Hulu's teen drama 'Love, Victor' is a coming-out story that doubles as a corrective. Alan Sepinwall reviews the new series
is simultaneously an expanded remake of the film and something of a corrective to it. Victor is Latinx, from a family of modest means — they live in an apartment building, and Victor’s mother Isabel has to teach piano lessons to help pay the bills — and his parents and grandparents’ Catholicism renders homosexuality a mostly taboo subject.
Because Simon’s story was too easy, but also because this is a TV season with five hours of time to fill, rather than the movie’s two, things prove more difficult for Victor. His first day at Simon’s alma mater makes him more nervous about coming out, rather than less, and soon he begins dating popular girl Mia , as much to lie to himself as to lie to the people around him.
Victor continues DM-ing Simon about his experience — and Simon replies , always seeming saintly, wise, and patient with this stranger — suggesting that his sexuality is more fluid than the traditional gay/straight binary. But the show largely treats it as him deceiving Mia, who falls hard for him, while he also does sketchy things involving Benjie , the very cute — and very out — boy he develops an instant crush on.
Victor’s conservative father Armando is even played by James Martinez, who basically filled the same role in a similar storyline in the first season of theSome of Victor’s lack of awareness regarding how his choices affect others can perhaps also be written off as part of the series’ bumpy origins.
But for all the mistakes that both Victor and the TV show named for him make, both are ultimately… nice? There are some tugs at the heartstrings that work as designed , and adding a host of socioeconomic wrinkles to the movie’s basic story mostly feels worth it, rather than shameless padding. It could engage with the material and the other characters much more deeply than it does, but it keeps good track of Victor’s emotional journey.
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