Stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere between real life and slick Hollywood gloss, John Carney’s “Modern Love” is back for a second season on Amazon Prime Video. Inspired by The New York Times column of the same name, this season opens itself up beyond New York City, with episodes taking place in upstate New York and as far away as Dublin, Ireland and London, England. While this allows for the stories to occupy more ground geographically, much like its first season, the show doesn’t quite live up to the potential of the talent found within its large ensemble cast.
The season is bookended by episodes about the complicated dynamics of remarriage. The season premiere, “On A Serpentine, Road With The Top Down,” features a strong performance from Minnie Driver, who is as irrepressible as ever, as a woman who feels a connection to her dead first husband when she drives his vintage Stag sports car. When her second husband asks her to sell it while the two are finding ways to fix their finances—the car is falling apart—this throws her and her eldest daughter for an emotional loop. While the episode looks gorgeous, when the literal manifestation of her first husband, a stoic Tom Burke, shows up, it veers dangerously away from the grounded emotions of the performers.
Similarly, the season closer “A Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open” stars Tobias Menzies, whose befuddled charm here is reminiscent of a young Hugh Grant, and Sophie Okonedo as a divorced couple co-parenting their children. The two have such easy chemistry together you root for their reconnection, but the episode then takes a melodramatic turn that draws groans. Not to mention the cloying moment when one of their young daughters plays Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” at a talent show on a blue ukulele. Give me a break.
The worst episode however belongs squarely to Carney, who wrote and directed it. Called “Strangers on a Train,” the episode was inspired by an entry in a series within the column called Tiny Love Stories. This particular story in its original form was a mere ten sentences long. Two young people meet on a train from Paris to Barcelona, argue over a plug, flirt for six hours, and then make a plan to meet up again at the station in Paris when they return. This “Before Sunrise”-esque story had the same ending as the film, only this time caused by the COVID lockdown.
Carney takes this simple story, changes their nationalities (in the original story the star-crossed lovers are French), and moves it to the train between Galway and Dublin in Ireland. He introduces us to the most obnoxious narrator maybe ever, a young Medievalist named Paula (Lucy Boynton) who judges everyone who might be her potential seat partner. It doesn’t help that Carney has assembled nothing but walking cliches (a cat lady, a “weird” looking man who is “comically” implied to be a serial killer, an idiot with an acoustic guitar who busts out in song).
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Paula is supposed to be “bookish” and therefore not like other girls (she calls some poor brunette an “Angelina” as an insult). There should be no room in 2021 for cliched “bookish” characters, let alone ones that are played by drop-dead gorgeous women that the audience is supposed to read as unpretty and awkward because they wear glasses and an ugly sweater vest. One would hope to think this is supposed to be satire given how dreadful the rest of this episode is, that may be giving Carney too much credit.
She meets a man who says he works in tech but really works in advertising, played by Kit Harrington, devoid of any charm. Somehow we’re supposed to believe these two have connected, despite their absolute lack of chemistry. Everything about the tone of this episode is abysmal, but the resolution takes the cake. What is supposed to feel deeply romantic, ends up equating to some skeevy stalker behavior. It’s hard to say if it’s better or worse that nothing beyond the initial set-up of this episode actually happened.
Thankfully the whole series isn’t a complete loss. One episode that manages some semblance of insight about love comes from first-time writer-director Andrew Rannells, titled “How Do You Remember Me?” This episode stars Zane Pais and Marquis Rodriguez as two men who went on one very intense date with disastrous results. Out on carefree strolls through the city with friends, the two see each other down the street. As the groups inch closer together, we get a glimpse of what once was from the point of view of both men. By using a frame narrative, Rannells allows his actors the space to explore emotions that are at once deeply melancholic, yet also wonderfully sublime.
While there are some good performances in the remaining episodes from the likes of Anna Paquin, Garrett Hedlund, and Dominique Fishback, they mostly leave viewers wishing these talented folks were given material that was on their level. There are some half-hearted attempts to give insight into queer youth, people with sleep disorders, the value of friendship over romance, and PTSD, but none of these episodes ring with much truth to them, despite the actors’ valiant efforts.
It’s unclear if authentic emotions are getting lost in translation at the column level, as people turn their love lives into entertaining stories to be consumed by readers of The New York Times, or if the problem is that, in going through yet another layer of translation via screenwriter and director, what is left on the screen is now so far removed from anything resembling humanity it’s almost baffling. Either way, this latest season of “Modern Love” leaves its actors stranded in a barren wasteland bereft of anything remotely true. [D]
“Modern Love” Season 2 debuts on Amazon Prime Video on August 13.