TV Geekdom: Defending The Man-Child

By far, this new TV season has been one of my favorites. There have never been so many shows with characters I relate to. Every week I get a chuckle when Chuck Bartowski is in his bedroom and there’s a Tron poster on his wall, or that Sam on Reaper can fight demons from the netherworld, but the only thing that really scares him is talking to his crush Andi. Even Ned on Pushing Daisies could be exploiting his powers for fame and fortune, but would rather bakes pies and kiss the girl of his dreams through plastic wrap. Never has being nerdy been so hot on TV. So I was disappointed by Entertainment Weekly’s Mark Harris assessment that “it’s a good time to be an appealing but sexually non-threatening leading man,” which dripped with so much sarcasm, I had wring the magazine out over a sink.

In his piece, he laments that most of the popular characters on TV are stunted, immature man-boys who are a far cry from the macho studs that were all over the tube in earlier times. I guess he’s upset that Sonny Crockett and Sam Malone have been replaced by more sensitive guys like geek-boys Hiro Nakamura and the guys on The Big Bang Theory. He says that the smoking and drinking alpha-males of Mad Men are more of the types he likes to see. But for me, seeing people on TV that I previously saw in a mirror is quite refreshing.

There’s a reason why everyone likes Hiro. When he first showed up on screen, he was quoting Star Trek and worrying about wrecking the fabric of the universe, we were looking at a new type of super-hero. He was still, in essence, a cubicle-dweller, stuck looking at comic books as a means of escape, hoping for something more. Try to find a guy now in his 20s, whose real life is so confusing and stressful, he has to dive into a fantasy environment, whether it’s in the pages of a book, or in a computer-generated environment. In a world where people have Second Lives in a virtual playland, seeing TV characters who don’t know how to interact with real people is not a surprise.

These everyday guys on TV are a good antidote to some of the people we meet on “reality TV.” Everyone who is supposed to be real are these Type-A-on-steroids types who can get any girl, drink as much as the want, and spend as much money as they can. If you want to know why nerds are ruling fictional TV Shows, it’s because the guys on The Hills and The Real World are so obnoxious, we need to get away a bit. Most guys who feel like Chuck or Sam don’t want to see another talking Ken doll, getting vapid blonds into threesomes they’ll never have after a bottle of Cabo Wabo Tequila, then throwing hundreds at a bouncer for bottle service at an LA club.

You want too see how far we’ve come from putting the perfect TV man on a pedestal? On Chuck, the lead’s sister is dating a guy Chuck calls “Captain Awesome.” CA is the best-looking, most career-adjusted, self-confident guy on the show, and he’s totally played for laughs. Last week, he helped Chuck’s best friend (and man-child) Morgan learn how to be more adult by equating tucking in your shirt to becoming a man. The way he looked at himself in the mirror was a total goof. Then later, his Halloween costume was Adam (as in “& Eve”), which showed that not only was his only reason for wearing the costume to show his “perfect” body, but it was him saying “I am who all men will be further based on.” But the costume that’s the hit of the party is, of course, Chuck and Morgan’s, which was a variation of a Dune Sandworm, which is not only the geekiest get-up someone could imagine, but is the same one they have been doing since they were kids.

Harris says that Mad Men has the best alpha-males on TV, but he leaves out a show that has the perfect mix of manly-men and nerdy-boys: Entourage. This HBO series is the only show this season that has an excellent mix of the guy you want to be and the guy you really are. Vinny Chase has everything, but he’s still sensitive enough to take care of his boys. E has a major movie star under this thumb, and was living in a huge house, but he falls to pieces whenever Sloane name gets mentioned, and can’t even handle being in the same room as Anna Farris. And Turtle best represents the audience, with his video-game obsession and slacker ways, but he still wants to branch out and get a real job (like when he tried to manage rappers) because he knows he can’t be a sponge his whole life. I would rather try to be these guys than the corporate, suit-wearing ad men AMC likes to show.

As someone close in age to Chuck and Sam, and if the writing is an indication, the people behind the scripts as well, I am glad there is a new breed of leading man on TV. When a main character has more problems with the cute girl in the Work Bench apron than he does when Satan appears in the passenger seat of his car (a Prius no less, very sensitive), my DVR makes me happy. And I’m sorry, Mark Harris, that the A-Team doesn’t crash their van into your living room every week like it did in the 1980s. I’d much rather join The Nerd Herd with Chuck anyway.