Because love's hard; bohot hard

You have to see it as I did to believe the sort of frenzied fanboy worship Charlie Brooker writershowrunner of Black Mirror inspires at a place like the New York Comic Con which is usually Mecca for Marvel bhakts going madAnd yet Black Mirror on Netflix is the kind of show that whenever I recommend it to friends invites a uniform response No no looking for something light to watch yaar tonight It might be a series admired by absolutely everyone But dedicatedly watched by only a few among the same lotAnd whats light anyway I guess something breezy is the usual explanation But the reference is inevitably to and Im pretty sure about this a romantic comedy Hard to tell why the postMegRyanHughGrantJuliaRobertsJudeLaw Hollywood stopped enthralling audiences with syrupy chocolateflavoured romcoms Not referring to Kissing Booth Riverdaletype teeny stuff Thatll always have its time and placeMaybe the larger point is if you can tackle romance without going Diet Coke or hard liquor about it Sure Make no mistake Black Mirror is to the nearly dystopian presentfuture mdash shocking you with a strange sense of recognition mdash as Easy on Netflix is to modern romance in abnormal sizes and uncomfortable shapesAnd Joe Swanberg the writercreator of the surprisingly underrated gem Easy Season 3 2019 deserves the same heroworship as Brooker How deep has he gone into internal recesses in order to relentlessly spin a series of short stories with such fullbodied characters dealing with love or the losslack of it in such relatable environments while people go about their regular day mdash chiefly dayjobs mdash rather than fixate as if their lives wholly depended on itThis is as true for the life of the mind Certainly truer than regular starryeyed romcoms where everyone lives happily ever after Or trueblue romances all of which seem derived from Romeo and Juliet who had probably met twoandhalftimes their whole life to give it all up for it The sheer complications of navigating a postmodernTinder world is enough to land you a mindf Sex seems easypeasyLike Black Mirror Easy is an episodic show in the sense that each halfhour episode is an altogether separate short film with an overarching theme of course and technology being common to many Characters overlap between episodes sometimes so their stories move forward Otherwise half an hour mdash short and sweetbitter and youre doneBy now Im beginning to prefer this over longform storytellingconsuming that seems unsustainable over a period of time Seriously lifes too short man How many shows over how many seasons would you binge over how many hours months and years to feel like youve had enough to find several anew and carry on stillFlip side Each short in Easy may not hit you the same way as the others Youve got to take your chances And if youre into friendly personal reccos Id say start with S1E5 Art And Life S1E8 Hop Dreams which is an extension of S1E3 Brewery Brothers S2E3 Side Hustle S2E2 Open Marriage S3E2 Private Eye I could go onEither way prepare yourself to enter dark or empty spaces filled up with mirrors so you can see both genders negotiating their roles without a clouded judgmentWhats common to all these shorts besides some fancy apartments is also a multiethnic crossracial nature of love where neither matters This is only possible in very few big cities of the world Which takes me straight to Modern Love that recently dropped on Amazon Prime and is to New York City what Easy is to ChicagoModern Love although surely fictionalised is based on personal essays from The New York Times under the column of the same name How is it different from Easy given that it is also an episodic series centred on the idea of relationships in a contemporary churnIt isnt by way of how it draws you in There is something about this genre that inevitably speaks to you more directly than any other Whether or not youve ever seenknown a killing crimemurdermystery bank robbery heist or landed up in space or into the future scifi 100 per cent chances are youve fallen in or out of loveAlso a pure relationship drama seems the most writerly of all genres with such little getting in the way of what you visually say allowing performers to get closest to living the real thing mdash with a few crutches that cinema can affordThat said Modern Love is the kind of show Id instantly recommend to Black Mirror nonfriends looking for something light for the night And man inch by inch does it blow you over Since this is a reccospecial aimed to help you start on the two shows Ive slept with for two nights in a row mdashwith Modern Love first please press E1 And well just dont stop thereafter Maybe fleetingly halt at E3 and wonder How did they turn a newspaper column into a goddamn musicalMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the 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