Love Episode 4 “Party in the Hills” Review
Reviewed by: Joaquin Gonzalez
Grade: B-
Better; not back to the level of the pilot yet, but better.
There are still a few instances of overdone Gus awkwardness, but he finally gets his moment in
the spotlight: teaming up with a bunch of strangers at a party for an impromptu rendition of
Paul McCartney’s “Jet”. Besides the fact that this jam session is good enough to make you
forget the really weird one that Gus partakes in with his friends during the teaser, it’s also
important because it’s the first time that he is being overtly cool around Mickey. And she
notices.
Mickey, however, is a different story. Actually, one could say she’s the same story. Obviously,
the idea of a character is that they should act a certain way consistently, and if they change, it
should at a believable pace. However, hammering home a specific aspect of a character too
much without revealing more of them makes them one-dimensional.
Gus isn’t the most compelling personality of all time, but at least there’s some depth to him; he
has aspirations of becoming a TV writer and at least one hobby, the aforementioned jamming.
We haven’t really seen anything like that from Mickey. This episode shows us, again, that she
struggles with relationships and romance, uses booze or drugs to deal with her emotions and
gets a little reckless. Which is fine; those are realistic features for a person to have. There just
needs to be a little more, something redeeming.
For comparison, look at Amy Schumer’s character in Trainwreck. She has all of those traits in
common with Mickey. The difference? She’s hilarious, so the audience takes to her even though
she’s not exactly a heroine.
In most comedies, the characters don’t need to be picked apart so much; humor covers up the
cracks. “Love”, however, plays a weird game of inviting you to delve deeper into the characters
while also trying to make you laugh, which is a hard thing to do. So far, it hasn’t really panned
out.
All that said, “Party in the Hills” has more of a feel-good element to it than any other episode
since the pilot, and it pushes Gus and Mickey one step closer to a romance which is really the
focal point of the show.
A tidbit: fans of Mad Men might be interested to know that this episode was directed by John
Slattery, best known as Roger Sterling from the AMC drama. Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) also
guest stars as one of Mickey’s ex-boyfriends.
