Love on screen

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Staff

Valentine’s Day is saturated with imagery of romantic love, and I’ll admit I’m a sucker for using the holiday as an excuse to buy my husband chocolates and write a sappy card.

Apart from romance, though, many people’s earliest introductions to the holiday included giving cards to classmates in celebration of friendship. Local initiative Bonner County Valentine’s Cards for Senior Citizens calls this to mind as it aims to ensure everyone feels the love — the camaraderie and community kind, anyway — by receiving a card from a stranger each Valentine’s Day. 

It’s no secret that most story plots are propelled by relationships. This is particularly true of TV plots, which depend on love — whether it be reciprocated, lost, forbidden, complicated or wholesome — to keep viewers invested in the lives of the characters. Here are some favorite examples of the many flavors in which that love can come.

Weird love

Jess and Nick of New Girl.

From Craigslist roommates to best friends to lovers, bubbly school teacher Jessica Day and low-achieving bartender Nick Miller of 2010s sitcom New Girl took viewers on a ride of dorky encounters and improbable chemistry. After two seasons of awkward “will they, won’t they” buildup, it all culminated in the hallway of the show’s most essential setting — the L.A. loft in which Jess is the “new girl” roommate — when Nick uncharacteristically grasped Jess by the arm and pulled her in for a kiss. The move defied all expectations and was reportedly met with applause from the show’s cast and crew. The couple went on to have their ups and downs, but the foundation of the kiss made it obvious that the two nerds, as different as they seem on the outside, were meant to be together.

Epic love

Claire and Jamie of Outlander.

There are love stories that are so fanciful that they either make viewers believe in soulmates or make them want to vomit. Enter Claire and Jamie: the main protagonists of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series and subsequent TV adaptation. Some inadvertent time travel and complications of war find the couple married, and the rest is (literally) history, as they live through some of the biggest events of the 1700s. The two are passionate, hard-headed people as individuals and, together, fiercely loyal and deeply compatible. In literary or television form, Claire and Jamie exemplify everything epic love can be: tender, volatile, safe and scary. It might not be your everyday love story, but that’s why it’s worth watching.

Friendship love

Walt and Henry of Longmire.

I have long ruminated on the powerful depiction of friendship captured between Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear, two of the principal characters in Craig Johnson’s Longmire mystery novel series and the TV show it inspired. Walt is the white sheriff of a rural Wyoming county and Henry is his lifelong best friend — a Native American who grew up in and is still strongly involved with the county’s reservation population. Without jurisdiction on the reservation, Walt often relies on Henry to help him connect the dots on transboundary crimes. Henry seems to be one of the only people who understands Walt’s genuine salt-of-the-earth demeanor, and the two share a mutual respect that defies race or class. Still, their relationship becomes a foil for larger issues around government complacency, vigilante justice and moments when doing the right thing doesn’t always mean following the rules. To watch them work through it is a testament to the love found in true friendship.