98 Time November 8/November 15, 2021
REVIEW
He’s loved and he’s lost
By Judy Berman
iT’s an old sTory. JusT when you Think you know
where your life is heading, somebody comes along and shoves
you off that path. One such transition shapes the smart second
season of Love Life, an HBO Max anthology series that follows
the romantic travails of a new character each season.
This edition opens with Marcus Watkins, a married book
editor played by William Jackson Harper, meeting his potential
soulmate Mia Hines (Jessica Williams) at a wedding. (Season 1
viewers will recognize Anna Kendrick’s Darby as the bride.)
Small talk leads to an “emotional affair” that hastens the end
of Marcus’ marriage. Instead of hopping over to Mia’s path,
however, as he’d hoped, he’s left lost in the woods, not just
single but also fundamentally confused as to who he is and
what he wants. The scenario yields a far fresher story than
Kendrick’s generic single-girl-in-the-city tale.
Like its predecessor, the season speeds through Marcus’ en-
tanglements at the rate of roughly one per episode, from the
eager but inexperienced college girl (Aline Mayagoitia) to the
older beauty who pays for fancy hotels (Leslie Bibb). But at its
core is the identity crisis his feelings for Mia set into motion.
A brainy guy who’s tired of having to prove his authenticity to
people—like a cocky young author he’s courting—who judge
him for not being “Black enough,” and exhausted by white
people who compare him to Obama, Marcus also has a strained
relationship with his hard-to-please dad (John Earl Jelks). That
tension doesn’t seem at all unrelated to his struggle to define
Black masculinity on his own terms.
As Mia drifts in and out of his life, hauling her own truck-
load of baggage, it’s through introspection, experience and
accountability that Marcus approaches
that elusive quality: maturity. Love Life
isn’t the first rom-com to trace a charac-
ter’s emotional coming-of-age through
successive relationships, but Harper’s
subtle, unaffected performance and
the insight with which the people in
his life are written and cast save it from
the glibness of works like John Cusack’s
High Fidelity. Punkie Johnson is a par-
ticular standout as Marcus’ lady-killer
sister Ida, while her Saturday Night Live
castmate Ego Nwodim brings nuance
to Ola, a woo-woo playwright girlfriend
of Marcus’ who might have otherwise
come off as a caricature.Onscreen rOmance has evolved
quite a bit since The Philadelphia Story—
and even since Notting Hill. We’ve seen
the genre diversify with movies like
Crazy Rich Asians and shows like Inse-
cure. The L Word, Looking and The Half
of It have explored queer romance. Yet
we still don’t see many love stories that
examine the difficulties a man, let alone
a Black man, might have to work through
in forming an identity independent of
his long-term partner. There is no male
equivalent to Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any-
more. HBO’s recent gender-flipped re-
make of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a
Marriage felt forced.
There are good reasons why find-
ing oneself post-breakup has become
an archetypally female narrative. Even
when we aren’t cutting ties with abusive
partners, women face a unique pressure
to please. But women don’t have a mo-
nopoly on identity crises. Whether he’s
putting up with his white boss’s micro-
aggressions or contorting himself to
fit Ola’s idealized conception of “Black
love,” the Marcus we meet lives largely
on other people’s terms. Only in inter-
rogating everything about his life—his
family, friendships, career and his ro-
mantic relationships—can he become a
person who’s ready for real love. As
RuPaul might say: If you can’t fulfill
your own emotional needs, how the hell
are you gonna fulfill anyone else’s?LOVE LIFE returns to HBO Max on Oct. 28◁
Harper plays a divorcé back on the market,
seeking self-awareness with every dateTimeOff Television
Women
don’t have
a monopoly
on post-
breakup
identity
crises