He treats his wife pretty abysmally, and he can be stubborn and impulsive. Marcus makes some bad choices in this series. Somewhere along the line in the interpretation of scripted television, rooting for a character became synonymous, for some, with agreeing with all of their choices. He’s a handsome, natural star - like The Good Place did, Love Life makes sure the audience is aware that Harper is absolutely jacked - and incredibly skilled at capturing every stop on Marcus’s emotional journey.
In a series structured so much around one character’s experience, it’s imperative that we connect with and enjoy that person. Stewy from Succession), and his sister Ida ( Saturday Night Live’s Punkie Johnson). Observing and advising during the journey are his two best friends, Yogi (comedian Chris Powell) and Kian (Arian Moayed, a.k.a. He fumbles his way through the split and into a new existence that involves awkward hookups, promising relationships, and affairs predicated entirely on sex. Since the premise of Love Life is based on the idea of watching its main character navigate multiple relationships, it’s not a spoiler to acknowledge that Marcus’s marriage disintegrates. Pretty soon, Marcus and Mia, who has a boyfriend, are regularly texting and hanging out in a way that is theoretically platonic but also very much not. They exchange contact information so he can share a book project with her. While attending the wedding of Darby and Magnus (Nick Thune) - a thin strand of connection exists between the seasons vis-à-vis the idea that Darby and Marcus are linked by mutual connections - Marcus meets Mia (Jessica Williams), and the kind of sparks he isn’t feeling with Emily start to dance between them. When we first meet Marcus, it’s 2016 and he’s married to Emily (Maya Kazan) in a union that is stable but spark-challenged. Love Life does not shy away from showing that. Love requires work, introspection, and pushing oneself to be bigger and better for the sake of another. While it’s entertaining and a mostly breezy watch, it’s also committed to showing the realities of being one-half of a couple. Part of the intrigue is trying to guess which partner will lead the protagonist to their happily ever after, but as envisioned by creator Sam Boyd, who acts as co-showrunner alongside Bridget Bedard and Rachelle Williams this season, Love Life isn’t all froth and hand-holding montages, especially this go-round.
Similar to the previous iteration of Love Life, which tracked the many romantic entanglements of Anna Kendrick’s Darby, this season follows a New York book editor named Marcus through various relationships over a several-year period.
But he very much belongs in one, as proven by his performance in the second season of HBO Max’s Love Life, an unequivocal romance in which he gets to show off his full charms as a leading man.
Plus, Chidi was such a nerded-up philosophy genius that, in that role, Harper didn’t necessarily come across as an actor destined for a rom-com.
But the afterlife love story between Chidi and Kristen Bell’s Eleanor was just one crucial element in a sitcom that had many. Jessica Williams and William Jackson Harper have a fizzy chemistry together, though Love Life reminds us that chemistry alone does not guarantee that a relationship will last.Īs the debilitatingly indecisive Chidi on The Good Place, William Jackson Harper was technically a romantic lead.