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In Netflix’s Love, Gus decries the unrealistic standards that are perpetuated by romantic comedies. “A prostitute wouldn’t fall in love with you,” he concludes about Pretty Woman. “She would just steal your shit and sell it for coke.” With its pessimistic backdrop, Love is a darker take on the highs, lows and complexities of modern relationships. Yet Love also calls sobering attention to the unrealistic expectations that Gus’s discarded rom-com collection has already imposed on its characters.

Pretty Woman (1990), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), When Harry Met Sally… (1989) These are all Blu-ray discs that get tossed from the window of a moving car in the Netflix series Love (2016). After Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and Gus (Paul Rust) meet at a gas station, they spend the morning getting high, eating fast food and retrieving the rest of Gus’s belongings from an ex-girlfriend’s house. He begins to blame the box of movies in his lap for giving him unrealistic expectations about relationships. As Pretty Woman meets the street, Gus comes to the conclusion that “A prostitute wouldn’t fall in love with you. She would just, like, steal your shit and sell it for coke.” Failed attempts at romance have also left Mickey jaded. Along with its two leads, the show itself seems to be giving romantic comedies the metaphorical middle finger.

But the series is called, quite simply (and perhaps ironically), Love, and it almost exclusively focuses on the budding romance between Mickey and Gus. With its pessimistic backdrop, it joins shows like You’re the Worst (2014 - ) and Catastrophe (2015 - ) in offering a darker take on the highs, lows and complexities of modern relationships. This popular subgenre–a messier and much more realistic representation of love–is seemingly becoming the new romantic comedy. Yet Love adds another self-referential layer by calling both hilarious and sobering attention to the unrealistic expectations Gus’s disposed-of rom-coms have already imposed on its characters, and us.

In a rather unattractive meet cute, their story begins at a gas station. The timing, however, is predictably impeccable; Mickey just called an on-again-off-again relationship with a coke addict off (again), confessing to a room full of people while under the influence of Ambien, “Hoping for love has ruined my fucking life.” And Gus’s girlfriend told him she’d slept with someone else because she resented how much he loved her. (Has loving someone too much ever been a bad thing in a rom-com before?) For both of them, expectation and reality aren’t aligning. Therefore, expectation and reality aren’t aligning for us either. They seem perfectly miserable for each other, but sparks far from fly between them. Gus offers to pay for Mickey’s coffee after she realizes she’s left her wallet at home, but when he insists against reimbursement, she coldly replies, “Don’t be a fucking hero.” This doesn’t begin with a grand romantic gesture, but rather a casual small favor repaid.

Moments later, we learn Gus wants to write erotic thrillers–the anti-romantic comedy if there ever was one–and specifically mentions Fatal Attraction (1987). This particular reference gives us the feeling that maybe Gus and Mickey were at the right place at the right time only to meet the wrong person once again.

Glaciers have moved faster than Gus and Mickey’s relationship–it takes them half a season to even hint at something romantic–but even then it’s devoid of any stability. Mickey can’t connect with Gus’s friends. Gus starts sleeping with a coworker the day after his first date with Mickey. They accuse one another of being archetypes of the rom-com formula; he thinks she’s only interested in him because he’s the “nice guy,” and she thinks he’s only interested in her because she’s the “cool girl.” (In reality, Gus isn’t that nice and Mickey isn’t that cool.) And when the tension between them is at its highest, we learn that Mickey has been going to meetings for love and sex addiction, in addition to drug and alcohol abuse. The clear correlation suggests that love itself is a type of poison. And as the series slowly exposes it as such, its once-optimistic title becomes no more promising than the likes of You’re the Worst or Catastrophe.

With this reveal of Mickey’s love addiction, Love reaches its most compelling and original point as both a romance and a comedy. Instead of merely satirizing the traditional happy endings of rom-coms past, it suggests the feel-good genre has the potential to inflict serious and lasting damage on our relationships, or attempts at such. As the show ventures into heavier territory, it becomes an unnerving examination into Mickey and Gus’s expectations, as well as ours, regarding love.

Yet even as Love critiques the traditional romantic comedy, it continues to comically follow two people who are romantically involved. As a result, it attempts to replace preconceived notions with a much more raw and real take on its title topic. There’s no guarantee that Gus and Mickey will end up together, or even that they should. Sure, the first season ends with the typical Hollywood kiss. But at least it happens in front of a gas station rather than a sunset, where there’s no bright light to blind you from the bullshit.