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\n After a whole season of being the series\u2019 sole representation of normal-ass behavior, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson) is the most interesting he has ever been with this mistake.
\n Photo: Kenny Laubbacher\/HBO\n <\/p>\n
Spoilers follow for \u201cI Love NY<\/a>,\u201d the season-one finale of I Love LA.<\/p>\n Everything is upside down in \u201cI Love NY,\u201d the season-one finale of I Love LA. Maia and Tallulah are back in the Big Apple, the city from which they both fled. Alani unknowingly befriends the woman who has been stalking her family for years. The normally selfish Charlie is actually being helpful to his friends. Everyone\u2019s making choices that align more with the bizarro versions of themselves, and no one more so than sweet, supportive Dylan, a good guy if ever there was one. Well, a good guy before he sleeps with his co-worker Claire and lies to Maia about it. What happened to the nice boyfriend who could perfectly cook a steak, did anything in bed that Maia asked, and put up with his girlfriend\u2019s misguided-yet-endless ambition? That Dylan is gone, and with his departure, I Love LA becomes a more interesting show.<\/p>\n When \u201cI Love NY\u201d begins, Dylan and Maia are on a break that seemed inevitable after she sabotaged his game night<\/a> with his teacher colleagues, insinuated he wanted to sleep with Claire, and then failed to call him<\/a> after accidentally stabbing herself in the foot and forgetting their scheduled dinner with his parents. They\u2019re people who approach life and work differently \u2014 and Maia is more than a little codependent with her friends \u2014 and once Dylan suggested they spend time apart and go no-contact for a week, it seemed like maybe they would realize they\u2019re not right for each other. So it\u2019s not really a surprise when Maia plans to sleep with her old boss, Ben, given that she had fantasized about him while having sex with Dylan. It\u2019s also not really a surprise that Ben is an asshole about her obvious lust, ordering Maia to masturbate in front of him and then practically sneering with the parting line, \u201cYou think you make these choices? You like to be told what to do.\u201d Maia doing something chaotic without fully thinking through the consequences is practically her whole characterization in I Love LA.<\/p>\n It is shocking, though, when \u201cI Love NY\u201d cuts to Dylan in bed with Claire, that very same co-worker Maia suspected, and when Dylan lies to Claire about who called, and when he agrees to do an array of good-boyfriend things with Claire that day, like seeing a movie together and going for a walk. Dylan was supposed to be the one person in this show who had their shit together \u2014 and who, as a result, was the show\u2019s most dependable, boring character. This is not a slight against Josh Hutcherson, whose good-guy bona fides were cemented with his run as Peeta in The Hunger Games franchise, and who here takes that baseline characterization and builds Dylan into a man you can rely on to cook dinner, change smoke-alarm batteries, and\u00a0remember your parents\u2019 birthdays. He\u2019s so accommodating that he practically ceases to exist as an individual, and by actively blowing up his relationship, Dylan makes a heel turn \u2014 but he also makes a choice. Finally! After a whole season of being the series\u2019 sole representation of normal-ass behavior, and the most passive member of its ensemble, Dylan is the most interesting he\u2019s ever been with this mistake. It\u2019s predictable as hell for a guy to use a break from his relationship to cheat. (After all, Friends got many seasons out of Ross Geller\u2019s \u201cWe were on a break!\u201d plea.) Within the world of I Love LA, though, Dylan doing something because he wants to do it shifts the character toward being as id driven and self-destructive as everyone else, and that\u2019s a ripe place for the series to go narratively.<\/p>\n Up to this point, Dylan has primarily been someone to whom things happen. Maia invites<\/a> Tallulah to stay with them, so Dylan agrees to it. Maia hangs out with her friends, and Dylan tags along. Maia schedules an awful double date<\/a> with her boss, Alyssa, and lies about what Dylan\u2019s passions are to try to impress Alyssa, and Dylan amiably goes with it. We only see him in the context of his relationship with Maia and don\u2019t follow him independently, as we do the other characters, and within that dynamic, Dylan doesn\u2019t make many choices for himself. I Love LA\u2019s narrative is more driven by Maia\u2019s decisions for both of them, which are really Maia\u2019s decisions for herself. But throughout all this, I Love LA has positioned Dylan as the one rational character amid Maia\u2019s chaos, relying on his facial expressions and curious questions to interrupt the frantic hustle-grind culture<\/a> by which Maia and her friends live. As a result, Dylan is the series\u2019 most relatable character \u2014 for older-than-Gen-Z viewers, anyway \u2014 and its most quietly funny one, with his concern about doing cocaine on a Tuesday, or getting a blowjob in the bathroom while his co-workers are in the living room, puncturing whatever ludicrousness Maia is steamrolling forward.<\/p>\n