While Netflix’s Feel Good will not return for a third season, its star, Mae Martin, is just getting started (and the show is worth a revisit, or a first look if you missed it).

Martin’s semi-autobiographical show is full of heart, vulnerable truths about addiction, and a touching queer story of sometimes-obsessive love that feels beyond relatable. Not to mention Martin’s dry stand-up often takes center stage, and every time she picks up the mic it is indeed a treat.

Here are five takeaways from Feel Good, a show that’s easy to fall in love with: 

1. Writing the personal story 

The show initially stemmed from Martin’s stand-up on addiction. Martin has stated that their character on the show is based on the circumstances of their own life 10 years ago — "manic and having a tenuous grasp on sobriety." Having mined so much from personal life for a story, Martin speaks very highly of working with co-writer Joe Hampson, stating that the outside perspective helped while choosing what to amplify about their own personality for the sake of amping up their own story for television. There is a quote in the pilot episode that quite brilliantly sets up both the theme and the feeling of the show. Martin is struggling through a set onstage that no one (except for future love interest George, played by the charming Charlotte Ritchie) is connecting to. Martin muses, "I feel like I’m full of birds — pelicans — after an oil spill, all these birds covered in oil and they can’t lift their wings and they are in my chest." Perhaps Mae doesn’t realize it at the moment — and neither does George — but the metaphor feels apt for the chaos of their future love, along with Mae's struggle to stay sober. Not to mention, it’s a lovely moment of connection.

2. Finding humor in the miserable 

Martin’s character Mae (and their stand-up) does a great job of always looking on the bright side, even in the darkest moments. When an audience member tells Mae she’s playing Candy Crush during a set, they win the audience back by quipping, "Did my mother hire you?" When caving in to a night of relapsing into drugs, Mae ends up with a tattoo of SUM 41. It’s a wonderful feat by Martin and Hampson that every dark or serious sequence is usually punctuated with a breath of a laugh — they even manage to make people jumping out of closets genuine. 

3. Addiction and love 

Martin so aptly portrays love as an addiction on the show (while still managing to keep Mae and George’s love story unbelievably sweet), but it begs the question: can a recovering addict be in love when the very act of being in love can initially feel like an addiction? It seems the notion very much explains early feelings of a relationship, but has never really been given its own show — at least not in a comedic way. In season one's final episode, George expresses the same revelation: "What if I’m a person and I’m in love with you. What am I gonna do? I don’t know what to do without you? I need you now." 

4. A private life turned public 

Even though the second season of Feel Good was shot during the pandemic, it gives a very contemporary look at viral fame. When Mae finally gets the attention they feel they deserve for their stand-up, along with it comes a group looking to capitalize on that at any cost. Excited about what Mae has to offer, an agent, chomping at the bit, says, “You’re an addict, you’re anxious, you’re trans,” she practically drools (as Mae, baffled, wonders, "am I?"). The new attention does allow for Mae’s character to examine more closely the idea of good and evil, the price of fame, and simply the fact that life is perhaps too often framed by a binary

5. Offering support 

The supporting cast of Feel Good supports the tone of the show in such a fun and lovely way. There’s Lisa Kudrow as Mae’s mother, who manages to be both supportive and cooly deadpan all at once. There’s George, who, while Mae initially views her as a solution to all of their problems, does not come without boxes full of baggage of her own. There’s George’s flatmate, Phil, who’s never-ending earnestness and good intentions are aspirational. It’s clear Martin and Hampson spent time with every person they were creating and generously gave every character an arc along with scene-stealing lines. 

Final Takeaway: While Feel Good is ending, it will leave audiences with a tender feeling after delving into love and addiction, pain and pleasure, hope and despair so simultaneously (and with such storytelling elegance) that fans will agree that it has come and gone too soon.