Modern Love

Modern Love is a new series on Amazon Prime, and each of its 8 episodes is a stand alone story based on a column in the New York Times. In the column, people write in and tell their stories about experiences in their life that relate to love in its many forms.

If you have access to Amazon Prime, I recommend watching the series, it is very good. The episodes are uneven, though, with some being really, really good (Are two reallys justified there? Yes.) and some being just OK. I don’t want to give anything away because I find that I enjoy TV/movies/books more if I don’t know much going in, and if you were to actually TAKE my advice and watch, and then I ruined it for you, that would be a shame. What I can say without giving anything away is that my favorite episodes were the one with the doorman, the one with Ann Hathaway (she was really good in her episode), the one with the column, the one with the runners, and the one with the couple hoping to have a baby. The one with the 2nd date was good but not as good, and the one with the dad and the one with the couple playing tennis were the weakest of the lot, I thought.

You can, if you subscribe, go read the columns on the New York Times website. They are limited in space, and the series does flesh them out a bit to make them more satisfying. I’ve read two so far, and found them very similar to the show, and yet of course different as well. And of course there are many columns in the Times that are NOT in the show, so you can go down that rabbit hole, reading through the archives, if you would like. And I read there will be a Season 2 on Amazon next year, so that’s a good thing.

It does seem like most of what is good to watch these days costs extra money, doesn’t it? Above and beyond your normal cable (if you still have cable, that is). I still watch a few shows live, but not many…I like This is Us. I like a local restaurant review show, Check Please, Bay Area. Sometimes I sort of watch Meet the Press while catching up on my email and so on. And I like to watch cooking shows on PBS if I can find them. Otherwise, it’s all Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO, YouTube, and sometimes Hulu. We unsubscribe from Hulu when there isn’t anything we want to watch on, and then resubscribe when there is. (Meaning, Handmaid’s Tale). I would probably cancel our cable, but it comes free with our internet, except for HBO. Wow, that’s a digression from a post about Modern Love, isn’t it? I could call it, Modern TV Habits or something like that. If you have the chance, give the show a chance. Every episode is 1/2 hour, so not too much of a commitment.