Man! I Feel Like a Man: Lessons in Masculinity from the New Fall Lineup

It’s almost September, and you know what that means. Fall premieres are just around the corner. The trailers are out. The press releases are in. The anticipation is mounting!

This year’s new comedies tackle such issues as being young and broke (2 Broke Girls), raising kids (Up All Night, I Hate My Teenage Daughter), falling for your co-worker (Free Agents), and acclimating to an eccentric roommate (Apartment 23, New Girl). But there’s also a deeper, more philosophical theme floating around TV land this season, serving as a premise for three new series. The question is, “What does it mean to be a man?”



Last Man Standing, Tuesdays on ABC



Tim Allen returns to ABC Oct. 11 in Last Man Standing, playing a married father of three daughters, with a tagline that reads, “He’s a man’s man, but lately he’s realizing he’s not in a man’s world anymore.” Can you imagine Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor raising girls? Can you picture how utterly clueless he would be? And how insensitive he would come off to them? Yeah, that’s Last Man Standing in a nutshell.

Some of the humor comes out of basic gender differences, poking fun at the stereotypical ways men and women can seem ridiculous to each other (men don’t listen, women cry a lot). But judging by the advertisements, the show is mostly about Tim Allen’s “fight to stay manly” while parenting three emotional females.

How to be a Gentleman, premiering Sept. 29 on CBS, has a similar tagline: “Bert's a man's man. Andrew's a gentleman. This fall they will teach each other a little bit about becoming a better man.” The two main characters here represent two extremes on the spectrum. Bert’s a rude, dumb, sloppy horndog who lifts weights and acts macho. Andrew’s a skinny, intelligent, prim-and-proper “nice guy” who writes a column on being gentlemanly.



How to be a Gentleman, Thursdays on CBS



Despite what the tagline says, the trailers indicate that it is mainly Bert who is teaching Andrew how to be a man rather than both characters teaching each other. And that’s rather unfortunate because Andrew has many admirable qualities while Bert has virtually none. Dave Foley, who plays Andrew’s boss on the show, commented, “Bert becomes a great, sort of, alter ego to Andrew in helping him basically learn how to be more of an ass.”

That is a scary quote. On a show addressing the topic of what makes a man manly, why is the nice guy derided and the jackass glorified? Maybe the series will live up to its tagline and Andrew will teach Bert a thing or two about respecting women… and being less ass-like.

ABC’s Man Up!, coming Oct. 18, advertises this slogan: “Will, Craig, and Kenny—three best friends who have completely forgotten what it means to be a man.” These are three sensitive, childish guys who feel a bit emasculated in their suburban lifestyles. They recall how their forefathers fought in wars, and they ask themselves what tough things they have done in their lifetimes.

Man Up!, Tuesdays on ABC

“They’re constantly like, ‘Man, we should be more like our fathers and take charge,’” said Dan Fogler, who plays the divorced Kenny. “And every time they take charge, they just mess up. That’s the fun of it.”

So unlike How to be a Gentleman, where the characters are, in theory, learning to be better men, in this show our main guys fail at redeeming their masculinity. The comedy depends on it.

What are we to conclude? Clearly the definition of manhood is on a lot of people’s minds lately, or else it wouldn’t be the basis for so many shows. But for the male viewer questioning the issue, are these shows going to give him any answers? Will the protagonists’ failures be comic relief or a frustrating blow to the ego?

As a woman, I don’t think I can answer that question. And we can’t know how these shows will actually pan out until they air. What I do know is that with active viewing, television can give us new questions to ponder and new ways of considering ideas. So at the very least, my hope is that these series will prompt discussions as they cause their viewers to see the issue from new angles.

What do you think? Is masculinity in jeopardy in real life or just in entertainment? Are nice guys doomed to finish last?

I hope not.

Happy Thoughts on "Happy Endings"

For those of you who don’t know, Happy Endings is an ABC sitcom that premiered in April as a mid-season replacement. Thirteen episodes have aired to date, and the mysterious thirteenth episode, which has been disowned by season one (it reportedly will not be on the first season DVD release) and remains unclaimed by season two (the second season begins September 28th), premiered last night.

The show is about six Chicagoans whose friendship gets a little awkward after one of the friends (Alex) leaves another one (Dave) at the altar. Since Alex and Dave are no longer a couple, which is a big change in the group dynamic, their buddies have to figure out how to maintain a friendship with both of them, despite their bad history.

Brad (Damon Wayans, Jr.), Dave (Zachary Knighton), and Max (Adam Pally)

In the friends group, first we have Brad—a down-to-earth black guy who likes to romance his wife. He’s married to Alex’s high-strung sister, Jane, who has some control issues and a few obsessive compulsive tendencies. Max is a cynic who isn’t afraid to say exactly what’s on his mind. He’s also the world’s least effeminate gay man, an irony that is often joked about on the show. And then there’s Penny, a nice girl who’s hunting for a husband and will do almost anything to find one.

Most of the first-season episodes were stand-alones (as in, nothing in the plot carried over into the next episode), but with one notable exception—the Dave and Alex story. Throughout the show, Dave’s main concern is building a new life where his longtime girlfriend is now just a friend. We see him moving out of her apartment, going on dates with other girls, and even agreeing to be Alex’s wingman at one point. And in the twelfth episode, we get a hint that Alex is regretting breaking up with Dave. I have a feeling this tension will be a mainstay throughout the run of the series. Will they or won’t they get back together? We’re dying to know!

Overall, the show is just fun. The plots, for one, are ludicrous. There’s an episode where Penny meets a terrific guy but is disappointed to find out his last name is Hitler. Wacky misunderstandings ensue. In another episode, Dave and Max don’t realize that a bum has moved into their attic and is stealing their food. In another, Penny wears a mismatched outfit to the laundromat (since all of her clothes are dirty) and hits it off with a hipster, who she later finds out dresses weird all the time, on purpose.

Watch Happy Endings Wednesdays on ABC

In addition to the silly plotlines, the actors have great chemistry. According to Adam Pally (Max), they improvise a lot. And it shows! The humor is natural, and with the actors being so comfortable together, it makes the characters’ friendships a lot more believable. When you watch, you feel like part of the clique, and you get sucked in to their world and their problems.

Happy Endings isn’t out there to teach us any big lessons about life; it’s just there to entertain. And it succeeds. Keep it in mind next time you need a good laugh.

Watch the season two premiere Wednesday, September 28th at 9:30 EST on ABC. You can also buy the complete first season on DVD Tuesday, September 20th.

(P.S. I recommend watching at least five episodes before voting yea or nay. This show needs time to grow on you.)

And in the End...

The Boob Tube

Watching television doesn’t require any critical thought.

It’s not a very bold statement—I think we can all agree with it. TV is made for the masses, not the highbrows. But does that mean it has to be “mere” entertainment? Can it be art as well? Could it even… dare I say it… make us think?

TV-viewing has long been deemed a passive activity, but I agree with the idea only to a certain extent. True, an audience can watch the same show for years without ever reflecting on why they enjoy it, or what the show is really about underneath all the episodic goings-on, but maybe that only accounts for a small percentage of today’s TV audience. (For the sake of this argument, we’ll have to disregard reality shows and their fans.)

Okay, assume for a moment that TV is completely meaningless.



Now consider series finales.

Last episodes often generate big audiences; even non-fans, even people who have never seen the show before will tune in. And they don’t want the finale to be just like every other episode, oh no. They want it to be climactic, to look back and to move forward. They want the series to finish off with a bang, leaving them satisfied yet paradoxically wanting more. And if a series finale isn’t conclusive, isn’t monumental, then viewers complain, journalists write angry editorials, and, we suspect, the writers sit back and laugh at our expense. We hate those writers. But if the entertainment has been completely mindless all along, then why do we expect the finale to rise to a higher standard than the rest of the series?

Perhaps it is because unconsciously, viewers are finally expecting to think. They feel that listening to a sitcom’s concluding thoughts will shed light on what the series meant as a whole. They hope the finale will redeem their time for them and give them a legitimate reason for having spent so many hours devoted to that program.

But then again, when you consider the colossal hatred given to ambiguous endings, as in shows like The Sopranos, then it seems I may have given the viewer too much credit. It’s not that they want to think; it’s that they want the meaning handed to them!

Now, I need not spend any time arguing for why critical thinking is better than mindless absorption (see entire text of Fahrenheit 451). But because this is so, the “best” TV endings are the ones that do not have all the answers. Ambiguity encourages viewers to analyze the series for themselves and reflect on what they have been following, and to find the meaning, if there is any to be found. Ambiguity is also more creative. It’s the difference between a Robert Frost poem and a Hallmark card. It’s what separates art from entertainment.

But the idea of conclusively ending a sitcom does not make a lot of sense when you consider that the genre was originally designed for one episode to have no effect on the next. Main characters could have boyfriends or girlfriends that appeared in one show, proposed marriage, ultimately got rejected, and then disappeared into whatever vacuum guest stars get sucked into, never to be discussed or heard from again. Every episode was a clean slate. Nothing ever changed. But finales have always been a big deal because that’s when things finally do change. It’s when the Korean War ends, the crew gets fired from WJM, and Bob Hartley wakes up from the eight-season dream that was Newhart. For many old sitcoms, changes were rare until the very end. But audiences clearly liked them, or else the two-hour movie that concluded M*A*S*H wouldn’t be the most-watched U.S. television broadcast of all time.

Thus it seems that, despite the disjointed structure of past television sitcoms, viewers still yearned to ascribe meaning to the series overall, regardless of the triviality of each individual episode. This is healthy critical thinking, and perhaps it is why ongoing character and story arcs are becoming more popular in today’s comedies. Audiences do want to think. They don’t want to watch characters that never grow. They want their favorite shows to evolve, to change, to be more like literature. To be more like art.

A sitcom is worth more than the sum of its parts. It is only passive if we allow it to be.

That is what I believe. And that is why I started this blog.

The Sitcoms They Are A-Changin'

Let me ask you something. What is How I Met Your Mother about?

Typical answer: All the girls Ted Mosby had to date before he found his wife.

Okay, I can accept that on some level. But is that what the show is really about? Is that one-line plot description enough to make us tune in every week, TiVo the reruns, and memorize the commentaries on the DVD sets? We love the show because Ted dates a lot? Honestly?

While you’re pondering that, let me ask you another question. What is Gilligan’s Island about?

Typical answer: Seven castaways on an island, trying to get back home.

That’s correct. Is it about anything more than that? Nope, not really. The entire series can be summed up in one sentence, and no matter what episode you watch, you get the same shtick. They’ve either got a hope of leaving the island or have found something that will occupy their time there, but by the end of the episode, everything goes back to the way it was at the beginning. If visitors come, they leave. If problems arise, they are resolved. If the Professor invents something, it is either destroyed or deemed useless. So when the end credits roll, everything is back to normal for the castaways… until the next episode, of course.

Is that true for How I Met Your Mother? Mmm, not really.

Chances are slim you see where I’m going with this.

In the old days, sitcoms were episodic. One episode’s shenanigans had no bearing on the next’s. You can turn on any ol’ I Love Lucy or Brady Bunch and understand what is going on immediately, even if you’ve never seen the show before, because they never make any references to previous episodes. It’s like an entire series of pilots.

Now, of course, I recognize there are exceptions—two-part episodes, for instance—but I’d estimate, for sitcoms produced before 1990, my argument holds up about 80% of the time.

But somewhere in the ‘80s, sitcoms started straying from the episodic format. Not discarding it entirely, just straying. Writers had discovered something new—romantic tension. Rather than bringing all the characters back to equilibrium at the end of every episode, the writers found that audiences enjoyed it much more when dating relationships between main characters developed slowly over a span of many episodes, perhaps even seasons. ‘Cause we all know that romantic, gushy stuff can get complicated. And dramatic. And difficult. And cute. And it’s so much fun to watch!


Ted Danson & Shelley Long on Cheers

Here’s the best example I can come up with: Sam and Diane from Cheers. These characters had an on-again off-again relationship right up until Shelley Long left the show. It was the most memorable plotline Cheers had to offer, simply because it took so much time to develop. Over a five-season span, no matter what the main plot of the episode was, Sam and Diane’s sexual tension was always lingering in the background. Thus, the audience spent so much time watching the plot unfold that before they knew it, they were emotionally involved. And now Sam and Diane’s relationship has gone down in TV history, whereas that one episode where Cliff doesn’t want to bring his girlfriend to the bar because she isn’t pretty… ehh, not so much.

Other shows did the same thing. Jesse and Rebecca on Full House. Harry and Christine on Night Court. Tony and Angela on Who's the Boss?



David Schwimmer & Jennifer Aniston on Friends

And the trend continued into the '90s. Just look at Friends's Ross and Rachel. Good luck following their relationship if you don't watch the entire series in order. Are they together or broken up? Is this before or after the pivotal "we were on a break" moment? And why are they living together and having a baby together, but still not together? The same goes for Cory and Topanga's relationship, which had its ups and downs in season five of Boy Meets World. For that matter, so did Kevin and Winnie's relationship in The Wonder Years. See the pattern? The episodic format waned so that main characters could have messy romances. And the audiences ate it up.

Now we’re in the new millennium of television, and modern comedies are mostly serialized. That means they have larger narratives going on that span multiple episodes. So if you start in the middle of a season, you’ll be totally lost. They’re not made to be watched out of order. While older sitcoms resolved all of life’s problems in a half hour, these days the problems take more time and often don’t get resolved at all. (Kind of like real life.) Overarching storylines are no longer just for good dramas—they’re for comedies too!

Let’s look at a few examples. At its most basic level, 30 Rock is about the wacky adventures of the head writer of a sketch comedy series. But underneath the surface, it explores how co-workers can become like family. Liz Lemon is the single mother, Pete is the bumbling father, the writers are the teenagers, and the actors are the infants. That makes Kenneth the babysitter and Jack Donaghy the wise grandfather whom Liz goes to for advice. Together they all make a beautiful, dysfunctional family. The show isn’t about silly situations so much as it’s about silly characters and their relationship dynamics.



Melissa McCarthy & Billy Gardell

Mike & Molly is about a new couple figuring out their relationship. But at a deeper level, it’s about all the milestones and obstacles that relationships go through, and how couples and the people in their lives react to these events.



And How I Met Your Mother. What’s that one about? You guessed it—relationships. And I’m not just talking about Ted’s failed romances. It’s also about Lily and Marshall’s monogamous relationship, Barney’s string of one-night-stands, Robin’s fear of commitment, and of course, Ted’s attempts to find true love. It’s about all the different ways one might approach love and sex—well, except for abstinence.

So while the old shows entertained audiences with silly situations that were easily rectified in a half hour, today it’s the characters’ ongoing, ever-changing relationships that keep audiences watching.

But I’m only commenting on trends and speaking in generalizations, so even as I write I am thinking of exceptions. For instance, the ABC comedy Happy Endings still resolves its issues at the end of each episode, and it doesn’t often reference previous shows. But it’s only in its first season. If it hopes to last, it’s bound to evolve into the serial format of its peers. That’s what audiences want nowadays.

The sitcoms, they are a-changin’. We might tune in for the funny situations, but we stick around for the relationships between the characters. Modern comedies are giving us stories that take longer than 22 minutes to resolve (if they are ever resolved), and that opens up the doors for more complicated and realistic plots. Our little sitcoms are growing up.