'Love Life' Episode 4: Zoë Chao's Sara gets a bit of a backstory and goes beyond just being Darby's friend
Spoilers for 'Love Life' Episode 4
In this episode titled 'Magnus Lund,' we see Darby Carter (Anna Kendrick) dive headfirst into a relationship after a string of one-night stands. The man of this episode is Lund, a young chef who "always jumped in with both feet."
While their relationship is at the center of the episode — and series — we finally got a bit of back story on Sara (Zoë Chao), Darby's best friend, and roommate since college. Sara's character seems a bit aloof and definitely has bad judgment, and was portrayed as a 'badass' since Episode 1. Her foul-mouthed personality seems to be the complete opposite of Darby and so their relationship seems quite interesting. This episode finally gave a secondary character some sort of depth — before this, they all existed around Darby's insecurities and relationship.
In the previous episode, where Darby had met the godforsaken 'Danny Two Phones', we saw a bit of Sara's relationship with her boyfriend Jim's (Peter Vack) family. Sara had ditched a family event to go out with Darby to a rooftop party but ended up making a sloppy appearance later at Jim's mother's home. Sara's insecurities were hinted at right there to the point where Jim's mother tells her, "let him go if you don't want him". She seems to be the louder part of the relationship while Jim falls into her chaotic background. In this episode, as Darby confesses to Sara that she thinks "it's finally right" with Lund, Sara loses herself for two minutes, almost questioning her relationship with Jim. Using 'being drunk' as an excuse to have even thought of leaving Jim, Sara assures herself she loves Jim by saying it aloud. This would be the second time she's said "I love Jim" in a way that seems she believes it only when she says it out loud.
Later, during Darby's 'I got a promotion' celebratory dinner, we find out that Jim's aunt had left him her house, which Sara tells him to flip. As they sit in a coffee shop to talk about it later, we're shown small dents in their fairytale relationship when Sara realizes she doesn't know everything about Jim before they became a couple. While she accuses Jim jokingly of never telling her stories of his aunt, Jim tells her she doesn't "show a lot of interest" about talking about events before they were a couple.
Here we get a bit of a backstory as Jim asks Sara why she never speaks of her mom, to which she replies "it's depressing" and it seems to be thrown under the rug — so unhealthy! For a split moment, Sara as a secondary character gets some depth as we're shown her possible flaws and how her ecstatic attitude is stunted at the immediate mention of her mother.
Throughout the episodes so far, Sara has been a pillar for Darby as she goes through heartbreaks, while Sara 'blooms' in her long-term relationship with her college boyfriend Jim. It seemed kind of 'too-good-to-be-true' situation as the couple was always shown to be fun and loving towards each other until this episode. Unfolding Sara's story should make the series have some sort of three-dimensional view — what happened with her mother? We'd like to know just as much as Jim.
New episodes of 'Love Life' will be released every Thursday on HBO Max.