Review: Young Love “Protest Love; Generational Love; Faith Love; Love Love”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Angela covers for her bosses at the Salon and Zuri leads a protest when the school deprives them of coffee cake. Later, Angela feels Zuri drifting apart during a school trip. After that, Angela and Stephen try getting help with their bills while Zuri tries becoming a faux messiah to her classmates when she is passed over for “Star Student”. Finally, after some advice from her grandpa leads Zuri to an over the top proposal, Stephen and Angela consider finally getting married.

OUR TAKE

Man, Max sure could not wait to be done with Young Love! Or at least that’s how it feels when they jettisoned out four episodes a week, as opposed to the two a week that shows like Velma and Fired on Mars got, or the one a week all the DC animated shows have gotten. I don’t mean to insinuate any intentions with how they’re handling it but simply throwing the entire twelve episode season in three four-episode clumps with little advertising (again like Fired on Mars) really gives me the sense that they just wanted to be done with it. They announced this back in 2020, back when WB was under AT&T and the original short, Hair Love, was still riding high off winning Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards that year. Since then, as mentioned, there’s been a regime change in the company, so perhaps there’s been an attitude or priority shift in how to approach this and other animated shows that were commissioned prior to the Discovery takeover *looks nervously at Scavengers Reign*. Still, even getting this full season out is an accomplishment in and of itself, and quite the landing for a short funded by Kickstarter that went onto be the only memorable part of the second Angry Birds movie.

But how are these last four episodes themselves? Well, the unfortunate side effect of dumping them out like this is that a lot of what may make each episode stand out tends to blur together with the other three it comes with, but here’s what I’ve been able to find that seemed to build on the respective character arcs. Zuri seems to have a future as a politician and/or cult leader based on her thirst for power and how much organized chaos she drums up at school, but she’s on her way to using it for good with guidance from her teacher. Angela is still learning to balance being a good but firm mother with Zuri while trying to maintain her own identity and goals. Stephen has now broken away from Lil Ankh and is making his own music with his own team, but is facing the difficulty of that without giving into his insecurities. And lastly, the unconventional nature of their family, with Stephen and Angela not married at Angela’s preference, comes into question in the finale, but is validated while understanding that while marriage is expected and what some may want, it’s not for everyone, which reminds me of an episode of Bless the Harts, which also has a main couple who are not married. It makes me grateful to see so many versions of a family now visible in mainstream animation (Bless the Harts, The Great North, and the recent Krapopolis just to name the ones coming from Fox/Disney) as well in various skin tones and cultures. Hopefully Young Love has a future, whether that’s coming in the form of another season or even another short, but even if this is the end, it’s a sign of better things to come.