Love in Fairhope Review 2023 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Abby Mannich is coming back to Fairhope after spending her post-college years building a career in New York City; however, a failed relationship has sent her back to her hometown, where she’s just moved into a new house. At the local watering hole, she runs into Trevor Chunn, the “town bad boy” and her on-again, off-again boyfriend. The “situationship” started before she left for New York and it turns out that she just can’t say no to him, as we see the two of them having breakfast together at her house the next morning. But Abby knows that Trevor isn’t looking for anything serious and won’t even be exclusive. However, he does seem to know her better than anyone.
Mya Jo Williams is back in town on a break from college; her first stop is always to go see Nick Difilippi. He’s her closest friend, and from time to time since they met as kids, there have been romantic feelings going back and forth. When he tells her he’s dating someone new, her feelings are mixed between being annoyed that he didn’t tell her earlier and being a bit jealous that he’s currently taken. When his current squeeze, Baylee Sutterfield, shows up at a party, Mya Jo’s annoyance is palpable.
LaShoundra and Kendell Young are seen to have a “perfect” family life; Kendell is the pastor of one of the town’s biggest churches, and they have a teenage son. But they’re currently separated and living in different homes. They’re working on trying to repair their marriage, but as we see when LaShoundra asks her son whether he’d be OK with her driving him to school, he grumpily says he wants Kendell to do it. As far as the town knows, their marriage is still intact; at the big Magnolia Ball, LaShoundra appeals to Kendell that they shouldn’t be putting up the facade any more.
Clairborne Walsh has been to every Magnolia Ball since the tradition started in the early ’70s. She’s 76 years old and is mourning the death of her husband, to whom she was happily married for over 50 years. The loss is profound, but Clairborne is looking forward, seeing where her life goes, especially romantically, in the coming years.
One thing we do appreciate about Love In Fairhope is that it’s not even pretending to be a “real” reality show. It fully admits that, while based on the cast’s real-life stories, it’s that aforementioned “collision of reality and fantasy.” We’re not quite sure how the sausage was made here, but the scenes do play out as somewhat of a combination of contrived party scenes from a Bravo series like Vanderpump Rules (whose production company is also involved here) and improvised but guided scenes between cast members like you might see in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
But let’s just say that the “real people” in the cast don’t have the performance skills of Larry David, Susie Essman and JB Smoove. The limits of this format can be seen in the stiff performances of the cast members in the one-on-one scenes, many of which play out like a bad web series from the early 2000s.
Graham’s narration is way too intrusive in the first episode, filling narrative mortar in what is some immense openings in the storytelling. We not only hear her narration, but voice overs from the five cast members themselves, making for a format that doesn’t quite know what perspective should be the one that rules each story.
Yes, there’s lots of men with their shirts off and a lot of sexy times, mostly implied in this case. But the stories are mostly boring and the cast is mostly uncomfortable with the task of trying to pull off the “reality” part of this reality drama.
