Falling Whilst Black: Why I Love Love Life (Season 2)

A sentimental look at how my complex comfort show depicts (Black) love

Throughout all the changes I’ve undergone over the years, all the interests and hobbies I’ve picked up and dropped, all the obsessions that have occupied my mind and memories, what has always remained is my fascination with love.

Specifically Black love.

“Black love” is actually a phrase that I’ve grown pretty tired of, mainly because of the way it’s been turned into an aesthetic, but also because it can sometimes be used to reinforce a patriarchal, unrealistic idea of “love” that is hammed up for content. Projects that delve into “Black love” can sometimes neglect the love part of it and instead focus on the more superficial, clickbaity aspects of romantic life for Black men and women.

Nevertheless, there’s just something about the way that we love others and ourselves that has piqued endless amounts of curiosity in me; leading me to do sh*t like devour bell hooks’ seminal love trilogy, watch an unhealthy number of romcoms throughout my life, and read an unhealthier number of romantic novels over the past year. There’s probably a good reason for why I’m like this, idk, I’ll psychoanalyze myself later, maybe with some Wrays.

So with all this in mind, I’m going to take this opportunity to have a fond look back on one of my favorite stories about love, specifically Black love: season 2 of Sam Boyd’s Love Life.

What I would say really sold me on Love Life s2 was its earnestness and its refusal to apologize for being a story about a Black man falling in love in an era where the subject is often treated with so much cynicism (including by myself at times). In a previous piece, I wrote about how many of the Black stories about love that I grew up with would often fall into these cynical “battle of the sexes” tropes. In these stories, we would often see our leads fall for each other in ways that would feel adversarial as if love was a game where one side had to win, lose, or simply give up and settle.

While I still love films like Brown Sugar, Poetic Justice, Hitch, and Think Like a Man, something about these movies felt almost like Black people in love could never just be. It felt like, for a Black person to fall in love, there was a certain level of domination (the bad kind ya sickos), game-playing, and subjugation required, many Black characters who would grow to love each other would often spend ample screentime trying to angle for some kind of dominance over one another, being sure to take time to scoff at the mere idea of finding a deep and meaningful connection.

This was by no means a bad thing and I still enjoyed watching the strength of their feelings break down the barriers between them. However, I soon grew to desire a fictional experience of another, sweeter, more earnest type of romantic love, especially considering how rare any story of Black love was compared to the sheer number of stories about that Richard Curtis, ready-salted Walkers crisps love (that’s so unnecessarily mean, I actually love most of his rom-coms). I wanted to see a type of love that treated both parties as human beings who were too caught up in their own mess and mystified by the vastness of love to even begin to successfully treat it as a game to beat the other team (kiiiiiind of like Brown Sugar but without the nagging feeling that Taye Diggs should’ve ended that movie alone). Hence my love of Rye Lane, and my appreciation for Love Life s2.

Love Life 2 follows short king & book editor (what is it about people who work in publishing that makes them such great rom-com protagonists?) Marcus Watkins, played by William Jackson Harper of Ant-Man Quantumania fame, as we chart his journey from his first love of the series — his white wife, Emily — to his last love — the much taller and Blacker Mia, played by Jessica Williams. Each episode shows Marcus exploring different kinds of intimacy with different people. Some of these are casual sexual encounters, some long-term romantic relationships, and some aren’t romantic at all. It’s through charting these love stories that we see Marcus slowly grow as a person and develop loving, healthy relationships that will stay with him for the rest of his life.

So let’s get into why, despite its flaws, I love this season.

Marcus Watkins: A Little-Ass Boy

For starters, the main thing that endears me to the protagonist, Marcus Watkins, is that he kinda sucks.

He can be whiney, slightly pretentious, kind of a mess, passive-aggressive, narcissistic, selfish, dishonest with himself and others, and self-pitying, he also doesn’t always treat the people in his life particularly well, and his indecisiveness and poor decision-making lead him to hurt people (kinda like Chidi if he ended up with the Black woman he should’ve been with… wait am I still mad at The Good Place?). Honestly, there are a few times in the series where Marcus is just a piece of sh*t. The show is completely unafraid to make Marcus almost unbearable to watch at times without making him utterly irredeemable.

Harper’s performance helps Marcus to stay well-intentioned likable and relatable, even at his most cringe-inducing moments, and the writers make sure to remind us that Marcus is as prone to giving in to his worst impulses as the rest of us and is ultimately just trying to become a better version of himself. Through seeing the journey of his love life, we also get to see Marcus grow as a person, through each episode and each relationship shown, we see him learn a valuable lesson that ultimately turns him into the man worthy of finding his person.

Multiple Goes At Romance

One of the things I really appreciate about the format of Love Life is that it shows us that love is often not a straight line, sometimes it’s a big ball of wibbly-wobbly lovey-dovey stuff. It’s clear from the outset (to me at least) that Mia is the one that Marcus should be with, but at the beginning, neither of them is ready for each other. Each episode depicts a journey that Marcus and later Mia must go on before they’re ready for their happy ending, and even when they get together, they still f**k it up because they’re not yet ready.

I love the range of romantic relationships that we see Marcus have; the one-night stand he has with Paloma, a college student whose youthfulness brutally exposes just how old he feels as he re-enters single life; the long-term relationship with Ola that — despite his hastiness in rushing it because it should feel right — just doesn’t quite click for him once he’s reminded of Mia; the casual sleeping arrangement he has with that white lady that forces him to confront his own selfishness and readiness to be a parent; his quickie with Destiny, an old classmate that brings his mother’s meddling to the forefront, forcing him to finally confront and confide in her. Hell, even his brief living arrangement with Anjali and the quickness with which he ends it simply because it’s not working for him, shows some level of growth on his part.

A Lesson In Self-Love

“Self-love implies the care, respect, and responsibility for and the knowledge of the self. Without loving one’s self one cannot love others.” ~ M. Scott Peck, Further Along The Road Less Traveled

It’s so funny that the last time I used this quote was about a cyborg bear man in a pirate manga.

A big part of Marcus', and to a lesser extent, Mia’s growth is that in order to adequately love each other, they must first grow to love and accept themselves. Marcus begins the show almost completely unsure of who he is, prone to self-doubt, and constantly questioning himself and his Blackness (which we’ll get to later). The show brilliantly depicts the different ways in which Marcus needs to prioritize his own growth before being ready to settle down. Whether it’s through taking more accountability for how his marriage ended, engaging more with his father, taking more responsibility for his dreams, or being more honest with himself and others about what he wants and what makes him happy; the series shows us how taking care of and loving yourself first can put you in a place where you can be ready to receive and fully appreciate real love.

Different Forms of Love

I’m currently working on a project where I look at the different forms of love from birth to adulthood, and how they inform our approach to romantic love. But if you want a very quick look at how this concept works in practice, look no further than Love Life S2.

I really enjoy how this season dissects the different types of loving relationships that Marcus has on his journey to making it work with Mia. Through his journey, Marcus evaluates his relationships with the people he loves, whether it’s his (ex) wife, his sister, his mother and father, his boys, Mia, his failed long-term relationship with Ola, or, eventually, himself. Marcus is forced to take long, hard looks at the ways in which he both gives and receives love or cathexis to the people around him, all so that when he is eventually ready to be with his true love.

It’s Not All About Marcus

A particular highlight of this season for me is the characters who aren’t Marcus, and how their own lives and relationships not only provide a mirror for him but are also interesting on their own.

You get Ida’s struggles with love as an older lesbian, Yogi’s hilarious insights into his marriage and relationship with fatherhood, and the love between Marcus and Ida’s parents which is held up as the blueprint for them; even Kian’s pining for affection and eventual relationship with Emily, Marcus’ ex-wife is a fun little thread to follow. There are also smaller recurring roles that are no less meaningful like Trae, a young, Black author whose more confrontational and radical nature makes Marcus question his own Blackness but who ultimately has his own struggles with trying to be a successful Black author without compromising his values; watching he and Marcus slowly become friends who uplift each other is a lovely addition to the series.

Loving Whilst Black

It’s funny, the aspect of this season that drew me to it is also the aspect of it that I’m probably the most on the fence about, the handling of Marcus’ Blackness.

There are parts of it that I do enjoy and even relate with such as Marcus being forced to assimilate into a predominantly white workplace, but still trying to promote the work of Black authors even though his white boss is often either uninterested or intimidated by this.

I also quite like how Mia forces an awakening of sorts on Marcus, forcing him to question the role Black women will play in his love life moving forward, albeit with slightly clunky execution at times (Marcus’ fear of “f*cking it up with” Black women is hilarious, like… with all of them??? My brother in Christ there are many). While I struggle to relate as someone who has a very rigid preference, Marcus’ realization that he struggles to be his full self with his white wife is very entertaining to watch because it’s relatable to me as someone who personally just doesn’t see how I could be my full self with a partner who isn’t Black, and it’s fun to see how much freer and more understood he feels on a deeper level with Mia. When he ruins his marriage to Emily, it’s very interesting to see the subsequent relationships where Marcus “leans in” and the ones where he either keeps it casual or just isn’t as into them as he previously would have been. Even though his relationship with Ola ends on an *ahem* flaccid note, I still get the feeling that he’s at least made some progress, and the image of him resting his head on his stomach while she plays with his hair is burned into my brain (although I am a lil saddened by her cameo later in the story).

The part that I’m less keen on but understand is the role that Black trauma plays in bringing Marcus and Mia back together. I’ve found myself becoming less and less enthused at the ways Black pain is used in media, although this show definitely isn’t one of the worst offenders (Steve McQueen’s Widows holds that title for me, despite having the most revolutionary ebon-ing and ivor-ing in the history of the swirl-d according to Viola Davis). While I absolutely get how Black people can be brought together by the unique emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma of witnessing acts of brutal anti-Blackness such as the murder of George Floyd Jr, it just doesn’t sit right that this had to be the factor that pushed the plot forward when there was already ample material to develop both Marcus’ career path and his relationship with Mia organically. In a lovely piece of romantic escapism, this felt like a brutal and not entirely necessary slap of reality that I personally didn’t hugely appreciate.

I don’t know, is it possible to show a realistic depiction of Black love in the West without an element of racial trauma? Probably. I’d go deeper into it, but this section is a lil long and it’s time to wrap this all up.

Mia Hines

If I had to list my favourite scenes of this season, at least two of them would be ones in which Mia and Marcus disagree on something. Specifically, their first big fight after Marcus blames the collapse of his marriage on Mia, and their last break-up, in which Mia coldly dumps Marcus to cover her own guilt after she cheats on him. The reason I really enjoy these conflicts is that they both have a nice amount of nuance to them and Mia is either a tiny bit or very wrong in both of them, but in a way that feels very human and understandable.

In the first argument, for example, Mia recoils at the idea that she had any role to play in the failure of Marcus’ marriage and then rightfully demands that he takes accountability. What’s interesting, however, is that her own restlessness and refusal to look inward causes her to kinda gaslight Marcus a little, stubbornly denying that there was anything between them at all and rejecting his (correct) assessment that she was also unhappy in her own romantic life and reached out to him.

Jessica Williams does a really great job of depicting this push and pull within Mia, where every time she feels herself get attached to Marcus, she seems to catch herself and pull back out of fear due to what we later learn is childhood trauma. There was just something refreshing for me at the time watching a Black female character who was able to be smart, witty, and competent, but also immature and messy with an aversion to vulnerability and connection that almost makes her just as frustrating as her male love interesting.

I think Williams and Harper have great chemistry (something about their height difference just works for me) and, even though I think the insights into her character are a bit rushed, I at least appreciate that we get an episode delving into her relationship with her parents and the damage that this does to her relationship with Marcus (reaffirming the idea that every loving relationship you have is connected). It would’ve been nice to see more things from her perspective after their last break-up, as well as her own relationship with becoming a mother, but ultimately this is a show about Marcus so it is what it is.

Season 2 of Love Life is by no means perfect, and I don’t think anyone that I’ve spoken to about it with or recommended it to has been quite as enamoured with it as I am, but I think there’s a profound sense of comfort that I find in this show as someone now forced to re-think my romantic life as I approach my 30s. It’s an often messy, funny, heartfelt, and ultimately optimistic and non-cynical depiction of Black love that I truly appreciate, and I hope that we get more projects like this and Rye Lane (which you should watch).