Summary
Easy Season 3, Episode 5, “Swipe Left”, is an outstanding piece of drama, providing further conclusions to Andi and Kyle’s open marriage.
This review of Easy Season 3, Episode 5, “Swipe Left” contains spoilers. The third season of Easy is going to be the final to land on Netflix. You can read our recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.
After reviewing Episode 1, I wasn’t sure if Kyle (Michael Chernus) and Andi’s (Elizabeth Reaser) open marriage was on the frays, or if they were evolving through the processes an agreement like this would bring. Little did I know that Easy Season 3, Episode 5, “Swipe Left”, would give us a 51-minute episode providing those answers. Easy Season 3 gives this relationship the justified limelight – it frankly deserves to be discussed more – it’s a great story.
Following on from Episode 1, Andi pursues her “thing” with Ryan, even though he is in a monogamous marriage with his wife. She’s excited and buzzed by the prospect of sleeping with her childhood crush. She straddles him in his car, but due to the guilt weighing on his shoulders, she teases him instead.
“Swipe Left” provides moments of tension between Kyle and Andi; following on from her date with Ryan, she returns home and tries to have sex with Kyle, stating that she didn’t get any at all with Ryan. Understandably, Kyle feels like a stand-in. The following scenes provide outstanding drama, as they discuss that night in couple’s counseling; Kyle states that he never imagined that Andi would start something with someone who is considered a friend, and who is in a monogamous marriage. Kyle is threatened and wounded by this new challenge in their open marriage.
There are more tense moments between the couple that immerses you into the story; it comes to a boiling point when one of them has to arrange a baby sitter for their children, and they spend more time arguing about who should text, that it feels like wasted energy.
While Kyle meets up with Amy for a chat to reconcile, Andi is fragile, learning that Ryan’s wife has seen the photos she sent at the start of the chapter. When she meets him, he is willing to give up his entire marriage and relationship with his children to have a third-wheel relationship with Andi.
Purely out of coincidence, Kyle and Andi find each other at a bar after a night with their other relationship and the next 15 minutes most likely secured the best episode of Easy Season 3. Andi describes how Ryan was not at all shaped up to what she imagined him to be, and that it did not work out and as Kyle apologizes, she comes to life, accusing him of apologizing like a friend.
I don’t know how they brought this scene together so well; maybe it’s the intimacy of the bar, the clinks of nearby glasses or the murmur of other people’s conversations, but when Andi describes how much she wants to be loved, and how sad their situation is, it not only absorbs you at that moment but you genuinely feel the sadness seeping out of her. We learn that Kyle is 100% committed to an open marriage, and his love for Amy is outstandingly tragic for Andi, considering she suggested open marriage in the first place.
“Swipe Left” is the mark of worthy drama, interlacing the painful struggle of processing an open marriage. Episode 5 is not built to persuade to team up with either of them, but more to sympathize with their situation; neither of them wants to sacrifice what they’ve built just for sex and excitement, but as Andi blurts out “I’m lonely”, it’s hard-hitting and suddenly raw. “Swipe Left” leaves them with hope, as they decide to leave the bar, they declare their love for each other, and Kyle promises to make the rest of the night just about her.
You can read the review of the sixth episode by clicking these words.
