CBS
My column in this week’s print TIME magazine reports from the upfronts on a trend I noted more briefly here after the fall-schedule announcements: the peculiar and specious trend of sitcoms about the “emasculated” modern man. It’s most blatant in new comedies like Last Man Standing, Work It, Man Up and How to Be a Gentleman, though I’ve been noticing it to some extent in other shows as I’ve been watching fall pilots. And just what is today’s man so wrought up about?
According to these shows, we’ve become soft, feminized and alienated from the physical world. On Last Man Standing, Allen records an online-video rant: “What happened to men? Men used to build cities just so we could burn them down!” A Man Upcharacter’s wife tells him, “Your grandfather fought in World War II, your father fought in Vietnam, but you play video games and use pomegranate body wash.”
So men today are emasculated because we smell nice and don’t kill enough people. This is what I like to call a TV problem…
As I say in the column, it’s not as though there aren’t distinct things a show can say about men today and how they negotiate life changes. (The weird real estate phenomenon of the “man cave,” for instance, is something I would love to see explained/explored outside a home-design show.) And I’ll even hold out the hope that these sitcoms might be good: the pilots I’ve seen at this point are not final versions. But the whole idea that men feel overevolved and wussified because of their grooming products and lack of hunting skills is the kind of silly, high-class problem you might find in a badly-sourced men’s-magazine trend feature.
But there is hope! Anybody interested in a show that looks at men and things masculine with nuance—if “nuance” isn’t too, you know, candyassed—should set their DVRs next week for the return of Men of a Certain Age, which will be back with new episodes June 1.
Do it! Be a man! Even if you’re a woman!