What I’m Watching: Living with Yourself

Living with Yourself: Season 1, Episode 6 “Neighbors and Friends” (C+)

One of the benefits of Netflix and other streaming shows is that episodes can be whatever length they need to, leading to an installment of the usually hour-long “Mindhunter” season one running just thirty-four minutes because that’s all that was relevant for the selected storyline. Cable and streaming shows are also considerably truncated from the typical twenty-two or so episode usually commissioned from broadcast networks, which means there shouldn’t be a filler episode in which pretty much nothing happens. That’s what I felt about this twenty-two-minute episode that didn’t feature much of anything, and did so little to move the story forward. Kate dinged Miles in a way that he didn’t realize at the start, telling him that it was funny how different the two of them actually were, and he went in for his fertility appointment without his wife knowing, which could lead to something down the road but not if she’s already made other arrangements. Trying to salvage the debate didn’t go too well, and getting peed on and finding out that his clone hasn’t shown up to work in a week were not good news at all. Now it seems like he’s being kidnapped by someone, and I do hope that the final two episodes of the season can course-correct. I’d like to see more of Kate and also the two clones conducting their parallel lives, since, as this show seems to suggest, Miles as a character isn’t particularly interesting, and so featuring just him wallowing in his misery naturally won’t be terribly compelling.