Uncoupled – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

‘Chapter 2’

Suzanne begins her tardy recollection of when she saw Colin near the High Line at the start of episode 2 of Uncoupled. She goes on and on about the frivolous details and finally reveals the person’s identity: Tyler.

Michael is in shock. As he frenetically starts to rethink when Colin and Tyler might have first met, he recollects that it might have been at their company’s Christmas party. He was the one who introduced them and they even looked at Tyler’s Instagram that night. Michael has a showing tomorrow – an important one – but has trouble going to sleep as he finds more and more imprints of Colin in his apartment. He has a nightmare about Colin and Tyler, together, making love against the glass window opening up in the street. When he wakes up, Michael realizes he is running late.

Through unsent texts that Michael keeps writing and erasing, we see how much he misses Colin. He has to keep his pain aside and help sell the apartment to the couple. They are moving in together from different cities to start a new family and Michael feels emotional seeing them together.

He reminisces when Colin and he were first moving in together and seeing the new space. His friends and people in the building – including Jack (Andre De Shields) – console him. At a charity event, Michael is forced to confront Tyler. But the young realtor reveals that he is not in a relationship with Colin. The only communication he had with him was getting him an apartment and what Suzanne saw through the windows was just a courtesy he extends to all his clients.

He again reiterates Michael should stay away from Claire as Tyler is the only one in the running. He is even seated next to Claire at the party.

Tyler’s prophecy comes true as Suzanne receives a message from Claire’s assistant that she will not be considering Michael and her for the apartment. Michael, already heartbroken and slightly drunk, follows Claire in a cab to her apartment building. He shouts for her from the back, breaking the “no shouting in the lobby” rule. But Claire asks Freddy the lobby man to calm down. Michael beseeches Claire not to list her apartment with Tyler and explains how he can understand what Claire is going through.

The sudden disruption in the domestic life by the other partner when there were no indications whatsoever has happened with him as well. Claire is impressed and agrees to wait and consider Michael. He promises to do everything possible to get her the best price and also have fun in the process. As he walks past his mailbox in the apartment building, Michael scratches out Colin’s surname, “McKenna”, from it, possibly looking at a new chapter in his life.

The Episode Review

The parallel falling apart of lives is a nice touch in episode 2 that becomes the central focus. Michael recuperates from the heartbreaking splitting up as remnants of Colin threaten to haunt him for the while. We always knew somewhere that Tyler could not have been the partner Colin left Michael for. The show would have devolved into being too shallow if that was the case.

Why Colin left Michael still remains the burning question that is kind of circumvented around so far. Some more contextualization of the current circumstances would have been better. We are caught on the wrong foot really when you consider the broken-up relationship. Perhaps the focus of the show is more on “what next” instead of “why previous”. And that is just fine by me. It would make for a unique experience to see something along those lines.

But the creators have to be careful not to mix the two. They can quickly lose focus, as they did on a few occasions in episode 2, and the project can derail into mediocrity. Until now, it has stayed away from the territory, defining itself with newfound archetypes around the queer community. Just seeing the path ahead and how it is sculpted seems like the right choice for Uncoupled to make at this point. The breaking over the phone was probably a bit backhanded swivel by Colin. He better have an explanation for that or else!