A Man Seeking Woman Episode Took Down "Nice Guys". It Was Awesome.

In our culture, there's the archetype of the Nice Guy. A guy who's kind and helpful and supportive and reliable. He's kind of boring but still an ideal and there just doesn't seem to be any of his kind around anymore. Then there's the men who fancy themselves to be the "Nice Guys". The guys who try to get the girl by being there for them and being their friend and being nice. The guys who grumble when the girls aren't interested in them and complain that "girls just don't want nice guys", as if the girl owes them for being nice. Their niceness has expectations and strings attached and completely ignores that maybe the girl they're after has a right to choose whoever she wants. It's the dark side of being the "nice guy" and something that was explored to great effect in Cactus, an episode of Man Seeking Woman that aired a couple weeks back.

Back Up. What's Man Seeking Woman?

Man Seeking Woman is a half-hour comedy on FXX (FX's comedy-centric station) currently on it's second season. If you're in Canada like me, you can find season 1 on Shomi. Created by Simon Rich and starring Jay Baruchel, it's an incredibly surrealist show about Josh Greenberg (Baruchel), a 20-something guy going through life trying to get by and looking for love, along with his womanizing best bro Mike (Eric Andre), and his sister Liz.  Each episode contains a series of semi-connected sketches of a regular dating or life situation (Your ex is dating the worst person in the world but no one sees it, going to a destination wedding in a bad locale, spending time with your S.O.'s closest friends when you don't know them that well), and blows them up to absurdist extremes (The ex is dating an elderly Hitler, the wedding is literally in Hell, Josh's girlfriend and his friends lived through a slasher movie and keep going back to the cabin where the undead lumberjack is waiting). These heightened situations are presented as actually happening and are played totally straight by everyone involved, as if Japanese Penis monsters and war counsels on how to send a girl the perfect text were everyday things. Loosely serialized narratives run throughout the season (season 1 had Josh trying to get over or get back with his ex, while season 2 has him fall for Rosa (Rosa Salazar), a girl at his work), but the episodes essentially stand alone. It's not a perfect show by any means. The nature of it means if something doesn't work or you don't like a particular idea, you're stuck with it for 5 to 7 minutes until the next thing. Putting it all through Josh's worldview also means that sometimes the woman characters aren't well-defined beyond objects of Josh's desire (Though the show has been taking more steps to correct this as it's gone on and will shake things up from time to time with a "Woman Seeking Man" episode that follows Liz or Rosa and shows their perspective). But when the show works, it really, really works and Cactus was a highlight of a season that hit a lot more times than it missed.

So What Went Down?

Cactus kicks off with Josh bringing Rosa a coffee with extra soy (which she likes) and discovering she has broken up with her longtime boyfriend (who was literally Jesus in the complete opposite of the Hitler scenario). Josh comforts her, while trying to hide the fact that his body is trying to dance for joy. He has liked her for a while now and finally has his chance to make a move. He reassure his sister they are soulmates "Rosa loves coffee. I love getting her coffee. Rosa loves Juno Diaz. I, for a long time, have really wanted to read something by him or her". He goes onto say how he knows Rosa isn't "flashy like the Maxim Magazine type that most guys are into" but that's kind of what he loves about her. It's like he's "the only one who can see how special she is". It's a sentiment straight out of a terrible Rom-Com and it immediately gets debunked when he runs into a massive line of guys waiting to ask her out, all of whom are "the only one who can see how special she is". Josh might love Rosa, but he's not the only one and their connection wasn't unique. Except for one thing. Josh is able to bypass the line by informing the bouncer that he's "a friend". After this is vetted by security, he's allowed through where he uses his status as her friend to offer to help her move out of her ex-boyfriend's house.

So he helps her move, despite not really being that good at it and getting poked many times by Rosa's cactus (both the episodes title and a metaphor for all Josh is doing for a chance with Rosa). They bond a bit over their shared love of Must Love Dogs, which coincidentally comes on the television as Josh is about to leave (though neither one really wants him to.). So they sit to just watch the first bit. A while in though, they're still watching and getting very close. That's when the movie is pre-empted for a news report announcing an asteroid is going to wipe out the earth in 7 minutes and everyone needs to stay where they are and make the most of their time. Josh hems and haws, even as the newscasters start making out and Rosa seems to be giving every indication she wants Josh to make a move. So as the asteroid barrels toward earth he goes to kiss her. And then she turns him down. It's not a horrible rejection. She apologizes for giving him that impression. She tells him he's so great but she wants to be his friend so bad (which is the highest level of intimacy). It's not the end of the world (literally as the asteroid gets destroyed at the last minute). But it's still a rejection and now Josh is left to his own self-pity to deal with it.

This is when nice guy syndrome kicks in and the episode goes from fine to something I haven't been able to stop thinking about weeks after air. Josh vents to his friend Mike about how not fair this is. He put in the man hours, got her coffee, listened to her relationship problems, and helped her move. What more does she want? He concludes that girls just don't want to date nice guys and wishes there was a law that would make girls date the guy who's nicest to them. This is an obviously terrible idea that would completely ignore and reject the girl's feelings and ability to make her own decision but it sticks in Josh's head and he goes off to State supreme court to plead his case to a group of judges. The judges (nearly all of whom are men) agree with Josh. It seems reasonable and the girl would get something out of it: they'd get to date a nice guy. The one dissenter is a female judge, but her comments about how absurd this all is and how the law doesn't work like this keep on getting condescendingly dismissed and ignored with a "That's a good point, Louise". The "nice law" is passed and from now "if a guy is really, really nice to you, he gets to be your boyfriend". A victory has been won for superficially nice guys who think they should be rewarded for basic human decency everywhere. Josh walks out into a world where men can enter a relationship on the flimsiest of pretences and it's beautiful. For men anyway.

Then things take a turn. Josh is let into his apartment building by a homeless man, who he thanks while he attempts to reach Rosa. The homeless man (Kevin Mcdonald) follows Josh to tell him he's welcome and get confirmation that what he did was "very nice". Then he follows the law and unzips his pants. After all, "if a guy's nice to you, he gets to be your boyfriend". Josh tries to explain to the homeless man whose name is Chainsaw that's he's gotten the law confused. Josh made the law because there was a girl named Rosa who he was very nice to who he really liked. Chainsaw counters that he was very nice to Josh and he really likes Josh. So Josh tells Chainsaw that he seems nice but he thinks they'd be better off as "just friends". It's then Josh gets it. Just because he was nice to Rosa doesn't mean she has to sleep with him. She can sleep with or not sleep with whomever she wants and Josh just has to live with it. Josh might be a nice guy most of the time, but he hasn't been a very empathetic one. It's taken him being put on the other side of his own law for him to get it. Chainsaw thinks he's really learned something, as do the police. Of course that doesn't mean Josh gets to escape the consequences of his actions. Repealing a law is a lengthy process so until it's official, Josh resigns himself to dating Chainsaw.

By the time this happens, Josh and Chainsaw have settled into an odd kind of domestic bliss, but Josh takes the first out he gets (Though he agrees to attend the wedding they've already RSVP'd to as friends.). And it's given him enough time to be friends with Rosa again. Actual friends this time with no strings or expectations attached. He probably isn't completely over Rosa (the episodes end has sparks fly between her and Mike, which will cause issues with Josh for the rest of the season) but he's done trying to control her feelings. He's seeing her as an actual person for once. He still has a lot of growing to do as a person, but this is a nice start.