Have watched 3 episodes so far, and this definitely deserves its own thread. I think. So far. ;)
It has its fair share of misses, and there are bits that don’t work at all, but the parts that do work are really good and feel painfully real.
Gillian Jacobs is the real revelation so far for me. I mean, I always liked her as Britta on Community, but she shows some real depth here. I mean, yeah, she’s playing a flawed character here…but it isn’t the zany flaws of Britta. This feels very grounded. There’s gravitas.
Wasn’t sure on Paul Rust, but he’s growing on me too.
At any rate, so far, so very good. Be interested to hear how others are digging it (or not).
Worth noting: Netflix picked up Season 2 before this season even went live today.
I haven’t watched Love yet, but I’m not surprised that Gillian Jacobs has a lot more depth than what she could show with her character on Community. In her improv on Comedy Bang Bang, she’s incredibly brilliant, smart and funny.
A couple episodes in and enjoying it as well. In my head I’m pretending that Dave Allen and Steve Bannos’s guest spots are the same characters they played in Freaks and Geeks, aged 35 years.
Watched the first episode. It felt like a really mean spirited version of You’re the Worst for the first 3/4 of the episode and I wasn’t totally digging it. The last 1/4 was funny and sweet and really brought the whole episode together as a whole. Pretty brave writing and I am looking forward to more.
I love that even minor characters, characters who probably are in the show to move plot levers, are still interesting, funny and engaging. Take Bertie, for instance. I would watch a show with just Bertie in it. I may be in love with Bertie. I’m just saying.
Comedy Bang Bang alumni always know how to make me laugh.
Yeah, this is what’s winning me over, really. I’m finding the episodes themselves to be somewhat hit and miss (though mostly hit), but O’Doherty always makes me smile. I really hope Bertie gets to say “I love fucking”.
There are plenty of thuds throughout the series, including kind of a climactic moment that just really doesn’t work because it feels so weirdly out of character.
Still. When it hits, it hits wonderfully.
One other thing that Apatow does so well: he gets that comedy needs sad stuff to happen, and he’s pretty relentless about going for those moments too.
I just wanted to complain immediately about the third episode after I watched it, but 1 and 2 were really good, and I’m looking forward to the rest. I like how slow the first episode is at getting them together, and how fun their little day together was in episode 2. I want to say something about how that pace could only work with the freedom of Netflix, though that’s probably not true. There’s so much excellent TV out there I could imagine FX or HBO or someone doing the same thing, but it’s still not exactly common, and I enjoy it.
What is more likely only going to work on Netflix is how the show length varies, and with only three episodes to go on so far I like that they just seem to be giving each episode exactly as much time as it needs. When Community went to Yahoo for their final season they had a little more time to play with (going from 22 minutes to a full 30, or something, I think), and I’m not sure it was a good thing. It felt like they threw in a few more scenes or gags that shouldn’t have made the cut just because they had the time. Probably not fair to directly compare the results since it spent five seasons doing wonderful work in 22 minutes and then changed things up, but the point is that Love doesn’t feel like it’s dragging or padded (or rushed) to fit any particular time constraint.
Really loving this so far. Great soundtrack too. One thing that’s impressive about the show is how big the cast is. So many excellent faces, some familiar from Apatow’s work, some new to me.
My favorite thing about the end of episode one, after all that side-by-side contrast between the two characters concurrently experiencing love, sex, despair, and spiritual epiphanies… all building up to that absurd convenient store meet-not-cute. There was something in their reaction shots (especially Gus’s) that suggested not only “can you believe this situation I find myself in?” but “can you believe this is how they wrote it?” Comedy in the moment and comedy in a more meta sense of all that build-up to such an absurd collision. It reminded me of Burn After Reading with all the hard work Clooney does to shop and assemble his contraption only to reveal that absurd, thrusting-dildo sex chair.
Mickey is such a great character. She tries to come off as so together, hip and dismissive of convention, but she is really broken and vulnerable and longs to fit into social norms that she has almost no understanding of. Hopefully we get to meet her (presumably) fucked up parents next season.
Gus is also awesome. He constantly falls into situations by chance and then just goes with the flow. He cares deeply about weird things that mostly only hold value for himself. He tries to do good, but it usually blows up in his face. For better or worse, I see a lot of Gus in myself.
I also think that the ten episode season is just about perfect. Characters can really grow and filler is kept to a minimum. BTW, so much of the ‘filler’ in Love turns out to not be filler after all. Up above, Woolen complains about how he doesn’t want to see these characters at work, presumably because it takes away from ‘the action’ of the relationship between Gus and Mickey. I think that the work stuff goes a long way to flesh out the characters and how they interact with others. I think that the way Mickey dealt with her possibility of getting fired was very analogous to her reaction to Gus and Bertie’s date: she uses sex as a means of bringing the situation back under her control and restore her own sense of equilibrium.
I am digging this trend of shows about people who just don’t fit in to society very well but who also feel very real (usually). Love, Catastrophe, You’re the Worst, Transparent, etc. deftly meld the absurd with pathos to create something very real. So many of the characters start out as the archetypes, but then the writers add depth and the audience can start to relate to the plights of the antagonists and the flaws of the protagonists.
I think my favorite ‘networks’ right now are F/X, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix.
