Love Life’s Darby doesn’t have a moral compass and we like it

Just when you thought that you couldn’t possibly ever see a show with a slightly 90s approach to love lives and relationships, we were introduced to Darby Carter’s world which offers a fresh outlook on love and relationships. HBO Max’s anthology is amiable, light and easily bingeable.

I have always maintained that most of the new age relationship and dating shows have a heavy hangover of Sex And The City. Anna Kendrick stars as Darby, a young woman whose perfectly rom-com career rise in the art museum and auction-house world in New York City is not, at least for some time, matched by confidence or self-knowledge in her personal life. Kendrick manages to convince — aided both by the show’s careful eye for what New York City at the turn of the 2010s looked like as opposed to what it looked like in, say, January 2020 and by Kendrick’s own gifts for manifesting youthful insecurity and a growing sense of worth.

In all, “Love Life” is amply watchable, if telling a story that seems not to be demanding its own telling. The Magnus plotline’s sprawl — defying the rules the show itself has set forth — kind of epitomizes this: He’s a character more compelling than anything else onscreen, but his awfulness makes Darby’s ongoing tolerance seem beyond belief, if there weren’t so much time to fill and she weren’t a central character defined by her lack of definition. During this very Magnus plotline, (who is revealed to be Darby’s husband) Darby is drawn to having a one-night stand with an old flame from High School. (I am not revealing any spoilers). The fact that Darby’s character is so unabashedly guilt-free about indulging in it made the episode worthwhile. For years television shows and movies, wherein the woman had one or more suitors and been put in a position to make a choice, women were always shown to grow a moral compass at the last minute and ‘do the right thing’. Darby, here accepts when the relationship is over and moves onto the next guy. She has no qualms in even having a one-off thing with a guy at a party and giving him a false name. The guy, as we predicted was a typical fuckboi who wanted to gaslight Darby into thinking she broke his heart and it mattered to him why she didn’t bother keeping in touch, but as it has been already established that making up situations is Darby’s defense mechanism and we totally get it. She makes up a lie about getting Cancer as a teen just so she could have the guy she likes by her side. It is not shown whether she really regrets her decision, but how do we even judge teenagers, especially the ones coming from broken homes like Darby’s? Darby, who struggles to make a living as an Arts Curator/Expert in New York has more than she can chew on her plate. Every episode reveals a side of Darby which shows how vulnerable she is, but is strong enough to take certain decisions. Carrie regretted cheating on Aidan, Darby doesn’t. Her slacker of a husband and her fear of being alone got the better of her and that is why she married Magnus. She is in control of the fact that her marriage has ended like she is every time her relationship ends. As you watch, you begin to see what lies behind the walls Darby has put up around herself through failed relationship after failed relationship after failed tryst, which means Kendrick really has to bring it when expressing those tender, fragile parts of Darby’s heart.

There was a rule on Sex and the City that nothing could be written that didn’t literally happen to someone in the writers room or to someone they knew firsthand. While Love Life didn’t go that far, some of the plots on the show seem relatable as we are all veering through relationships, meeting the same kind of people over and over again and in all possible places across the globe.