Being In Love With Netflix’s Love

Season two of Netflix’s Love broke my heart. I watched the first two episodes over Japanese food with a friend, and a few more after she left. I felt prematurely sad that I was going to be done with the season so quickly and woke up the next day excited to plunge back into the 30 minute jewels. However, as I neared the end of the season, my love for Love morphed into anxiety, my watching interspersed with eating leftover udon and playing solitaire on my phone to dull some of the cringeworthy scenes.

Season two picks up with the gas station kiss where season one left off. Mickey and Gus go through a series of will-they-won’t-they While working their way towards each other. It’s hard to take your eyes off of Gillian Jacobs as Mickey Dobbs and Paul Rust as Gus Cruikshank. The unlikeliness of their pairing draws them to each other. Gus foils Mickey’s confidence, mystery, and adventure, with reliability, kindness, and devotion. In truth, is there anything better than the beginning phase of a relationship? When you are discovering each other and even the flaws seem so charming, so intriguing. The possibility of who Mickey and Gus could each become through the relationship hangs in the air.

Judd Apatow has a knack for making the viewer feel like she is inhabiting the characters’ lives. The magic of how real Love feels exists in the intimacy of minutiae, of watching movies and ordering takeout and talking about work. There were several times when I had to remind myself that all of season one and most of two was taking place over the course of 3-4 weeks. And just as you get comfortable in the little world Gus and Mickey inhabit together, Gus is sent to Atlanta with his student, Arya, for a month, and their little ecosystem is disrupted.

Mickey begs Gus for constant contact while gone and says she isn’t good with distance; Gus gives her Hemingway in a futile attempt to start a long-distance book club. They both make promises before he departs. Once in Atlanta, Gus tries to keep up the relationship through text, skype, phone, and phone sex. Mickey pulls away and into work and her ex. The storyline mirrors this feeling of distance, we go from the episodes existing over a few hours to a few weeks.

When Gus makes his way back to LA and eventually, back to his relationship with Mickey, something is fractured. While the season ends with a more concrete relationship status, instead of feeling like it’s the beginning of something new, I feel sad for the pain that they will inevitably put each other through.

I still loved Love and I still love actual love, but both will break your heart.