Among other Netflix releases in November, “Dash & Lily” came to show us that love stories aren’t necessarily about finding someone like you. Actually, it is the perfect show for those who believe that opposites could make a great combination.
Adapted from “Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares”, by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, the show has 8 episodes with about 25 minutes each, is produced by Nick Jonas, and starred by Austin Abrams (“Chemical Hearts”) as Dash and Midori Francis (“Good Boys”) as Lily.
Lily is a positive person, believes in the miracle of Christmas, keeps a lot of hope and likes to imagine the day she will find true love. Dash is a reader, not really outgoing, critical, skeptical and meticulous. How could that possibly work?
Well, the story begins when Lily’s brother, Langston (Troy Iwata), has the idea of helping Lily find love through a game of “dares”. Lily writes some challenges in a book and places it in a library for someone to find.
Dash is the guy that finds it, and from there they start to get to know each other through this game. Their preferred places, foods and hobbies are introduced to one another by the notebook. Slowly, they get closer and face unusual situations throughout the episodes, until the day they will really meet.
Some positive points about the show are the very diverse – Asian, Black, Latin, Queer – cast, and the attention pointed to the problem of bullying during childhood. Another interesting factor is the various references of literature and music, like writers Dostoevsky, Aldous Huxley, Truman Capote, Zadie Smith, Haruki Murakami, and singer Joni Mitchell.
But if you are not into cliches, maybe you won’t like this release. There are many of them: comparison with fairy tales like Cinderella, dramatic speeches, airport getaways and typical problems with exes. They are there because this show is a romantic, cozy and comfortable comedy. The goal is to make us happy, soft and in the mood for Christmas.
Lily also often looks very silly for her age, a little bit “caricature-esque” when compared to other characters, which can make the series reach a lower age range. But in general, “Dash & Lily” meets what it set out to do and shows diversity, fun and love. If you haven’t watched it yet, you can watch the first season right now!
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The article above was edited by Laura Okida.
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