Chicago-Based Netflix Series ‘Easy’ Wraps After 3 Seasons


Love, life, relationships: none of it is easy. That’s all painfully apparent in the Chicago-based Netflix series “Easy.”

The show is a collection of vignettes set in different Chicago neighborhoods with different characters who are trying to make it all work.

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“Over the course of the three seasons we kind of move from intrapersonal relationships to more community-based relationships in season two, back to more intrapersonal,” said show creator Joe Swanberg. “But it’s all people trying to figure it out.”

The Chicago-based writer and director has been shooting “Easy” in Chicago for the past three years. The city has become somewhat of its own character in the show.

I moved to the city in 2003,” Swanberg said, “so at this point it’s really nice to write for characters who I can situate in a neighborhood and have a really strong feeling that these characters would drink at this bar they would eat at this restaurant their kids would go to this school.

I think Chicagoans are used to watching television where it’s disorienting and characters are walking through the Loop and then they take a left turn and suddenly they’re in Logan Square and then they walk another block and suddenly they’re in Andersonville and you’re like, ‘What is happening right now?! So it’s fun to make a show that actually feels geographically situated,” he said.

Swanberg is also the creator of a number of independent films, including “Drinking Buddies” and “Happy Christmas.”

He hopes to bring the “Easy” characters back someday, possibly in a film.

Video: Joe Swanberg talks about a character on the Netflix series “Easy” played by stand-up comedian and podcaster Marc Maron.


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