Many series have tried to capture Chicago on the small screen with little success. The comedy Happy Endings is supposed to take place here, but is obviously filmed in LA—it’s riddled with incorrect references, and there’s almost never snow. Chicago Fire attempts to be Chicago so aggressively that the Sears (er, Willis) Tower is somehow constantly in the background.
Swanberg deftly captures the internal struggles that plague a range of simple, everyday decisions, like whether or not to ride a bike, or when to completely cut off an ex. That’s in part due to the talent of the cast, all of whom easily fell into the director’s style of emotional, improvised scenes that are funny and sad and all too real.
