Easy
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Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Chicago couples improvise their way through threesomes, breakups and the ethics of the graphic novel about your ex.
Easy is an anthology of half-hour stories set in Chicago, most of them about love, sex and the arrangements people make to keep both alive. The dialogue is improvised from short outlines, and several couples return across the three seasons.
Kyle and Andi, married fifteen years with two children, begin the series with a sex life that has gone quiet; Kyle stays at home, Andi works. After couples therapy, in the second season, they open their marriage. By the third, Kyle has fallen for another woman, Amy, while Andi's pursuit of Ryan, an old friend, wrecks his marriage and disappoints her. In their last story they meet in a bar. Andi says she is lonely, Kyle says he cannot go back to monogamy, and they leave together declaring their love, with nothing settled.
The brothers Jeff and Matt start an illegal brewery in a garage. Success, fatherhood and arguments about growth split them; by the end Jeff, arrested after his gentrifying neighbours complain, is staying home with his daughter while his wife, Noelle, starts a business, and the brothers make peace after their father's death. Jacob Malco, a graphic novelist who feels he no longer matters, turns a sparsely attended signing into a night with a young woman and a viral humiliation, reaches out to the ex-wife his first book betrayed, and finally learns that a former student is drawing an unflattering book about him. Chase and Jo, two young women, argue over veganism, then over burlesque and feminist art; in the final season Chase says she is not ready for commitment, sees Jo with someone else, and ends up back on the couch beside her. Annie, who sings for mothers and babies, is invited into a threesome by a married couple, Tom and Lucy, who never tried dating apps; later she spends thirty days saying yes to everyone who asks her out, and finds someone.
The last episode returns to Sophie, an actress who, in the first season, left her boyfriend, Drew, for a television career in Los Angeles. Her show has been cancelled. Back in Chicago for one night, she calls him. Over drinks and a kiss she says she wants to come home and start a family. Drew tells her he never got over her, but he does not believe her, and he walks away. She runs after him too late, and the series ends on her crying.
Starring
Michael Chernusas Kyle
A stay-at-home father fifteen years into his marriage, who finds in the open relationship something he does not want to give up.
Kyle’s story
Kyle keeps house for the two children while Andi earns the money, and after fifteen years their sex life has gone quiet. When, after couples therapy, Andi wants to open the marriage, he goes along with it for her sake. Nervous about Amy, a colleague from the theatre where he rehearses, he still ends up with her on the first night, and then in bed with Andi, both saying they love each other. By the third season he alone is seeing someone, and he has fallen for Amy. When Andi pursues a married friend, Ryan, he feels threatened and used as a stand-in. At a bar he tells her he cannot go back to monogamy. They leave together declaring their love, and he promises to make the rest of the night about her.
Elizabeth Reaseras Andi
Kyle's wife, the family's breadwinner, who suggests opening their marriage and ends up the lonelier for it.
Andi’s story
Andi earns the money while Kyle stays home, and she tries to shake their fifteen-year marriage out of its quiet, testing a friend's theory about traditional roles with Halloween costumes. After couples therapy it is she who wants to open the marriage. On the first night her date disappoints, but a charmer she meets in a bar does not, and she comes home to curl up with Kyle. By the third season Kyle loves Amy while she has no one, until she meets Ryan, a childhood crush, now married. She pursues him and sends him photographs; his wife sees them, and he offers to leave his wife for her. He is nothing she imagined. In a bar she tells Kyle she wants to be loved and is lonely, and they leave declaring their love, with nothing settled.
Marc Maronas Jacob Malco
A self-absorbed graphic novelist who has built his work out of his own infidelities and the women in his life.
Jacob Malco’s story
Jacob Malco has made his name drawing his own life, infidelities included, and feels no one cares any more. After a thin book signing he sleeps with Allison, a graduate student, is furious when she turns a photograph of them, him asleep, into her own work, and embarrasses himself in a moment that goes viral. A new edition of his first book brings him back to Karen, the ex-wife it was built on; he seems to want her back, then trades on their being seen together for publicity. Later he learns that Beth, a graduate student he slept with fifteen years ago, has drawn him in a book of her own. He sleeps with his loyal friend Annabelle and ignores her the next day, then meets Beth, reads her pages and apologises. He and Annabelle make up, ready to try.
Dave Francoas Jeff
A coffee-shop worker who starts a garage brewery with his brother and ends up a stay-at-home father.
Gugu Mbatha-Rawas Sophie
A Chicago actress who leaves her boyfriend for a career in Los Angeles and comes back when it falls apart.
Kiersey Clemonsas Chase
A young woman whose relationship with Jo keeps colliding with what each of them believes a good life should be.
Why it matters
Easy is about the arrangements people make to keep love and sex alive past the first rush: an open marriage, a threesome found through an app, a business between brothers, a relationship renegotiated over veganism. Joe Swanberg wrote outlines of a few pages and let the actors improvise, which gives its sex scenes and its arguments the awkward texture of real ones; he said he showed actors their scenes before locking the cut so they could remove anything they did not want on screen. It treats consensual non-monogamy not as a punchline or a warning but as hard, specific work, and Kyle and Andi's story is its spine: the partner who proposed the open marriage becomes the one it leaves lonely. Swanberg said he deliberately left the endings open. The last image, a woman who chose her career crying on a Chicago street, asks what having it all actually costs.