Love Bites

LOVE BITES

By Carlos Uribe

Love Bites is supposed to be an anthology show. This means that every story is meant to be self-contained within that story segment. At the same time, though, the genre has been dead a while and Love Bites is perhaps a way to bring the genre to modern times (as it's been dead for a while now). The segments in Love Bites share characters (although not themes (outside of love), which is a problem) and situations tend to carry over. So even though each story is meant to be separate, there is some serialization going on. Likewise the show has some main characters who are supposed to serve as the “hosts” or who appear in every episode.

It would be interesting to see if an anthology series could ever actually work again. The problem is, though, viewers have gotten used to seeing the same people evolve over time. Anthology shows, real ones, had different characters in every story. They were movie-of-the-weeks rather than a series as we know it. As it is, though, Love Bites isn't set on actually bringing back anthology only elements of anthology.

There are three different stories in the first episode and based off the description in future episodes this seems to remain. The problem with this, is that each story is rather short and doesn't develop as much. True, due to the somewhat serialized nature of the stories, it develops a bit further. It would be better for the series though to have one main story with sub-plots (the sub-plots should almost always involve the regular players with the main-plot revolving around the guest stars). Or perhaps it would be better if the series was truly anthologic.

The show isn't badly written, but lazily written. While some scenes did get me to chuckle a bit, it felt more like three different romantic comedies-and not the good, funny kind but the cheesy idiotic kinds. The characters weren't that developed, and for an anthology-like series that is a major problem. Other shows can indeed afford to develop their characters in future episodes, but in a show where only a few are supposed to return then each character needs to be fully developed. So many times, the characters are reduced to sterotypes and often cliché decisions and moves. And usually the pop culture jokes felt out of place.

Still the show is about something universal and that is love. But it seems to take more of a Hollywood take on love than a real take on love, and frankly Hollywood love is extremely cheesy. Likewise a lot of the conclusions and scenes could easily happen in any cheesy romantic comedy. This means fans of the genre will really like the show, while people who prefer stuff with substance will be forced to look elsewhere. If the show can somehow find a way to escape Hollywood and get more real with it's love stories (and explore the idea of unhappy with the happy endings), then maybe watching the show would be worth it especially since it's well acted. As I saw the first story, I could see why Krysten Ritter was casted as the mean girl in Apartment 23. She wasn't mean per see in her story, but I could definably see her as having no morals.

Many tv critics and journalists have noted that this coming season seems to demasculate men. As I saw this show throughout, the roots are seen here. Love Bites has men that are either the woman's ideal, or in the process of feeling demasculated. Few of the men on the show seemed to actually be men, but just romantic comedy version of men.

The show tended to be a bit silly at times, especially the second story of the first hour (in which I laughed out loud at how cliché and over the top it was). Everything was rather predictable, as there is no surprise. Each happy ending felt like it existed because it had to, not because it was really earned. Overall, Love Bites is a show that shows little promise and while it may be interesting to see how it would handle a second season, it seems destined to be canceled after it's nine developed episodes. This isn't a shame, largely because it's lazy.

Some Lines I Liked:

“Cause we live in a Twitter world where you have to hook somebody with 140 characters or less”

“Bang the Unicorn” “Forget the duck”

“Is it fun working here?” “I have a boyfriend” “No, I'm actually looking for a job.”

“No I don't need Five. All I need is Love.”: Clever way of stating all he needs in his celebrity list is Jeniffer Hewitt Love, at the same time stating all he needs is love-as in the girl he loves.