I wouldn't normally watch a romantic drama TV show, but I'm a big Anna Kendrick fan so I gave it a go.
In some senses, I was very pleasantly surprised. The production is so well done that it feels like watching a film. The narrator makes it feel different to a standard romance and gives off "Pride and Prejudice" vibes. The dissection of past relationships idea is a solid concept and it works well to devote one episode to each of Darby's past relationships.
As Darby, Kendrick is funny as ever, and her facial expressions and sarcasm bring a rather flat script to life. Unfortunately, the writers dulled down the Kendrick effect by giving her a character who is inherently quite bland and has very little about her.
While the series starts really well, the more we see Darby through the lens of each relationship, the more we realise that she lacks an independent personality. I don't know whether this was poor writing or whether they were intentionally trying to make the point that Darby is always defined in terms of her relationships. I'm inclined to think the former based on the ending, which does nothing to subvert her lack of an independent personality. Either way, it didn't work and there is like to like about Darby.
She sails along on whatever life gives her, yet lands an incredible job without much effort. She has a difficult relationship with her mother, which isn't fully explained. She has issues that we don't really get. In short, we don't come to understand why Darby is the way she is, so the dissection trope is unrealised.
Now for the ending....
Disappointment #1: Of course, Darby can only experience "real love" when she has a baby, can only "find herself" by being a mother, can only repair her relationship with her own mother by becoming one. I wish the producers of these shows would think about the kind of message this sends to women, especially those who can't have or don't want children. Women's value is not defined in terms of motherhood, so please stop pushing this idea on us.
Disappointment #2: We get two episodes of Augie and two of awful Magnus, but we get hardly any of "the person" and learn almost nothing about him, so he fails to be a fully-formed character that we could believe Darby will spend the rest of her life with.
The ending, I guess, aims to subvert the notion that meeting the love of your life is all fireworks, but we are expected to believe that Darby meets her person while being rude to him, and that he keeps coming back despite her talking about nothing but herself and her baby and asking him one question about himself. Yes, romances are unrealistic, but we are given no reason to believe in their connection other than he thinks "it's cool that she's a mom". Again, the message is that Darby ceases to be her own person and is now defined in terms of her baby.
I really wanted the ending to be Darby taking control of her own life and learning to become an individual (like in Dakota Johnson's character in "How to Be Single"). Instead, we get the cliched, traditional ending where Darby does not become her own person but is instead defined in terms of her relationship with the three men in her life: her son, her son's father, and her person. Can't we offer anything new, anything more progressive or empowering than that?
In some senses, I was very pleasantly surprised. The production is so well done that it feels like watching a film. The narrator makes it feel different to a standard romance and gives off "Pride and Prejudice" vibes. The dissection of past relationships idea is a solid concept and it works well to devote one episode to each of Darby's past relationships.
As Darby, Kendrick is funny as ever, and her facial expressions and sarcasm bring a rather flat script to life. Unfortunately, the writers dulled down the Kendrick effect by giving her a character who is inherently quite bland and has very little about her.
While the series starts really well, the more we see Darby through the lens of each relationship, the more we realise that she lacks an independent personality. I don't know whether this was poor writing or whether they were intentionally trying to make the point that Darby is always defined in terms of her relationships. I'm inclined to think the former based on the ending, which does nothing to subvert her lack of an independent personality. Either way, it didn't work and there is like to like about Darby.
She sails along on whatever life gives her, yet lands an incredible job without much effort. She has a difficult relationship with her mother, which isn't fully explained. She has issues that we don't really get. In short, we don't come to understand why Darby is the way she is, so the dissection trope is unrealised.
Now for the ending....
Disappointment #1: Of course, Darby can only experience "real love" when she has a baby, can only "find herself" by being a mother, can only repair her relationship with her own mother by becoming one. I wish the producers of these shows would think about the kind of message this sends to women, especially those who can't have or don't want children. Women's value is not defined in terms of motherhood, so please stop pushing this idea on us.
Disappointment #2: We get two episodes of Augie and two of awful Magnus, but we get hardly any of "the person" and learn almost nothing about him, so he fails to be a fully-formed character that we could believe Darby will spend the rest of her life with.
The ending, I guess, aims to subvert the notion that meeting the love of your life is all fireworks, but we are expected to believe that Darby meets her person while being rude to him, and that he keeps coming back despite her talking about nothing but herself and her baby and asking him one question about himself. Yes, romances are unrealistic, but we are given no reason to believe in their connection other than he thinks "it's cool that she's a mom". Again, the message is that Darby ceases to be her own person and is now defined in terms of her baby.
I really wanted the ending to be Darby taking control of her own life and learning to become an individual (like in Dakota Johnson's character in "How to Be Single"). Instead, we get the cliched, traditional ending where Darby does not become her own person but is instead defined in terms of her relationship with the three men in her life: her son, her son's father, and her person. Can't we offer anything new, anything more progressive or empowering than that?