As Manhattan is Woody Allen’s love letter to New York City, Easy appears to be writer-director Joe Swanberg’s own fawning missive to Chicago. A small part of the city, anyway.
It’s telling that one of the most recurring motifs in Easy, aside from Swanberg’s trademark scenes of awkward sex, is the logo for Dark Matter Coffee. The brand’s emblem appears on paper cups that characters nonchalantly drink from and on stickers that hover conspicuously in the background of certain scenes. After a while, it becomes tempting to suspect the show’s been underwritten by the artisanal java company: at least two main characters are Dark Matter employees, one of which ends up conducting what amounts to a gratuitous extended interview with company founder Jesse Diaz about the growth of his business.
