Rom-Com Chronicles #1: Ships Passing

No one is allowed to say that the rom-com is dead. Loose Shakespeare adaptations may be the only way that those stories become financial successes on the theatrical side, but TV has been stoking the romantic comedy flames for years. 

That’s especially true for shows outside the English language, even in just the last five years. For those who are still searching for a worthy “Fleabag” heir, Germany’s “Oh Hell” has picked up that torch with added flair. Anyone looking to give themselves over to a manipulation of not just emotions but time itself, Spain’s “The Time It Takes” runs through all the ups and downs of a relationship in two opposite directions. You could spend half a decade cycling through every season of every Korean drama, from “My Mister” all the way through this year’s “When Life Gives You Tangerines.” And we might never get that elusive Season 3, but the Swedish series “Love and Anarchy” is still probably the show I’ve recommended the most since it debuted in fall 2020. 

While theaters may not be the home for rom-coms that they once were, TV has stepped in to fill the void. To highlight some of the best new additions to the pantheon, enter the Rom-Com Chronicles.

First up? “Benefits with Friends” — available in other countries under the better and also more generic title “Amor da Minha Vida (Love of My Life)” — a Brazilian will they/won’t they romance told over ten episodes.

Rom-Com Chronicles Presents: A List of Details in “Benefits with Friends” That Prompted Smiles (or, at the Very Least, Knowing Nods) of Recognition

• Bia (Bruna Marquezine) and Victor (Sérgio Malheiros) have been best friends for years. They are two attractive, charming, outgoing twentysomethings navigating their own romantic lives while trying to make two different careers in Rio de Janiero. Bia is an aspiring actress. Victor owns and operates the family lamp shop. 

• That’s right, a shop filled with lamps. He also wears glasses and is very sensitive. She has an alt Instagram account where she rates the city’s best cream puffs. It only takes a few minutes for this show to start off on the right foot.

• This show does one of my favorite Trust the Audience moves by giving Bia and Victor nicknames for each other but not explaining them right away. Both characters arrive as such fully formed people that whether someone calls them Bia or Silvio, Victor or Fausto, there’s never a moment when someone has to spell it out to some new person from the friend group. When the season does get to the inspiration behind them, it’s a beautiful little touch, a misdirect payoff multiple episodes in the making. 

• “Benefits with Friends” isn’t afraid to embrace a certain kind of repetition. It makes sense that dating patterns lead some people into the same cycle of bad decisions or on some metaphorical Ferris wheel with one particular problematic partner. (This season also has a literal Ferris wheel.) Creator Matheus Souza and the writing team are smart enough to capitalize on having two people at the show’s center. One friend can continue to make the same mistake, but the other’s reaction to that mistake can still change. 

• Time is elastic on this show. Months fly by in a snap. Someone can suddenly find themselves in the second year of a situationship. Each episode of “Benefits with Friends” is like the water planet from “Interstellar.” You feel the immediacy of what’s happening on the surface, but you can also feel the weight of those months spent in the gaps that happen offscreen. There’s a “Lovesick”-level confidence here to fit the entire arc of fling or affair or deep love into a single episode and not have that emotional and psychological weight disappear when the characters involved move on. 

• One other way “Benefits with Friends” gets at the tiny details of a relationship without really drawing attention to them is how these characters absorb information when they meet someone new. It can be incredibly easy for one offhand comment at the start of things to have ripple effects months or even years later. Someone casually mentions that they don’t like something/someone/somefood and then that becomes locked-in canon. Or in reverse, a random phrase blurted out in an attempt to cover an awkward silence then becomes the basis for inside jokes or little gifts or tiny notes. “Benefits with Friends” is littered with these. 

• Two phrases that continue to appear in some form over the course of the season: “This is me now” and “love of my life.” (If they’d kept the original title, you could do the “That’s chappie” whisper or the Leo point every time that second one popped up. Your vocal cords/fingers would be sore by season’s end. You would not care.)

• It’s not a secret that these two have some feelings for each other. Bia and Victor fall into that fascinating/confusing/frustrating/offten-beautiful zone in between friends and partners. They call each other “best friends” but this show is under no delusion that either of them are fully content with that status. Perhaps there’s a Portuguese word that better describes that secret third thing that’s neither buddies nor lovers. In place of that, this is the kind of show that will almost certainly have real-life people writing messages to each other explaining “You’re the Victor to my Bia” or the other way around. 

• If the show can get a little too cute at times, it’s in underlining parallels between Bia and Victor in their own separate dating worlds. (Oh, so they both happen to be seeing someone who escapes into performing as someone else? Interesting.) Thankfully, this only pops up enough to be a curious coincidence every once in a while. 

• A show called “Love of My Life” is never going to fully reject the notion of a storybook romance. Yet, even as it dangles that idea in front of characters beyond even Bia and Victor, it does so knowing that there’s a danger in holding out for some sweeping rom-com-worthy romance. This is a show that strongly considers what a “Perfect being the enemy of the good” approach does to someone’s love life. Willing real life into something that feels like it’s out of a screenplay is a tricky prospect. When it works, it’s sublime. When it falls short, it has a way of pointing you toward what it is you’re really looking for. 

• However much the show might be slowly pulling Bia and Victor closer and closer to each other, it doesn’t hold back from showing each of them making genuine connections with someone else. There’s the unspoken feeling that some of these other relationships have a ticking time bomb aspect to them. But there’s a real understanding of how it feels to carry around certain kinds of love with you and how easy it is in moments of uncertainty to look to those for comfort, even if you never actually reach out to the people who once inspired it. 

• Marquezine’s superpower is reacting to the unexpected. Bia has about 15 different moments when she’s surprised by something (thoughtful displays, shocking news, mid-makeout mishaps) and each of her facial expressions in those moments are delightfully different. Both she and Malheiros have charm to spare, the renewable energy that keeps “Benefits with Friends” running. 

• The best rom-coms like this, so laser-focused on two people, usually have at least one character who drops in for one key scene to deliver an absolute emotional hammer blow. (If you just thought of Bill Nighy, feel free to leave real quick and watch the best man speech. We’ll be here whenever you’re ready.) There’s someone who comes in during Episode 7 and crystallizes the entire season in just a few minutes. The character beat that ends that heart-to-heart is the loveliest writing touch in the whole season and the image that’ll probably stick with me more than any other. 

• Love has a way of clarifying and shrouding at the same time. It’s easy to overlook what you do have while immediately seeing what others have that you don’t. This is often true for Bia but it becomes one of Victor’s defining characteristics. An extremely potent tension in a rom-com, especially when you spend enough time in the head of a character to sense when it’s about to happen. This show presents that questioning and that spiritual restlessness without any kind of judgment.

• “Benefits with Friends” gets messy. The longer certain characters spend with each other, they drift more toward decisions that make little sense and act on rash self-destructive impulses that undo years of a good thing. In the same way, this show makes active choices to avoid following some preset formula. The discomfort of being pulled against those expectations leads to some fascinating late-season choices, even when they’re purposefully unsatisfying. 

• After ten episodes of seesawing through emotions and the fits and starts of what it takes to find lifelong companionship of any kind, the strongest message that the finale leaves is the idea that life shouldn’t be lived without gratitude for those we’ve loved and those who’ve loved us. If “Benefits with Friends” was an otherwise empty husk with no other sentiment than that, it would still be a show worth watching. Fortunately, Bia and Victor are two people with plenty more to discover.