Modern Love – Season 1 Episode 1 Recap & Review

The Doorman

Episode 1 of Modern Love begins with Maggie and Mark walking down the street together . As they walk, they come across a doorman, Guzmin, at the apartment building Maggie is staying at. Disapproving, Guzmin calls Mark a taxi after he makes a move on her. Guzmin tells her Mark will never ring her before she heads upstairs and messages him that night. As it turns out, Guzmin is right and he doesn’t ring.

The next day, Maggie goes on a date with another man, this time it’s charming Ted. She invites him up but after tapping the doorman on the shoulder, Guzmin’s vision changes to that of a sniper as night turns to day. It turns out Ted hurried out to get coffee and breakfast but when he returns, Guzmin tells Maggie he doesn’t like him and their short-lived whirlwind of love comes to an end.

Feeling under the weather, Maggie heads out to get a pregnancy test and the results come back positive. She contemplates whether to have an abortion while sitting down talking with Guzmin. After telling her he’ll help with whatever her decision is, Maggie meets up with Ted and shows him the test. He reacts badly, resulting in him blowing her off and telling her she can come up with the name of the child herself.

Back home, Maggie cycles back and shows Guzmin the baby scan pictures. From here, we then see a musical montage through Maggie’s pregnancy as Guzmin helps her every step of the way. As we get to the end and Maggie goes into labour, she laments Guzmin not being there but alone, she gives birth.

Heading home with the little baby, Guzmin is there to greet them and she asks him if he wants to hold the child. As we continue through, another musical montage sees the child grow older, up to being a toddler.

As we reach the climax of the episode, Maggie contemplates moving to L.A. for a job offer and expresses her concerns to Guzmin about doing just this. After talking together, he heads out himself before we cut forward five years to see Maggie heading back to New York after living in L.A. Guzmin meets Daniel, Maggie’s current flame, and sees the look in her eyes and knows instantly he’s the man for her. Sarah is now 8 and as the episode closes out, she decides to visit the natural history museum with Guzmin and Maggie, just like old times.

Aside from some nice Father/Daughter vibes between Maggie and Guzmin, there isn’t a whole lot else here to get excited about. The actual episode itself is pretty good though and the music choices for the montages are certainly welcome, especially given how well-placed they are. For the most part though, the story plays out without any real twists or surprises but there’s enough here to make for a relatively good opening episode nonetheless.

The big reveal at the end showing Guzmin keeping the baby scan photo is a lovely way to close out the episode though but as a series opener, I can’t help but feel Modern Love could have picked a stronger episode to kick things off.