Love (Season 1) [Archive]

Henry Gale

02-20-2016, 09:43 PM

Soooo I somehow ended up watching all 10 episodes last night, which is something I hardly ever do. Needless to say I really liked it.

The pace that Rust, Arfin and Apatow establish has an even more leisurely, lived-in quality that might be the worst nightmare of those who hate the lengths of Apatow's films (or maybe give it a pass because it's made in a episodic series?) but the dialogue and the rhythms of the characters interactions are just so strong, and I fell for it pretty easily by the second episode with the beautifully believable day-out Jacobs and Rust have together.

Like the early seasons of Girls, the finale here seems to be the weakest point, as any sort of huge resolutions or grand, tidy statements don't seem to quite click with the series' storytelling modus operandi. I did read somewhere that after the initial delay (Jacobs was committed to this until the day before her Community contract expired and Yahoo swooped in to save it) that Netflix essentially ensured them a second season here, but I'm not sure if that makes it more or less interesting that this is where they decided to leave things, as it feels more like a rush to an other more well-earned inevitability than how it goes about it just to neatly end a season with.

Bonus points for making me go "wha?!" on director credits alone, as John Slattery and Steve Buscemi helm episodes (along with Michael Showalter, Joe Swanberg, Maggie Carey, Dean Holland). Tons of UCB / Earwolf / Comedy Bang Bang-related cameos to be found here. One subtly sombre bit is a scene that scrolls through photos of Gus when when he was younger using real-life ones of Rust, including one of him and Harris Wittels.... Just watching this on the one-year anniversary of his death hit me in an unusual way for an appearance of someone in a fictional series not even acting.

Definitely recommended, either at your own regular show-watching pace or as something of a 5½ hour film the way I did it!