Welcome back to our latest installment of Shows That Won’t Ruin Your Life.
Today I’m recommending LOVE on Netflix. Look, I goddamn love this show. If you follow me on Twitter, you are aware.
So... clearly I want everyone to watch the show. Ok: here’s the premise. Gillian Jacobs plays Mickey Dobbs, an early thirtysomething radio producer who makes out like she is The Cool Girl. But at heart we know she’s not. At heart we know she’s lost and scared (but not in a boring way). She goes to AA meetings, brags about how well she did at a party the other night (in which she was literally drinking straight vodka), and then in the quiet and privacy of her car resets the app on her phone that says how long she’s been sober.
Paul Rust plays Gus Cruikshank, a super nerd who works as a tutor for a “so bad it’s good” TV show about witches (Witchita). He’s kinda languishing in LA, feeling sorry for himself, and feeling self-conscious about his own insecurities.
Then he meets Mickey. And their relationship is tumultuous but relatable and everything you want from an awful/beautiful relationship. Seriously. I scream into a pillow because their pain is so visceral but SOOOO good.
Mickey is a complicated, often extremely unlikable character but the show immerses us in her awfulness frequently. Her struggles with sobriety and addiction in the second season especially are complex and challenging and the dynamic they establish between her and Gus in relation to that is so compelling.
The show has elements of screwball comedy--Mickey is so the dominant one in their relationship--and a super supporting cast like Claudia O’Daugherty as Mickey’s Australian roommate or Iris Apatow (yes, those Apatows) as the star of Witchita and Gus’ student.
The second season somehow is even better than the first and has such a clutch use of “Freedom” by George Michael it had me about 0.5 seconds from putting it on a HYH pod ep.
So.... have you watched LOVE on Netflix yet?