There’s a scene in the Netflix romcom Always Be My Maybe in which Sasha, Ali Wong’s straight-talking, successful celebrity chef, watches her high school crush Marcus (Randall Park), a dope-smoking slacker who still lives with his dad in his mid-30s and plays in the same band he always did, bang out a song about tennis balls. She’s cheering wildly.
A decade ago, this type of romantic setup would have contained all the chemistry of a bloated ShamWow. But this is 2019, and here the disappointing, underachieving male is not simply in a supporting role on TV, he’s a proper romantic lead. Sure, Marcus reminds Sasha of home and the things she left behind, but it’s hard not to watch the film and think – really? The high-achieving go-getter prefers this guy to Keanu Reeves?
It’s no secret that male characters have been going through something of a shift recently. We’ve already witnessed the Hot But Horrible trend come back into force via the priest in Fleabag, a show utterly bereft of decent male characters. Earlier this year Vulture examined what it called the “soft boys of Netflix”, while The Hollywood Reporter ran a story last March on “The Triumph of the Beta Male”, featuring the openly nerdy stars of TV’s Silicon Valley on the magazine’s widely panned cover.
Without bemoaning the disintegration of a terribly two-dimensional idea of strong masculinity, the new wave of tough, independent female characters does seem to be increasingly paired off with love interests who simply don’t measure up.
Consider Sandra Oh’s moustachioed husband in Killing Eve, who dresses almost exclusively in lounge wear and has passive-aggressive tantrums about his wife leaving home to hunt assassins.
Or Jeremy, Audrey’s husband in The Letdown, who, when he saw his own baby crying, had the temerity to ask, “Do I pick her up?”
Then there’s Aidy Bryant’s love interest in Shrill, Ryan, who asks her to please exit from the back of the house so his friends don’t see who he just slept with. The gesture is more likely to save her reputation than his, considering he’s basically a bed-dwelling Hobbit with the refined charm of a leaf blower.
The disappointing male partner is also in full bloom on Netflix. In Dead To Me, Judy’s husband, Steve (James Marsden), is so used to gliding through life using only the power of his cheekbones, he seems blind to the needs of everyone around him. And then there’s Dean (Matthew Lillard), Christina Hendricks’ husband in Good Girls, whose greatest betrayal is not his adultery (though that’s also obviously not great) but his incompetence: as a businessman, an investor and, most crushing of all, as a dad.
Perhaps the trend is in part a backlash to the dark and brooding antihero who dominated our TV screens in the early 2000s – Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Walter White, Omar Little. Flawed men who emoted dangerous, sometimes sexualised power with a squint, and a flare of the nostrils. If they sneezed, their female counterparts caught pneumonia.
But somewhere along the line, perhaps as more women took up space in writer’s rooms, the alpha male lead began to fade from view. As a consequence, it’s becoming clear just how dissatisfying the unbalanced power dynamic actually is.
Part of it is a function of the writing – drama comes from conflict, and a story about a woman wielding power doesn’t work as well with a supportive husband; where’s the conflict then?
Still. Why can’t we have stories in which two equals battle it out and find meaningful compromise? What about a world in which neither partner has to sacrifice themselves or the things that are important to them? Especially when we’re talking about romcoms, which are essentially wish-fulfilment fantasies – wouldn’t that be a more progressive kind of wish-fulfilment than settling for the lazy and uninspiring?
But perhaps in 2019, women’s wish-fulfilment is only partly focused on romance. The romcom has, for a while now, been as much about the ideal job, outfit and home as it is the ideal partner. Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada and Something’s Gotta Give are about aspirational lifestyles. Perhaps it is that right now, a woman’s greatest wish is her own success, and the man figures less in that equation, because he’s no longer seen as the central measure of it.
Or perhaps, just for this moment, female wish-fulfilment is centred on dominance. It’s not progressive, it’s not ideal, but as women get in touch with their general disappointment over men, perhaps it is – for this short time in history – an accurate reflection of what women want.
