People-watching in the lobby between acts at a recent Everclear concert at The Midland in Kansas City, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: Among couples, nine times out of 10, the woman was better looking than the man. And the 10th time, they were of equal attractiveness. Almost never would you see a couple where the guy was the better looking of the pair.
Maybe this is an old phenomenon, and just never noticed it until now. I admit that the TV sitcom premise of the schlubby funnyman with the hot wife was pretty trendy in the last decade. But other than shows like “The King of Queens” and “According to Jim,” the attractive woman/average guy combo rarely plays out on TV. This is because most TV shows feature only attractive people of both genders.
“The Office” (8 p.m. Central Thursdays on NBC) is a notable exception. I don’t mean to say that the actors and actresses on “The Office” are hideous-looking; only that they look like normal people. That, of course, was the intention from the beginning.
It’s one of the few shows positioned to explore the hot girl/average dude trend, and it has done it well.
The best combination is Dunder Mifflin paper salesman Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) — a.k.a. ‘Nard Dog — and receptionist Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper). Neither was around when the show premiered; Andy joined in Season 3 and Erin joined last season. But now these two non-core characters are certainly the best reason to watch the show.
Thursday’s episode, “Happy Hour,” also sees Michael (Steve Carell) hit it off with an attractive bar owner and Dwight (Rainn Wilson) make out well with a character named Isabel whose background I can’t recall; I think she’s a friend of Pam’s or something.
Although I’m no closer to understanding the trend (my working thesis is that women are drawn to traits other than looks, whereas looks rank higher on a man’s list of priorities), I do like that “The Office” is acknowledging it.
Often, TV writing staffs consist of men with low self-esteem, so although we see a fair number of awkward male TV characters, we haven’t seen them successfully hit it off with attractive women too often (it just doesn’t occur to writers that such a scenario would be possible). Rather, the typical sitcom plot would show how the guy screwed things up with the girl. Or, if it were being a little nicer, it would simply show the disconnect between the schlubby guy’s world and the attractive woman’s world (this is the premise behind “The Big Bang Theory.”)
But that is changing, and “The Office” is among the shows at the forefront. It started with an episode earlier this season when Pam thinks she is joining Erin in a laugh at the geeky Andy’s expense, but she realizes halfway through that Erin is actually moony-eyed over ‘Nard Dog. Pam reacts with a “Huh!?” expression that says, “Don’t you know he’s a 6 and you’re an 8.5?” But, to her credit, she quickly recovers and helps set up the two lovebirds.
For a viewer, it kind of makes sense. Andy would be an awesome guy to hang out with. But Michael and Dwight have also been effortless chick magnets of late, and that’s harder to understand. However, because I saw so many real-world examples of “What does she see in him?” at that concert, I’m totally willing to buy into it.
Basically, “The Office” is acknowledging that women can have questionable tastes in guys just like guys can have questionable tastes in women.
Technically, one could question Andy’s taste, although it wouldn’t be on physical grounds. Erin is clearly less intelligent and more naïve than he is, so one could argue that he merely has a crush on her — based on her cuteness and quirky personality — that will fade with time. On the other hand, that very disparity in IQ levels has already resulted in laughs, and I hope more will come.
The first example is when Andy first visits Erin’s house to discover she lives with a foster brother with whom she shares an unusually touchy-feely relationship. Another is when Erin keeps saying “Warmer, warmer” as Andy is probing near her breasts for a hidden index card (it turns out to be on her desk, but Erin, of course, never intends any sexual innuendo).
Truth be told, if you took Erin and Andy (or, to be specific, Erin-and-Andy) out of the equation, I’d probably cancel “The Office” from my viewing schedule. But Andy-Erin has now surpassed Jim-Pam (the current, baby-raising incarnation, if not the vintage version) as the show’s cutest couple. And it has surpassed Michael-Holly by default, since the writers inexplicably abandoned that successful thread.
Any other Andy-and-Erin fans out there? And is this average guy/attractive girl trend a new thing, or have I just not noticed it until now?
Comments
Rarely happens on TV? I would argue that the schlubby-dude-with-attractive-woman cliche has been a sitcom trope since the days of The Honeymooners (1950s).
I think you have to add to your list The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Flintstones, every short-lived live-action sitcom on Fox, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Third Rock From the Sun and probably a lot more terrible shows I have never seen or heard of.
Back to The Office, I did like where they were going with the Erin and Andy relationship, aside from my belief that it was moving a little too slowly. But I stopped keeping up with that show sometime in the 5th season, so I might not really know what I’m talking about anymore on that.
And Ryan Reynolds will make a terrible Hal Jordan.# Posted By Another Matt | 3/26/10 2:54 PM
You are right, of course, about the TV sitcom tradition. But the interesting thing about all of those sitcoms is that they feature married couples, and the comedy comes from their interactions as husband and wife.
But on shows about budding relationships (which includes most serial dramas and the more progressive sitcoms), the casts usually consist of exclusively attractive people. “The Office” is an exception. I find it refreshing that a 6 like Andy is succeeding with an 8.5 like Erin on a show that tries to reflect reality more than an old-school laugh-track sitcom.
And since Erin is obviously a unique person who doesn’t represent the typical female’s tastes, the cases of Michael and Dwight become perhaps even more worthy of analyzing. Because while Andy has an appealing personality, Michael and Dwight are annoying (they are funny to watch on TV, but they’d be annoying to hang out with after a while).
In terms of looks, Michael’s a 7.5 and the bar owner is an 8, so that’s not a huge leap, but what is surprising is that a woman (other than Holly, who is the female equivalent of Michael, and not a real-world type of woman) would be drawn to Michael’s personality. The twist, of course, is that Michael attracts her only when he is being himself (not aware that he’s on a date). Once he actively tries to impress women, pulling out the “Date Mike” guise, he fails. The double twist in this episode is that “Date Mike” drives away one woman, but Michael bumblingly stumbles across another woman as he is doing that.
And Dwight, a 6, is also able to attract Isabel, a 7.5, because of his personality. It’s another example of a female TV character with progressive taste in men.
I contend that five or 10 years ago we wouldn’t have seen a plotline like the Andy, Michael and Dwight threads on “The Office.” Rather, they would’ve been about the three guys’ bumbling and failed attempts to attract these women. And the women would have had no personalities; they would simply have been objects filling space.
It’s almost as if for all those years we saw the end result (fat guy married to hot woman), but it’s only now that we’re seeing scenarios play out that show the guy attracting the girl in the first place. (An exception would be flashback episodes, such as the courtship of Homer and Marge when they were teenagers.)
Anyway, whether “The Office” is doing something new or not, I’m mostly enjoying it. I don’t blame you for bowing out, though; the Andy-Erin thing is very slowly paced. That fits with the characters, but it’s a shame when the rest of the episode is generally not that great.
P.S. Hey, give Ryan Reynolds a chance. He might have acting range. Although probably not; he strikes me as more of a leading-man movie-star type. I can’t comment beyond that because, embarrassingly, I don’t even know if we’re talking about “Green Hornet” or “Green Lantern.” Sorry. I’ll learn when the hype machine kicks in.# Posted By John Hansen | 3/26/10 4:18 PM