing actually works to color the series in a way unbefitting a “romantic comedy,” which was refreshing.

Also, outside of the series crux – the “will they?/won’t they?” dynamic – Love offers up some lovingly light moments. Mickey and Andy Dick deciding to trip on sassafras and then ride the subway. Gus and his weekly get-together with friends where they come up with cheesy theme songs for movies that don’t have theme songs. Tangents about Spaceballs, 1986’s Armed and Dangerous and 2006’s The Holiday (yes, with Apatow comes more than a few random movie nerd-outs). As mentioned, the world presented here feels filled in. Apatow’s been criticized for going over-long in some of his movies (or, you know, the Director’s Cuts of said movies) but when presented with 10 episodes to play with, that so-caled “undisciplined” nature can feel like a benefit.