By Noelmy Abreu Marte
The definition of love is not something that needs to be explained but it is The show ‘Love Life’ is an amazing show that is able to conquer the attention of anyone that decides to watch it. It is an experience that can’t ever be forgotten. The storyline of the show is able to give you familiarity to the outside world because it feels like you are honestly watching someone you know go through all these life changes and trying to find someone new to share their life with all over again. You get very acquainted with the main character and who he really is among his friends and family.
In the show we get to see things like the ups and downs of falling in love, rejection, and the instability that makes the show that much more realistic about wanting love and never wanting to stop.
Love Life is a show that primarily goes through the focus of what being in love is and the issues that surround dating as an adult. Either way the main focus of season 2 for the show is how an already married African American man goes through the motions of getting a divorce and then tries to get back out there in the “dating scene”. Most of the articles you find online are reviews on the whole plot of the first couple of episodes for the season. They don’t explain how the first season correlates to an extent on how the new main character for the second season meets the new person he finds a connection with. The sequence of articles are able to provide a look into the story of the show, the motions of blind love, and how far things can progress when you are under that kind of “spell”. Through these articles we are able to learn all about what kind of significance happened throughout the show.
The story begins with the MAIN character named ‘Marcus’. During the first episode we get to see him at a friend's wedding where he then meets ‘Mia’. He finds himself attracted to her but doesn’t really try to show it because he is already married to ‘Emily’. He does end up befriending Mia by the end of the night. Throughout the days that follow we get a glimpse into Marcus and Emily’s relationship and how worn out it really is. Because of this Marcus ends up hanging out with Mia a lot more and he finds himself more intrigued and attracted to her. Emily ends up finding messages between him and Mia where he specifically says how his marriage has lost its spark and also flirtatious messages between them as well. They end up getting a divorce and in a matter of seconds (i am exaggerating of course) Marcus ends up getting with Mia. They start their relationship journey together and after 6 months of it Mia ends up breaking up with him. (Because she feels guilty for cheating on him) “Forgiveness is conceptualized as a process during which victims of transgressions experience changes in the way they think about, feel about, and behave towards their offenders”. Marcus ends up actually heartbroken. From that moment Marcus didn’t stop for a second and started going out with all different kinds of women almost like to fill a void inside him.
With all of that in mind I think it’s important to tie it all together with saying the show goes through the realistic points of falling in love and how it all crumbles as well as never wanting the love to end. For example Marcus never stopped to get himself together after Mia and him broke up. He simply kept going even though he needed to take a break and focus on his crumbling life and putting it back together. He kept chasing after “love” because he felt he didn’t get enough and most times people don’t get enough. He chased and chased and no girl truly completed his desire so he kept chasing until there was no other girl. He even went as far as moving in with a girl even though he hated their relationship and wanted to leave her. That’s when he realized that Mia was what he always wanted. That’s what I like to call the chase that NEVER really ends when looking for love and never wanting it to end.
The ups and downs of falling in love is everywhere in the show. It’s the main thing being represented. Marcus going through ‘withdrawals’ after Mia breaks up with him. He decides to keep trying and gets into another relationship. Not being able to wrap his head around all of his problems is why he doesn’t stop. “The definition of romantic love, a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between two people that reflects a high regard for the value of each others person..” The show also shows us forms of rejection that we all should know very well. “Rejection can be defined as the act of pushing someone or something away. One may experience rejection from one's family of origin, a friend, or a romantic partner, and the resulting emotions can often be painful.” ( I myself am going through that right now) Marcus and the girl he ultimately ends up moving in with do seem to disconnect specifically because of him and how much he actually does not like her. She finds out that his feelings for her are untrue and decides to kick him out but not after getting some things off her chest.
According to McFarland (2021) “one of the most important points to the show is showing how it is out there in the dating world. How each person goes through finding someone or even simply just a person to start things with. The author expresses the representation of a man, especially a black man trying to go through with finding love.” For the show it’s important to represent all types of people and the different kinds of relationships that happen to be a part of the real world because it is an adaptation of the most common concept of human interactions.
The main part of the topic is how difficult it is for the main character of the show to figure himself out after the divorce. Framke (2021) discusses how the actor (William Jackson Harper) shaped the show into a new light. The author talks about the progression for the actor and how he is able to complete his character development. Marcus in the show is seen as a guy that has an idea of what he’s supposed to be and an idea of what his life is supposed to look like. “Marcus experiments with drugs, sleeps with inappropriately young women, and over-commits to the first adult prospect who’s nice to him. He’s sure of what he wants, then only sure he wants nothing.” according to Indiewire. It is easy to assume that for the longest time he got in his own way before he could ever do or say anything he actually wanted. With the non-easy situation he gets in he has a lot of things to go through mainly with himself. And he’s having to rethink who he is at a time when he feels like he should have figured it out by now.
Although the show has all the qualifications of giving us a very realistic aspect of love, it still has its faults that make it seem like they rushed a couple of details just to make the show fit a lot faster than it needed to. One of the main problems was Marcus and Emily and their marriage. It is reasonable to believe that they didn’t have a great marriage anymore the way it was being presented to the viewers but “it’s unclear whether depicting Marcus’s wife Emily (Maya Kazan) as a perpetrator of their boring life was a framing device designed to make Marcus more quicky sympathetic”. When first watching the very first episode me as well as some of the reviews I read about it had similar questions in mind. It felt rushed in the aspect of Emily being the sole problem in the marriage when in fact it takes two people in a marriage for anything. I thought it was kind of harsh portraying Emily in that kind of way all because they wanted everyone to be ok with Marcus and her breaking things off. Making the audience want to pick sides with Marcus specifically for the purpose of continuing the show as he is the main character is brilliant but it also raises the question of who was really the problem when Marcus was purposely falling in love during their time together.
I think it's worthy of consideration to think about the side characters that make the show what it really is. Emily deserves better representation than the kind she got in the couple of episodes she got to be in. It’s also something to really think about when we see the dynamic of the couple and what they are going through in their relationship. While it was a smart thing to do it shouldn't have ended in that manner. I think it ultimately could've been a collective decision instead of her finding him saying all kinds of things about her to a strange woman who he was simultaneously flirting with. Let’s not behave like we wouldn't kind of hate Marcus for almost cheating on his wife either. But ultimately the show was able to give us lots of realistic representation in other parts of the episodes. And in the show we get to see things like the ups and downs of falling in love, rejection, and the instability that makes the show that much more realistic about wanting love and never wanting to stop.
In short the show “Love Life” is a great way to see a good representation of love in the real world unlike most shows that give us insane expectations that we ourselves cannot meet whatsoever. The reason lots and lot’s of people are so into the show is because it is able to give us a sense of familiarity like I’ve said before. You get very acquainted with the main character and who he really is among his friends and family. In the show we get to see things like the ups and downs of falling in love, rejection, and the instability that makes the show that much more realistic about wanting love and never wanting to stop.
Comments