Season 1 of “Love Life,” starring Anna Kendrick as the unlucky-in-love Darby, left both of us underwhelmed. Though it was very watchable, and undeniably spoke to our passion for love stories, it was also weirdly lugubrious for a happily-ever-after tale. The chapter structure felt a bit choppy. The British (why??) narrator overexplained Darby’s emotional journey, and lent an odd whiff of pomposity to the whole proceeding.
So when season 2 rolled around, we might have given it a pass — except that the new lead was William Jackson Harper, playing unlucky-in-love Marcus. And look, we watched “The Good Place” and developed crushes on philosophy prof Chidi just like every other male-attracted person with a pulse. We were back in!
Harper’s Marcus is, like Chidi, a neurotic intellectual type, a 30-something book editor in New York with a ripped physique so unlikely that one of his lovers is compelled to ask him whether he is actually a CrossFit instructor. When t…
