Analyzing someone else's life is easy, but how do you build your own, even if you understand human nature perfectly? The heroes of the series "Friendzone" try to find answers.

A psychology student decides to take the phenomenon of the "friendzone" as the topic of his term paper. The fact is that Kirill himself (Alexey Slavkin) has fallen into the notorious friendzone with his friend-turned-love-interest Sonya (played by Valeria Shutovskaya in the first season). The guy is convinced that friendship can be turned into love with a little effort. He decides to prove his hypothesis through an experiment on his friends.

The text contains minor spoilers for the first season of the series "Friendzone"

The Unusual Story of the Series

The debut season won the Realist Web Fest 2022 award and was shortlisted for the Digital Reporter and National Internet Content Awards. After such success, the platform START took notice of "Friendzone," where the project, originally released as a web series, found its home.

Another feature of the series is the abundance of young directors. Each episode of the first season was directed by different people, resulting in slight variations in style and presentation. References are not hard to find – youthful anxieties and the prevalence of neon lights migrated into the project from the then-trendy "Euphoria," while breaking the fourth wall and commenting on events for the audience came from "Fleabag."

The creators didn't limit themselves to merely copying the "successful settings" of their colleagues. For example, they managed to convey the atmosphere of Moscow not as a metropolis, but as a fairly cozy city for young people. Not to mention that the concept of "young psychologists building their personal lives" is fresh, interesting, and well-executed – watching the characters use manipulation while fully understanding its mechanisms is a delight.

If in another domestic hit, the same questions of romantic relationships, breakups, and other youthful sufferings were raised, but often in an exaggerated form and with mandatory humor, then in "Friendzone" the situations are often more down-to-earth and relatable to the viewer. Therefore, it's a bit easier to empathize with the characters or put yourself in their shoes.

Roman Kovalev

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Evolution in the Second Season

The story of the first season seemed quite complete. The characters matured, each received a logical "reward" for their actions. But the authors came up with an interesting twist for the plot development. In the second season, the series adds a dialogue between generations.

The issues of "un-friending" are still present, but no longer take up the main narrative time and are examined through the lens of different eras. Thus, Alexey Slavkin's character not only tries to win back Marina (Vlada Erofeeva), who suddenly left him, but also wants to understand why his parents separated (the theme of breakups is central to the season). To do this, he goes to Gelendzhik, where his mother has settled, who, moreover, has gotten together with a man who was once just a friend to her.

It is the dialogues between Kirill and his mother that become the highlight of the second season. They show how one can overcome the generation gap by trusting a loved one and sharing one's thoughts and feelings.

Evolution has touched not only the topics discussed, which, by the way, are quite interestingly analyzed from a psychological perspective in the closing credits, but also the character of Vlada Erofeeva. If in the first season her role could be described as a beautiful trophy girlfriend, here the character reveals herself more strongly, just as the parallels with the actress's own life become stronger (she is a model in real life). Therefore, the new season also presents a female perspective on the issues of "un-friending," making it less one-sided than before.

The same cannot be said for other characters. In the first season, for obvious reasons, more time was devoted to secondary characters – after all, the experiment to turn friendship into love was conducted on them. Here, the development of their storylines is puzzling. They are mostly used to lengthen the runtime and fill gaps between the main events, and the subplot about attending HIV support groups seems out of place. And this is perhaps the main drawback of the second season.

The series "Friendzone" turned out to be very uneven. In terms of tone and pacing, style and presentation (for example, none of the "Euphoria-esque" elements of the first season are present in the second), but the project is more than interesting – thanks to its concept, the still fresh and interesting young actors, and the atmospheric soundtrack featuring diverse modern music in Russian. Such series rarely appear in our country, so it is not recommended to miss it.