‘Love Life' Episodes 1, 2 and 3 fail to explore the friendship between Darby, Sara and Mallory
HBO Max’s ‘Love Life’ is about finding love and exploring the ups and downs on the path that leads to an eternal relationship. But is that all what it is? When we saw the trailer and other previews of the all-new romantic comedy-drama, it clearly showed that Darby Carter’s (Anna Kendrick) love life is not just about dating and learning about the men in her life, but also about her friends, who are instrumental in her journey.
Friends are an important part of people’s lives, especially when you are exploring new relationships and need the right advice from people who are close to you. But that can only happen if those friendships have established over time and significant circumstances. Unfortunately, despite knowing how close Darby is to her best friends, we have no way of knowing (at least not so far) how they all came together and shared a similar life.
Her best friends, Sarah (Zoe Chao) and Mallory (Sasha Compere) who all share the same apartment with Darby, in uptown New York have a lot of influence on her. From the very beginning, we see how Sarah eggs Darby on to be out there, explore, learn and discover new relationships. But we don’t see much of interaction between Sarah and Darby to understand the dynamics of their friendship. All we know about Sarah is that she is in a steady relationship with her high-school sweetheart, Jim (Peter Vack) and she is a little overwhelmed by how he is so involved with his family. As far as her friendship with Darby goes, we only see her randomly advising Darby in certain situations.
In a random chat in Episode 1, Darby mentions how Sara treated Jim in high school, which makes us assume that they all know each other from their adolescent years. Other than that, we never get to learn how far their friendship goes. Is it possible that Sara has always been there for Darby since they were kids and when Darby was going through a tough time at home with her separated parents? If so, then it is possible that her friends have guided her through her teenage into her adulthood where she finds herself lost in her life and constantly seeks validation, particularly in her love life. Even Mallory’s character is half explored. Except for a few instances where she suggests that Darby should take more control of her relationship, there’s nothing more that we know of their friendship and how it evolved.
Although Mallory and Sara have contradicting opinions and differ on dating advice, they both have Darby’s best interests in mind. As for Darby, she takes her friends’ advice very seriously.
Perhaps in the coming episodes we will learn the backstories of both Sara and Mallory and where they find themselves in Darby’s life.
‘Love Life’ premiered Wednesday, May 27, with three episodes on HBO Max. New episodes will be released every Thursday from the next week.
