Amazon has a thing for anthology series about love and relationships, and last year’s went nowhere for me. Each segment was a 2 hour movie almost, very rich and vibrant but going nowhere. This year’s show is called Modern Love and I fear it suffers from the same fate. Like a collection of short stories that are more slice-of-life than full stories, the pilot was only 30 minutes long and has some interesting slice-of-life scenes, but hard to say what the real intent of the anthology will be.

In the first episode, the premise is a woman living the single life in New York while living in a rent-controlled building with a doorman. As a recap, the doorman serves as an initial gatekeeper, as well as a judge of her life choices, or at least, of her choices in men. One of the occasional lovers ends up getting her pregnant, and she doesn’t know what to do. The doorman acts as an almost surrogate father for her, with just a hint of personal interest in one scene (why is he discouraging her from dating others?), but outside of her romances, he is surprisingly unconditionally supportive. She decides to keep the baby, raise it on her own, but he helps with bringing in the crib, carrying bags, even showing up in the delivery room (or is it a vision?) to help her get through. In the end, she gets a job offer in LA, he convinces her to take it, and she comes back five years later to see him and introduce her now older family to him, including a new partner. The episode is entitled, “When the Doorman is your Main Man”.

It is short, it is funny in places, it is almost like watching a one-act play. And the two main leads interact well. It’s enjoyable. But if it wasn’t Amazon, would it even make it to air?

Anthologies are tricky business, because ultimately it doesn’t go anywhere, and if you miss an episode, doesn’t matter, because there’s no link between the segments. I don’t know if there is enough in this one to hook people, maybe it works on a binging basis.

I’m going to pass though. Cute, but not enough to hold me.