I was scrolling through my Netflix queue and saw something that caught my eye. I’d never taken Love off of it. And then it dawned on me, it was here and gone in a media flash. I saw a few reviews giving it pretty good praise, but other than that there was hardly anything written or said about it. Especially not when compared to the other shows Netflix has put out. And I think it’s criminally underrated.
Maybe it’s because I related to Gillian Jacobs’ character, Mickey, and her lost direction in life a little too much. Or because I’d been in Paul Rust’s Gus’ socially awkward shoes one too many times. Either way Love got me — hook, line, and sinker.
Mickey is not a nice person. Yeah she’s living in Los Angeles, but she hasn’t “made it.” She’s a young working professional but doesn’t have everything together. The show opens with her having sex with her cokehead ex-boyfriend; then going to get cigarettes and coffee the next morning only to fight with the cashier about running back home to grab her wallet after already holding her purchase. For a late 20-something in LA, she has a decent job at a radio station as the programmer. But that doesn’t mean she knows what she’s doing, or is personally heading in a great direction. She’s also an alcoholic struggling to stay sober — or more often trying to get sober.
In the episode “Party in The Hills,” Mickey invites Gus to a housewarming party she’s going to later, then completely ditches him to talk to Dustin, an ex-boyfriend of hers. That talk quickly falls apart, as Dustin accuses her of stealing his laptop and burning her cigarettes into his couch. “You destroy everything you touch!” he yells at her. Mickey can barely start to defend herself before he throws a cheating accusation at her. The whole thing causes her to storm off and get a drink, after which we see her become more and more drunk. She runs into another ex, Eric, and is arguing with him when Dustin comes back at her with apparent proof she cheated. It’s all too much for Mickey, especially when she sees Gus making friends and enjoying himself. She culminates a desperate attempt to relive “the wild days” by jumping off the house roof yelling, “We’re not dead yet fuckers!” Afterwards, her outburst becomes incredibly sympathetic and relatable as she’s sitting on the floor drying off and she says, “I just wanted to have fun.”
Gus isn’t the nice guy trying to get the hot girl either. This isn’t that story. He thinks he’s nice, sure, but that’s shot down in the first few minutes he’s introduced. His girlfriend breaks up with him in bed one night for being “fake nice.” She says he acts nice, but he isn’t inherently a nice person. That moment puts Gus on downward spiral for most of the season. He’s always been that socially awkward kinda guy, but now he’s questioning himself a little. And as for his job, he has a pretty good gig as an on-set tutor for a teen actor — but he really wants to get into screenwriting. He constantly is trying to get himself into the TV writer’s room to get his ideas heard, although it often falls on deaf ears.
A clear example of Gus’s “fake nice” is in the episode “Andy,” when he goes on the date with Bertie, Mickey’s roommate. He feels as if Mickey pawned him off onto someone else, and takes it out on Bertie. He subtly condescends her job as a focus group moderator, their waiter at the restaurant, and even Mickey’s friendship.
“That’s a nice way of thinking about it, most people say focus groups dumb everything down.
Oh Mickey hangs out with the cool kids? Like I’m not a cool kid?
So why do you think Mickey pawned us off on each other? You think she thinks we’re freaks?”
And even though during that episode Mickey messes with them both, by getting them to both blow the date, she is taking the next step in figuring herself out. Through a talk with her neighbor Mickey realizes her track record with past boyfriends. Her neighbor, who had followed a similar aimless path in her youth, tells her “I didn’t meet Jeff until I decided I deserved someone nice.” It’s then Mickey realizes maybe she should reconsiders where she’s put some people in her life (Gus).
Love is also an honest look at love in real life. Love in real life is messy, it’s not perfect rainbows and sunshine all the time. It’s two humans trying to connect with each other — they’re going act like human beings and mess up. A lot. With Love, the show is constantly breaking down the barriers and facades Gus and Mickey try and put up for each other. Whether that’s making the two of them see the other isn’t perfect either, or if that’s letting the viewers see that. It’s about breaking through the charades we play in navigating that side of living. Of course we all want to put our best foot forward and be the best that we can for the ones we care about. But that’s not something we can do everyday, all the time. And I really enjoy how even though on the surface Gus is the “nice guy” to Mickey’s “cool girl” — the show constantly digs deeper into each of the characters. It shows that there’s more to them and there’s more to Love than just two people constantly working to impress the other.
Did anyone else like Love as much as I did? What did you think of Mickey and Gus?