With ‘Uncoupled,’ Darren Star Finally Nails On-Screen Texting

If you’re a fan of Darren Star shows like Sex and the City, Younger, and Emily in Paris, you’ve likely checked out his new Netflix series, Uncoupled.

The rom-com’s first season follows Neil Patrick Harris as Michael, a New York real estate broker in his 40s whose boyfriend of 17 years unexpectedly dumps him. The cast is charming, the New York City apartments are glamorous, and while the series hasn’t received the same fanfare as Star’s recent projects, there’s one thing Uncoupled does noticeably better that its competition: on-screen texting.

The way in which TV shows depict texting on-screen has become a widely-debated topic over the years, in large part because every show puts their own unique spin on digital communication. Star himself varies his approach from series to series, but with Uncoupled, he finally recreates the iMessage aesthetic while showing an accurate, modern-day approach to text messaging — one that helps enhance, rather than distract from, his story.

Before we dive into what makes Uncoupled‘s texting so superior, let’s take a look back at Star’s on-screen texting evolution, starting with Younger, which ran from 2015 to 2021. The series about a 40-year-old woman Liza (Sutton Foster) pretending to be 26 so she can get a job in publishing depicts text messaging through colored text bubbles on screen, alongside contact names and timestamps. Younger‘s characters use iPhones, but you wouldn’t know it by the looks of their nondescript text exchanges, especially because the bubbles are green instead of blue.

As the show progresses, Star switches up Younger‘s approach to texting to better reflect technological advances. By the seventh and final season, the show has ditched the bubbles and freely types messages across the screen. The freestyle texting gets the job done, but in terms of reflecting the device being used it isn’t necessarily accurate. While neither of Younger‘s methods are particularly painful to watch — especially compared to other corny designs we’ve seen on shows like The Mindy Project — the layouts are ultimately unrealistic and the creative approach perpetuates a cheesy disconnect between the show and technology.

After Younger, Star tried to raise his on-screen texting game with Netflix’s 2020 series Emily in Paris. The show follows an America marketing rep Emily (Lily Collins) who’s new to Paris, so there’s a heavy focus on texting and social media, specifically Instagram. The aesthetics of on-screen mobile notifications and social posts in Emily in Paris are seriously lacking, but at least the texts appear in bubbles featuring the iPhone’s signature alternating blue and light gray message colors. The formatting isn’t identical to iMessage, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

At times, both Younger and Emily in Paris show full iMessage threads via actual iPhone screens,  which is both refreshing and annoying. On one hand, it’s nice to see the real deal. But if you know your characters are using iPhones, why not simply create on-screen texts that more closely represent the iMessage software?

The direct method of zooming in on a character’s phone screen to show text conversations is also used on the 2022 Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, to show that Carrie and Samantha have been chatting. Choosing to forego texts displayed on screen was a good choice for this series, especially since Carrie isn’t very tech savvy. But Star’s latest show Uncoupled reminds us that on-screen texts can be simple, fast-paced storytelling tools that liven up scenes.

When I first saw Uncoupled utilize on-screen texting I thought, “Yes, Darren Star. You finally got it right!” At long last, the gray and blue text bubbles visually scream iMessage and properly correspond to the phone used in-scene. To make conversations even more realistic, the series features imitation iMessage Tapbacks and gives viewers the chance to see text being typed out and deleted while corresponding sound effects play in the background.

Like so many on-screen texts before it, Uncoupled‘s iPhone-inspired display includes names and photos of the people in conversation, which isn’t a feature present in real world one-on-one text convos. But since those pieces of information are included for the sake of storytelling, I’ll let it slide. As the GIF up top proves, Uncoupled doesn’t just nail the format of on-screen messages. The show also understands the cathartic act of drafting brutally honest texts, only to delete them before sending in favor of calmer, more calculated responses.

Uncoupled‘s on-screen texts might not be as fun or creative as those in Star’s previous shows, but the realistic aesthetic makes their inclusion more natural and less distracting, which helps viewers take the show more seriously.