Falling in “Love”

Music memories and Netflix’s LOVE

Is it a good thing that we can binge-watch whole seasons, entire runs, of a favorite TV show? When I was a kid, without VCR and with only three major networks, favorite TV shows were once a week entities (with weird exceptions like “Peyton Place” and “Batman”), and woe be unto all of us were a show to be pre-empted by, say, a Presidential address, a rocket launch, or a fever on the freeway that blacked-out the night.

I’m not saying I’d trade today for that past, because as Carly Simon once sang,

“These ARE the Good Old Days.”

And my wife and I — usually at my urging — try to contain our bingeing, by watching no more than three or four episodes of our latest fave-du-jour at a time. That was really tough during the epic run of Schitt’s Creek, and very hard right now with Clickbait.

Sometimes we need a one-off break, so last night we finally watched Taylor Swift’s documentary, Miss Americana, and I’ll have more to say about that in a later story, I hope (Get ready Noah Nelson!).

Two nights ago, however, we went back to the series I MOST want to watch, the one I am MOST in love with:

Netflix’s Original Series, Love, created by Judd Apatow and starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust, two actors who, before I found this series, I’d never heard of.

We’re in season three (so sadly, the last season), and we watched episodes 7–9, leaving us now only three more episodes.

I’m dying inside: I want the show to go on and on and on (yes, like that very Wilco song). Sure, Rust’s character “Gus Cruikshanks” sometimes makes me very uncomfortable, mainly because he hangs around just a little too long in spots where he’s clearly not wanted (I can identify in part when I remember crashing a party at my own college house in the summer when I was supposed to be gone, watching the couples clinging and clawing beyond me). Gus is fairly self-possessed, though, and even more oddly, he is entirely right for Jacobs’ character Mickey, a woman who’s a recovering alcoholic, sex and love addict.

Love is about their relationship and that of several of their friends, too (Mickey’s roommate — an Aussie transplant here in LA — almost steals several shows). But just as much, it’s a quirky romantic homage to the ways we love ourselves, the times we short-change ourselves, and the hopefulness that we can find ways to start again, alone or with a loved one, even a newfound loved one whom we’re not so sure about at first, or maybe at third, too.

For, truly, when do we ever decide we’re sure about someone we’ve met? How long does it take? How many break-ups, infidelities, misunderstandings, counseling sessions, meals with potential in-laws, and late-night reassurances that you’re ok when you know you aren’t, when you’re pretty sure that you DON’T want to be with this person any longer, can any one couple take?

I don’t have the answers, though I have been married to the same person since 1984 (in the year of George Orwell). It’s work and love, which is maybe why I love Love so much. Someone, many people actually, work quite hard to make the series work. It’s funny, stupid, endearing, and frustrating, and Mickey and Gus keep enough of their pasts and present secret that a fictional series in this case seems real to me.

One of my favorite doses of reality comes with the soundtrack to the series. I don’t know who selects the songs to underscore Mickey and Gus’s relationship, but whoever it is thinks carefully and knows how moods work — how they display character insightfully and how they move an audience to that incredible stasis/epiphany that James Joyce writes of so lovingly (and frustratingly).

For instance, in episode seven of season three, Gus and Mickey go to a wedding — one of Gus’s old college pals. There, of course, is a woman Gus formerly lived with, formerly was engaged to, and seemingly, formerly loved (played well by former SNL-er Vanessa Bayer). It’s difficult: Gus doesn’t love her any longer, and Mickey is sure the old flame still flames for Gus. It’s messy, and after she gets staggeringly and sloppily drunk, Gus volunteers to drive his old love back to her hotel, which his current love, Mickey, finds, ahem, unacceptable.

“What would you have done?” my wife asked at this moment.

I didn’t respond; instead I called her attention to what was really killing me: the song.

A song I couldn’t place, though the singer’s voice was hauntingly familiar. So, instead of driving my poor mind crazy — and to further avoid my wife’s innocent question — I looked it up, and felt both vindicated and shamed when I discovered it was the sound of Karen O and The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. A song from 2003’s Fever to Tell:

“Modern Romance.”

Gus is driving back from putting his ex to bed — and I mean, he comforts her, waits till she falls asleep, after she has told him that she’s glad he’s happy — toward home, a place he mainly shares with Mickey. You’ll understand the mood and maybe what all Gus is feeling when you have a listen right here.

I think we all understand that when you end it with someone, especially someone you’ve gotten so close to marrying, that breaking up, while maybe indicating a falling out of love, doesn’t negate the months and years you spent in love, or at least thinking you both were.

Once, I came close to marrying someone else. I instigated the closeness, and in the end, I ended it a few years later — years that were spent mainly in long distance, with late night phone calls where we spent as much time reassuring each other that we were right, that the distance didn’t mean so much, and that “Someday, We’ll be Together.”

Was it truly love? We thought so, and for a while it had to have been, at least until it wasn’t any longer.

In a way, what I think of when I think of this person, whom I last saw almost 40 years ago, is nothing but tenderness. I’m not proud of making such a sudden halt in what we had, but as little as I knew back then (or now, let’s face it), I understood that “we” would never make it together.

And yes, I’m glad we didn’t work on the relationship or take it to counseling, because, just six months after we ended, I met another woman, my now and forever wife. My love.

But I remember, and I know, that even when relationships are over, our feelings remain: complicated, convoluted, strange, and sometimes definitely unsettling. So, while I was never as in love with this person as I have been with my wife, I did love her once. We had years together.

She and I spoke once after breaking up. She called me and told me I had handled things badly, and I agreed. I told her I was sorry, and I was.

But I quit being sorry a long time ago, because some loves just end.

Like a TV series called Love.

I don’t know when we’ll watch the last three episodes, but it will be soon. I hope it all ends well. I hope the lovers, Gus and Mickey, stay together.

I hope these lyrics apply only to those past loves — the ones that have already faded:

“Don’t hold on Go get strong Well don’t you know There is no Modern romance Time time is gone It stops stops who it wants Well I was wrong It never lasts And there is no Well this is no Modern romance And time time is gone It never lasts Stops who it wants Well I was wrong It never lasts This is no There is no Modern romance There is no modern romance This is no modern romance There is no There is no.”

Thanks for reading, for being vulnerable, for falling in love, for making this TV series. For writing your heart out on Songstories: Christopher Robin, Samantha Drobac, Paul Combs, Chris Zappa, David Acaster, Keith R. Higgons, Rob Janicke, Kevin Alexander, Jessica Lee McMillan, Nicole Brown, If Ever You’re Listening, Kathryn Dillon, Jim Mowat, Alexander Briseño, Reuben Salsa, and Alex Markham