Modern Love for the Disney Generation
photo courtesy of @modernlovetv
Millennials grew up on the Disney Channel that led us to believe that finding love is just a matter of harboring a secret crush or being on the receiving end of a secret crush that can reveal itself in some grand gesture and end in a happily ever after. Troy abandoned his dad’s dream to join Gabriella on stage, Shane discovered Mitchie though her voice, even Oliver and Lily got their happy ending. We’re not saying Disney set us up for failure and that's why we’re persistently single and perpetually disappointed, but that is in fact what we’re saying. Thankfully, Amazon's new show Modern Love is here with painfully human and blissfully realistic depictions of love in all it's messiness. Don’t worry all of you juvenile rom-com victims, Modern Love is the hope we need to find our perfect counterpart.
Modern Love is not just an Amazon series, though that is what’s getting all the buzz right now. It actually started 15 years ago as a column in The New York Times, and 4 years ago it became a podcast. At its root, Modern Love is a collection of personal essays written about the respective author’s experience with love in all its forms. As a series, Amazon chose to highlight 8 specific essays, each with an entirely new all-star cast. They cover a wide-range of emotional, circumstantial, and mental struggles that Disney certainly did not prepare us for. For instance, the third episode titled, “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am”, tells the story of a successful young lawyer named Lexi, based on the writer Terri Cheney and played by Anne Hathaway, facing the reality of her bipolar disorder. It’s funny, it’s entertaining, and believe us when we say it hits different. Like most of the series, this particular episode makes you realize just how little representation there is of human issues that make finding a partner, romantic or otherwise, so difficult.
Now, Disney Channel is of course content for kids. No one is saying lighthearted children’s programming should touch on daddy issues, mental illness, and adopting a baby from a homeless woman. However, a lot of kids develop the framework for understanding themselves and the world from what they see in movies and television. For those of us who spent the early and mid-2000s watching beautiful people overcome small obstacles to find love based primarily in infatuations that emerged into adulthood, we were faced with a much harsher reality than High School Musical prepared us for.
Maybe we didn’t have Modern Love when we were entering or graduating from college, but at least it’s here now. Think of it as a supplement for all the hyper-romantic and simple-minded content we were inundated with in our youth. You might not relate to everything you see, maybe you haven’t pursued a relationship with a sixty-year-old man, or experienced the pain of falling out of love, but this is a show for humans, and we guarantee you will resonate with something in at least one of the episodes.
If hookup culture and the dating game has got you down, or you’re looking to get a little more in touch with your fellow Earth-goer, do yourself a favor and settle down with Modern Love as a series, podcast, or column. We’re all going to be ok, and this series is just the reminder we needed.