'Love Life' Episodes 7, 8, 9, 10: A half-baked attempt at bringing 'Sex and the City' vibes to the HBO Max show
Spoilers for 'Love Life' Episodes 7, 8, 9, 10
HBO Max's 'Love Life' is a romantic comedy anthology television series featuring the love life of Darby Carter (Anna Kendrick), the first season's protagonist. Viewers were given insight into the young woman's perspective of love as we're shown how her upbringing and the influence of her relationships allowed her to grow into an adult who was aware of the choices she was making. Starting off in New York City, young and brave, Darby still held on to her desire to always please people. Even her therapist called her a "pleaser." Her tendency to keep things calm and stay away from confrontation was highlighted as we're exposed to her life in the Big Apple, chasing after a work promotion, living with two of her best friends, and navigating through the loves of her life.
Does that ring a bell? While Gen Z might say 'Katy Keene,' we were looking for the '90s favorite 'Sex and the City' vibes. The series attempted to bring a favorite narrative of "girlfriends trying to make it in the city that never sleep" but failed quite miserably for various reasons. Shows like The CW's 'Katy Keene' and 'Sex and the city' have secondary characters that contribute heavily to the storyline regardless of the series having a central character. Kendrick's Carter was the focus of this series, so the storyline only move forward at her pace. A supporting character's narrative is not given screen time to bring to life a story of their own. Instead, you'll only notice another narrative, if Darby's character is paying attention to it.
Shows with the same narrative such as 'Sex and the City' have curated a fan base because it had many storylines that converge into one hectic series deep in emotional character arcs. There are very many perspectives in stories like those (remember 'High Fidelity'?) Darby's look back at formative relationships as she grows is a shadow of shows that have already produced this narrative, and have done it better, might we add. The lack of secondary characters being shown any importance proves that this show is far from the types of shows it was attempting to model after.
We see almost nothing of Mallory (Sasha Compere), one of Darby's roommates and best friends. All we were shown is a straightforward attitude where she asks Darby why she needs a man. The potential of this character was sadly not explored. Perhaps, she could have been a bit of Samantha. Her dry sense of humor and her blunt dialogues were the most we got of Mallory. Now, as far as the other characters are concerned, we are given bits and pieces of Jim's (Peter Vack) and Sara's (Zoë Chao) life, but only when Darby has the time to speak to her friends. That storyline also had so much potential to bring some interesting plots to the series, and we were thinking she was more of a Miranda. The fact that these characters, although secondary, were given barely any time in the series gave our expectations of 'Love Life' being a good show a huge blow.
The show does seem to touch on issues such as emotional abuse, gaslighting, lying, Munchausen syndrome, depression, and anxiety but refuses to take a stand on any of those topics. The scenes that brought awareness to these issues were not given the time of day. Nothing other than Darby's dating life was explored -- in fact, we knew more about Darby's men than her. There were so many aspects of this narrative that could have been utilized to produce a series that was more than a convenient binge watch. None of those aspects were explored enough to bring this season anthology to likable fruition. It's frustrating that while watching the series, our minds wander off to other familiar grounds such as 'The Bold Type' because the series has nothing new to offer on its own. With the lack of any dynamic character besides Darby, the series makes a dry attempt to emulate the success of other productions with the same synopsis. We feel a little more time and effort on character growth and exposure could have brought the series a lot closer to be graded above a 5, but alas, we have been disappointed.