Welcome to The A.V. Club’s Love binge-watch. From Friday, February 19 through Sunday, February 21, A.V. Club contributor Shelby Fero will be watching and reviewing every episode of Netflix’s new romantic comedy. You can watch and comment along with her here, or chime in on the individual episode reviews. For those watching the show at a more moderate pace, reviews by Molly Eichel will run daily starting Monday, February 22.
Rounding out season one of Love, “The End Of The Beginning” is all peaks and valleys: Filled with more punchlines than any other episode, it also delivers the most punches to the gut. Like the pilot, Mickey and Gus spend the bulk of the finale separate. He has his first (and last) taste of working in a writer’s room before being loudly dumped by Heidi, while she spends the day searching for her missing cat and trying not to think about Gus. Love impresses in its ability to consistently find humor in the worst parts of ourselves. Gus can freak out on the writer’s assistant–because she’s not writing down his idea–but still apologizes for almost dropping her computer. When a foul-mouthed stranger is surprisingly helpful to Mickey, she’s quick to thank him and call him an ass. Even Bertie, who finally stands up to Mickey, is too easily cowed and pushed over. Arfin, Rust, and Apatow treat their characters like humans, and humans are good and bad and awful and great. It’s never all or nothing.
We’ve seen Mickey and Gus make incremental progress as human beings over the course of the season, albeit imperfect progress. The Gus who gets told he says “I love you” too much by girlfriends now grabs at computers and yells “fuck you” when he’s upset. It’s not an acceptable way to express anger, but there’s no denying it’s there. And half the battle is admitting you have a problem (of course, the second whole half is fighting a battle). And when Mickey catches herself lying to Randy about why Gus “totally hates her” after looking at Bertie’s face, it’s only a flash of accountability. But a flash is infinitesimally more than nothing. She progresses from mistakenly accusing Bertie of letting the cat out to manically displacing her emotions onto an employee at the local animal shelter (the always great Betsy Sodaro), to attending her first Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting. She makes a couple of mistakes (like yelling at all those people earlier), but they lead her in the right direction.
There are a couple fumbles in the season close: The SLAA stories run from seemingly-joking to heartfelt, so it’s unclear what to take seriously, and to what degree. Gus’s job being salvaged through a Deus Ex Arya is a little fishy, but her point is valid (“That’s your fault! You made him a writer, why did you do that? He just doesn’t understand the campy quality of the show!”). Arya might be the only one feeling any sort of healthy attachment to people around here.