What I’m Watching: Modern Love (Season Premiere)

Modern Love: Season 2, Episode 1 “On a Serpentine Road, With the Top Down” (B)

I didn’t realize quite how long it had been since this show premiered its first season, which I finished watching three months later in December 2019. It’s a weird one to welcome back because of its anthology nature and the fact that we’re not seeing any familiar faces. That said, there were some recognizable actors in the cast, namely Minnie Driver as the woman holding on to the memory of her dead husband by putting countless dollars and time into the classic car he loved that just didn’t work well enough to merit continuing to drive. I also pegged Tom Burke, who played a truly terrible husband in “The Souvenir” and an irritable Orson Welles in “Mank,” as that bit of nostalgia that would be sitting in the passenger seat of the car when she went out to drive and got to keep him updated on what was going on in the world without him. I liked the idea that her new husband was understanding of the connection that she would forever have to the man she lost so young and to a physical possession that meant so much to him, and I think it’s representative of a lot of relationships where someone still holds on to feelings for someone else that have been fractured by an untimely death or separation that doesn’t necessarily contradict the possibility of finding new love again with someone else. That was a sweet concept in an installment that didn’t move all that fast, comparable most to the unreliable classic at its center.