Uncoupled Review: A Gay Dramedy That Feels Too Betwixt and Between

The show’s struggle to find pathos in its characters’ predicament often comes at the cost of its comedy.

Uncoupled
Photo: Barbara Nitke/Netflix

Between Frasier and Sex and the City, Darren Star and Jeffrey Richman have both proven adept at mining laughs from the social missteps and romantic mishaps of America’s metropolitan elites. Joining forces for Netflix’s Uncoupled, the producers deliver the same breezy tone and winning charm that made those shows so successful, even if it occasionally finds itself marooned on the hyphen in “comedy-drama.”

Uncoupled revolves around a gay man trying to find his feet again after his long-term partner almost literally pulls the rug out from under him. Michael (Neil Patrick Harris) comes home one day to discover that Colin (Tuc Watkins) has packed up his stuff and moved out of their apartment, ending their 17-year relationship. And just like that, Michael’s dreamy domestic life is shattered and replaced with the living nightmare of being newly single in his 40s.

The show’s premise is more or less an eight-episode dramatization of the famous “You don’t wanna be out there” Twitter thread. The dating scene Michael once knew is a thing of the past, as he now finds himself stranded in a strange land of dating apps and dick pics. And it doesn’t help that his work as a real estate agent for tony clients, including a recent divorcee played by Marcia Gay Harden, only manages to exacerbate his frustrations.

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A quick succession of outrageous scenarios, pivotal moments punctuated by soulful pop songs, and a brisk 30-minute runtime ensures that Uncoupled is always moving at a traditional sitcom pace. An early scene in which Michael confronts Colin about the callous way that he ended their relationship has real teeth to it, touching on what we owe to the people we’ve shared our lives with, versus what we owe to ourselves. But side from vague allusions to “big feelings” and listening problems, the series never fully excavates its characters’ emotions or the reasons why Michael and Colin’s relationship fell apart in the first place.

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By far the most affecting scene in the entire season occurs as Michael returns home from yet another unsuccessful foray into the New York dating scene feeling tired, jaded, and hopelessly old. His perspective shifts thanks to a conversation with his neighbor Jack (André De Shields), a debonair, older Black man whose sage words of advice put a wider lens on Michael’s situation, helping him to recognize how much more of his own story he has left to live.

Refreshingly, Uncoupled treats Michael’s sexuality with the same unflinching delight as Sex and the City did the erotic escapades of its similarly emotionally adrift protagonists. But for the most part the series mostly skirts along the surface, too often hinting at a real interest in its characters’ inner lives before falling back on sitcom tropes. There’s a lot of crossed wires and cases of mistaken identity, which keep the action moving along but without ever resting long enough to let the characters develop. Michael’s friends, played by the likes of Tisha Campbell and Brooks Ashmanskas, mostly exist for him to trade witty banter.

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Michael’s gentler, more introverted nature helps to distinguish the character from the womanizer Harris played on How I Met Your Mother, but it’s hard not to feel like things would be a lot more fun if Harris were allowed to cut loose a little more. He’s an actor who thrives on both comic and dramatic extremes—as evinced by his chilling work in Gone Girl and a scene here where Michael is caught taking a dick pic by a bathroom attendant—but the show’s struggle to find pathos in its characters’ predicament often comes at the cost of its comedy, leaving both Harris and the series itself a little betwixt and between.

Score: 
 Cast: Neil Patrick Harris, Tuc Watkins, Marcia Gay Harden, Tisha Campbell, Emerson Brooks, Brooks Ashmanskas  Network: Netflix

Ross McIndoe

Ross McIndoe is a Glasgow-based freelancer who writes about movies and TV for The Quietus, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Wisecrack, and others.

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