Modern Love Review: Amazon’s New Series is All About Human Connection
Amazon’s newest series, Modern Love, which is based on The New York Times column of the same name, offers up individual tales about people from all walks of life in a search for human connection.
Each of the eight episodes has a different story to tell, and while I can’t help but think many of these stories could be more “modern,” what’s most significant is that Modern Love isn’t always focused on romantic love.
These aren’t stories of two people meeting, falling in love, getting married and living happily ever after. Life isn’t that simple, and neither are the stories being told. Still, there’s a feeling akin to the rom-com in each episode.
It’s light viewing and almost every episode is an enjoyable, easy watch, even when we’re examining bipolar disorder or homelessness. Each story is a “slice of life” that isn’t necessarily wrapped up with a bow, at least not in the traditional sense.
And because each episode is only thirty minutes, there’s a lot to be done and not much time for the exploration these stories deserve. They could all dig deeper and offer more complexity, but then, it wouldn’t be the easily digestible but still thought-provoking experience that Modern Love seems to want to be.
Modern Love Season 1 Episode 1, “When the Doorman Is Your Main Man” is one of the strongest episodes, and it’s one that leaves romantic love as more of an aside. What matters more is the unlikely friendship and platonic love between Cristin Milioti’s character, Maggie, and her doorman Guzmin (played by Laurentiu Possa).
This is a star-studded cast, by the way, and every performance is stellar as expected. Modern Love Season 1 Episode 4, “Rallying To Keep The Game Alive,” features Tina Fey and John Slattery as a struggling married couple who aren’t sure if they’ll make it once their kids are out of the house. For them, the love story is about whether or not they’ll be able to reconnect with one another.
The second episode has a split focus. Dev Patel’s character is the creator of a dating app while Catherine Keener’s character is the journalist interviewing. They develop a friendship as they share stories of the loves they had who got away, and as interesting and real as those stories are, the friendship their characters develop is the best part of it all.
Maybe the most surprising episode is Anne Hathaway’s, “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am,” which seems to want to channel Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and ultimately fails in that attempt, but otherwise offers an eye-opening story about bipolar disorder. In that case too, what’s most significant isn’t a story about romantic love at all, but one about the basic need for friendship.
The only story involving a homosexual couple is “Hers Was a World of One,” and while that seems like a missed opportunity to me, that episode manages to be one of the more complex, and it does a good job of showing character development in a significant way in just that half-hour time span with Andrew Scott’s character.
“At the Hospital, In Interlude With Clarity,” is as awkward as it is sweet, but it’s not entirely memorable (except for the reason these characters wind up at the hospital, which is bloodier than I expected after watching the episodes before it).
Least impressive is a “daddy issues” story that feels unsettling at times and even a little too cliche. Then the final episode, which is one of the more endearing and deals with “old love” as it’s put in the episode, is ultimately abbreviated for the sake of bringing all of the stories together.
It’s unfortunate that the story is so shortened, but the additional pieces to the other stories do serve their purposes. Some show what happened next, some show what happened before, and others show glimpses of things we weren’t shown in the other episodes. And, Peter Hermann makes an appearance, which I don’t imagine anyone could complain about.
Overall, Modern Love is perfectly entertaining and it does a nice job exploring a relatable theme. And the format makes it an easy watch that works well as comfort television. This is wrap up with a blanket and drink a cup of tea kind of TV, and who doesn’t appreciate that every now and then?
What did you think of this episode of Modern Love? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Modern Love is currently available for streaming on Amazon.
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Ashley Bissette Sumerel
Ashley Bissette Sumerel is a television and film critic living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is editor-in-chief of Tell-Tale TV as well as Eulalie Magazine. Ashley has also written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Insider. Ashley has been a member of the Critics Choice Association since 2017 and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her work as an editor and critic, Ashley teaches Entertainment Journalism, Composition, and Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.