Love Episode 1 “It Begins” Review

By Joaquin Gonzalez
Grade: B+

[Note: Like all Netflix original series, the first season of Love has been released all at once,

in its ten-episode entirety. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to write as if episodes

were released once a week as with on-air television.]

Judd Apatow has his own show again. Yes, Girls is under the domain of Apatow

Productions, and he also contributes as a writer, but he mainly just provides the platform

for Lena Dunham to unleash her brainchild (as Kanye would say, she just needed the

infrastructure). Yes, he was credited as a creator of Funny Or Die Presents, but he doesn’t

have a single writing credit on the sketch-comedy series, and everyone knows Funny Or

Die is Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s thing anyways.

All told, it’s been fourteen years since Apatow really helmed his last TV project, the

short-lived but posthumously cult-followed Undeclared. And his career has really taken a

turn since then. Until that point, he had produced and written a few movies sporadically

while working extensively in television on shows like The Larry Sanders Show and Freaks

and Geeks throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. But the Aughts saw him

transition heavily into film, becoming a prolific and highly involved producer responsible

for a large string of hits, some of which he also wrote and/or directed. It was during this

period that Apatow developed the brand that most people associate him with today:

romantic and bro-mantic comedies, often in the stoner and/or slapstick sub-genres.

Love, which he co-created with Girls alumnus Lesley Arfin and comedian Paul Rust,

brings the 21st-century-Apatow feel of films like The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up

to the medium where he first earned his stripes. The Netflix-original features Rust as Gus,

an on-set tutor, and Gillian Jacobs (Britta Perry on Community), as Mickey, a program

manager at a satellite radio station. Both are thirty-somethings coming off rough break-

ups: Gus from a previously stable, long-term relationship and Mickey from a caustic, on-

and-off thing.

The pilot establishes the series as low-concept, with a loose plot and lots of

character development: we follow the two protagonists separately through a sequence of

kooky situations which are meant to make us laugh, but just as importantly, to help us get

to know these people. Mickey is a little wild and a bit of a shambly mess, while Gus doesn’t

let himself go enough; as he tells a young woman when he finds himself at an impromptu

party: “Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been acting like a grown-up.”

Whatever their differences, by the time Gus and Mickey meet for the first time in a

chance encounter at the end of the episode, they’re in similar positions: alone and

wondering whether they might need to really work on themselves before they can ever be

truly happy. Love is screwball-y and raunchy, but there are certainly some more serious

undertones and themes waiting to be unraveled by the rest of the season. If the pilot is

anything to go by, watching that happen will be a humorous and satisfying experience.