Parents' Guide to Love Life

Both Kendrick and Jackson are very good in this romcom, which isn't particularly strong on either the rom or the com but moves along pleasantly enough, mostly due to their charmingly off-kilter performance. Kendrick is a sweetly sardonic delight, whether she's getting bowled over by the sudden betrayal of a boyfriend, pulling support duty for a substance-addicted friend, or arguing with her neurotically needy mom (Hope Davis, also fantastic). Jackson reinforces that he's a leading man after his breakout in The Good Place. Love Life's structure is a little hard to grasp, true. The show starts out with the premise of investigating how Kendrick found "her person" by seeing her through a series of failed romances.

Yeah, except for after doing that for a few episodes, Love Life drops that construction and zeroes in on Darby's relationships with other people who loom large in her life: her best friends, her mom, her boss, who would be absolutely horrible if he weren't played by the incomparably charming Scoot McNairy. In fact, that's a bit of a theme with Love Life: pros who have done amazing work elsewhere, doing work here that's enjoyable but unremarkable. Executive producers include Paul Feig, the genius behind Freaks and Geeks and Bridesmaids, as well as Brigitte Munoz-Liebowitz (One Day at a Time, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Bridget Bedard (Transparent, Ramy). Maybe it's too much to expect, that these bringers of greatness elsewhere will score every time, and certainly Love Life is no dismal failure. If it never gels into anything fantastic, neither does it curdle into anything awful.