One of the things that made the Lesley Arfin/Paul Rust/Judd Apatow-created Love so engaging for its lack of engagement in the first season was that it was unafraid to stall on those uncomfortable moments of intimacy that most cameras tend to pan away from before the audience starts to cringe too much. The happenstance meeting of Mickey Dobbs (Gillian Jacobs) and Gus Cruikshank (Rust) at a gas station convenience store leads to the type of lingering encounter that fewer and fewer people are even capable of imagining, what with a certain dependency on apps for securing physical and “emotional” contact.
And through the ups and downs of season two that find them at a stasis by the six month mark that commences the third and final season (three is really the number to go with on a Netflix series), Mickey and Gus are at an almost unreal place of gushiness, making the viewer nearly want to cover their ears and look away as the two go on about how much they love each other’s morning breath. It’s really quite nauseating, even to someone who can stomach scenes of this ilk. With Mickey in recovery for her sex and love addiction (in addition to alcohol), Gus is starting to wonder if perhaps he was only attracted to her for being a “wounded soul,” in turn comparing himself to mac and cheese while amid a group of people (Al-Anon, presumably), describing Mickey’s interest in him as the kind one initially has for the unhealthy “pasta dish” before finally getting disgusted by the middle of the eating session and then never wanting mac and cheese again. And speaking of such an analogy, Bertie’s (Claudia O’Doherty) continued “dating” (if you can call him living with her against her will that) of grotesque and useless Randy (Mike Mitchell) serves as one of the most irksome aspects of the show–yet also among one of the realest, for who among us has allowed a relationship to go on long after it was dead?
As she nurtures her attraction to Chris (Chris Witaske), another member of Gus’ jam band specializing in creating movie themes for films that don’t have them, she begins to understand that she’s settled into the very same rut that left her wanting to flee Australia in the first place. This revelation comes during one of the most satisfying episodes of season three, “Bertie’s Birthday,” in which she finds herself with no one to celebrate with as a result of notifying Mickey and Randy the morning of her first official mark of aging in America. With Mickey obligated to help Stella (Jessie Ennis) interview a sex worker that evening for the radio show of the same name and Randy confined to being near a toilet as a result of some medicine he needs to take the night before his colonoscopy, Mickey grasps at straws for what to do. Her answer comes in the form of Chris, who casually invites her to get free cake at The Smoke House, a restaurant he works at as the most aged waiter, therefore making him the butt of every joke. As the two re-spark the same chemistry they had at a party from before, Bertie blatantly questions why she’s permitted herself to fall into another unsatisfying, safe rut with Randy.
Where Mickey’s old adversary and unwanted sex partner/former boss, Dr. Greg (Brett Gelman), is concerned, the writers choose to leave him as a loose end–though he does seem to provide a source of great emotional stress and temptation to relapse as the season goes on and he becomes increasingly volatile and erratic the less relevant he becomes. To that point, some of the most complex plot points pertaining to the current gender clash come in the form of Dr. Greg, who begs Mickey–in her stead as producer–to come on Stella’s show for what he antiquatedly refers to as a “he said, she said” perspective. As one of the foundations of the eighth episode, “Stunt Show,” watching Dr. Greg lose it over the air, followed by his suspension from the station affects Mickey in ways that manifest in her desire to order a drink–especially after Stella and another colleague, Truman (Bobby Lee), mock his patheticness. The sight of his spiral perhaps hits too close to home for Mickey, and we’re never given precise clarity on what will happen to Dr. Greg–in spite of us not really caring since he is an annoying and entitled dickhead in the vein of Randy.
Once the arc of the show hits its stride by the tenth episode, “The Cruikshanks,” it becomes evident that Arfin, Apatow and Rust want to get in one last moment of bated breath from the audience as they expect everything to fall apart as it always does with Gus and Mickey, perhaps too different to function together in the long term. Yet, possibly not wanting to discourage its viewers from the old platitude “opposites attract,” it is ultimately their reversal of yin and yang natures that solidifies their rapport in a fashion that serves as the ultimate twist for a show like this–one that we came to count on for its Blue Valentine cynicism. In fact, that it ends so happily is almost a disappointment. Or is that just the miserable, abandoned Dr. Greg within me talking? Whatever loyal viewers’ take on the outcome, it can at least be said that Love perfected a new genre for the so-called TV rom-com. Made it more tantamount to watching a scary movie unfold as we recognize the same destructive behaviors in Mickey and Gus that we ourselves are or have been guilty of. Except, in Mickey and Gus’ case, the two seem to take a comfort in one another’s averageness (for being a radio producer and a TV show writer amounts to “average by L.A. standards”), whereas other couples with their level of argumentativeness tend to either be so as a result of “competing” or for more conventional and prosaic reasons–like financial inequity.
But no, it seems, as we are hit upon the head with via “Catalina” (the series finale), that despite all evidence to the contrary, Mickey and Gus are tailor-made for one another, ergo transforming Love into a more subversive show than we initially thought.
