Valentine's Day may be over, we all still deserve a little romance—whether it's real or not.
If you're anything like us, sometimes you just want the good parts of a TV relationship. You don't want to watch the whole series, but you just wanna watch the longing glances, the romantic speeches, the unexpected hook-ups, the moments that keep you coming back to the show in the first place. You want to live vicariously through TV characters, even if you've got your own love story to live through IRL. You want to enjoy years of a romance evolution without actually spending years doing it. We got you.
In an effort to get that itch scratched, we've put together a guide to how to watch some of TV's most satisfying romantic relationships without actually re-watching the entire series, just in case you're in the mood to have a good time without spending days doing it.
We're starting with six of the most popular TV comedies, and we narrowed down which couples to include based on a few criteria.
1) The couple doesn't start out together. Sorry to the Adam and Kristina Bravermans or the Eric and Tammy Taylors of the world—we love you, but we're here to watch love stories play out from the beginning. The pre-dating longing is a must.
2) The relationship doesn't require the entire series to get to a major relationship milestone. Yes, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big are one of the most fun TV couples to watch, but they meet in the Sex and the City pilot, date on and off, and get married in the post-series movie. Just rewatch the whole show.
3) The relationship has to be satisfying, even if it's in a tragic way. We don't mind a death, but if the couple gets torn apart because of cheating or people being really horrible, we simply didn't want to deal with it. (We thought about including Mindy and Danny from The Mindy Project, but their post-baby breakup ruined both characters for us, so you can just watch the airplane kiss in S2E14, "The Desert." We also haven't included Superstore's Amy and Jonah after their upsetting season six breakup, but there's still time for them to reconcile!)
4) There's an "ending." If the show's still on and the couple hasn't yet made any sort of commitment, we're leaving them off the list for now, but there is always room for updates.
5) The show has to be available to stream. If shows become available, they can be added.
So, without further ado, here is the first comedy-focused installment of our guide to the most satisfying TV romances.