It’s Valentine’s Day! I’m not the protagonist of a rom-com, so I don’t have strong feelings about this holiday, but I thought it would be fun to honor the spirit of it in the only way I know how – by applying it to fictional characters and their relationships. This one’s for the cynics out there who haven’t realized yet that they’ll be converted into believers of true love just in time for the credits to roll. In no particular order, here are some of the worst fictional couples:
Galleria Garibaldi ❌ Angel
As a rule, Kenny Ortega can do no wrong. The exception is Angel – Galleria’s curly-haired, guitar-playing, eavesdropping “love” “interest” in The Cheetah Girls 2. Galleria and Angel barely even count as a couple, but I’m including them because Angel’s inclusion in an otherwise faultless film has Disney’s corporate messaging and strategy fingerprints all over it. It’s fine if Aqua doesn’t have a love interest because, let’s be real, nobody’s watching The Cheetah Girls for Aqua. But Galleria? Without Angel to pop in at key moments, it might become even more obvious to viewers that her actual love interest is Chanel and that most of Galleria’s storyline is being jealous over Marisol taking her place as Chanel’s favored gal pal.
If some man was going to be shoehorned into Galleria’s plot line, they could have at least cast someone she has chemistry with, like the white rapper in the first Cheetah Girls movie. But apparently Kyle Schmid was too booked and busy in 2006 to squeeze in a flight to Barcelona, so we got stuck with the guitar-toting Angel instead. Good for Peter Vives, whose Wikipedia says “he is perhaps best known for his role as Angel in The Cheetah Girls 2,” but we can’t let Disney higher-ups keep getting away with this!
Anyway, I’ve resigned myself to Angel’s presence in The Cheetah Girls 2, if only for the hilarity of his performance in “Strut.” The camera cutting to him strumming furiously on his acoustic guitar whenever an electric guitar plays on the track is what cínémà is all about.
Abby ❌ Harper
Happiest Season, otherwise known as the Discourse Before Christmas, is a classic case of false advertising. What was packaged as a fluffy holiday romcom for people who’ve rarely seen themselves represented in Hallmark or Lifetime movies turned out to be a bleak family drama instead. And Abby and Harper, the couple whose alleged romance the promotional material spotlighted, were the most disappointing part of it. But the issues with Abby and Harper go beyond the marketing – at the most basic storytelling level, Happiest Season seems confused about who its protagonist is. The film begins by establishing Abby (Kristen Stewart) as the character whose point of view will frame the narrative. We tag along while Abby and her friend John (Dan Levy) discuss her plans to propose to her girlfriend Harper Caldwell (Mackenzie Davis) on Christmas. So we have the stakes (the success of Abby’s proposal & her happily ever after with Harper), a timeline (commence the countdown to Christmas) and plenty of hijinks to look forward to in the meantime. Then Happiest Season throws in the twist that Harper isn’t actually out to her family, contrary to what she’d told Abby previously, and that she isn’t ready to come out until after her dad’s political campaign is over. Suddenly we find ourselves surrounded on all sides by Harper’s family and their rivalries, resentments and secrets, the romance all but forgotten. We feel Abby’s hurt and betrayal at being lied to, forced back into the closet again and deserted by her girlfriend in a town where she knows literally nobody else while Harper remains frustratingly distant and resentful. And for most of the film, this doesn’t change. The Caldwells (Harper included) walk all over Abby. She lets them. She feels isolated and tries to connect with Harper, who pushes her away. Rinse and repeat. Tell me again how this is supposed to be romantic and/or comedic in the slightest?
The Big Ideas of Happiest Season – unlearning internalized homophobia, how holidays exacerbate family tensions in particularly painful ways for queer people, asserting your own identity independent of familial expectations and the endless negotiations involved in coming out – all play out internally, in Harper’s heart and mind. While Abby remains largely static over the course of the film, Harper undergoes a dramatic transformation from closeted to out, hesitant to committed, on edge to comfortable in her own skin. Why isn’t Harper, who actually experiences character development, the protagonist of this story? Instead, we witness her metamorphosis from the perspective of the person sacrificed on the alter of her self-actualization. Maybe it’s a challenge to the audience, to test if our empathy can reconcile Harper’s inner conflict with her actions, which hurt Abby (the character we’ve been primed to root for) over and over again. In any case, it’s not a particularly effective strategy to make us want them to end up together by the film’s conclusion.
The outsider who gets invited into an insular community, is abandoned by the very person who brought them there and then struggles to escape is literally a horror movie plot. The difference between Get Out and Happiest Season is that we’re supposed to find Abby’s eventual assimilation into the creepy rich family heartwarming. To which I say: absolutely not. I think Abby can dream bigger than helping her girlfriend’s Republican dad get elected as mayor and cuddling up with Harper’s just-learned-not-to-be-openly-homophobic family. Near the end of the film, Harper’s mom tells Abby to get in their family Christmas photo in a callback to a previous scene where she asked Abby to act as photographer instead. It has all the elements of a sweetly obvious romcom bookend – recently orphaned Abby finds a new source of familial acceptance! – but it doesn’t feel earned at all.
Questionable storytelling tactics aside, Abby and Harper also suffer from the tragic absence of sparks that plagues the Galleria/Angel pairing. Riley (Aubrey Plaza), in all her middle-parted, blazer-outfitted glory, makes the simple act of eye contact with Abby electrifying. Meanwhile, the hottest it gets between Abby and Harper is this “sext” that’s really just a picture of Harper’s clavicle and the barest hint of a beige bra that screams I haven’t done laundry in two weeks and don’t currently plan on taking my shirt off in front anyone so I guess I’ll wear this bra I found at the back of my drawer.
In my fantasy, Abby and Harper break up soon after the film’s epilogue and Abby, John and Jane go on a fun vacation to celebrate being free of the rest of the Caldwells. Now that’s what I call a happiest season.
Andy ❌ Nate
I know, I know, I sound like every generic TweetDecking meme account that posts the same lukewarm, recycled takes on romcoms of the aughts, but it cannot be said enough – Nate in The Devil Wears Prada is the worst! Maybe if he had a regular grooming routine that he was passionate about then he would know what it takes to look as good as the women at Runway, but he doesn’t. So he shouldn’t even act like he knows what Andy’s job is about.
Nate’s Chopped intro spiel: Yo what up, I’m Nate. I’m a sous chef at the Oak Room in Boston and I’m going to make my competitors feel as worthless and insecure as I made my ex-girlfriend feel. *uncomfortably close zoom in of his face as he holds out a plate of grilled cheese*
Lane Kim ❌ Zack Van Gerbig
Question for Roxane Gay: can you have a nemesis if they have no idea you exist? What I’m saying is that Amy Sherman-Palladino’s treatment of Lane Kim is my supervillain origin story. The fact that Lane’s character is based on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s childhood friend and Gilmore Girls co-producer Helen Pai has always made me feel kind of weird. Like Lane, I grew up hiding most things – the clothes I wanted to wear, the music I wanted to listen to, the books I wanted to read – from my religious, culturally conservative Korean mom. But the idea of a white friend taking note of my double life and then using it, decades later, to create a caricature of my mom who’s regularly compared to Cool White Mom Lorelai and found lacking … well, it would probably make me feel worse than the whole ordeal of shoving The Clique books under my sweater so my mom wouldn’t see me sneak them into my room when I was 12.
Let me get back to the actual focus of this newsletter – fictional coupledom. Gilmore Girls viewers will always bemoan Lane’s One That Got Away aka Dave Rygalski, played by Adam Brody. He was sweet, into music, even more into Lane and probably would’ve been endgame if Adam Brody hadn’t gotten cast on The O.C. ahead of the fourth season of Gilmore Girls. After all, Helen Pai ended up with her own Dave Rygalski in real life. As tempting as it is to lay the blame for Lane’s fate at the feet of The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz and Adam Brody’s agent, however, the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of Amy Sherman-Palladino. Dave Rygalski exiting the show didn’t have to mean that Lane was doomed to a life devoid of romance and rock ‘n roll. If Dean and Jess could reenter Rory’s love life years later, then Henry Cho could’ve rekindled his flame with Lane. But no – season after season, Amy Sherman-Palladino chose to dig Lane into a deeper and more miserable rut. First, it was getting paired up with her immature, possessive and utterly charmless bandmate Zack; then, it was getting married super young so she could have sex; but of course the sex was a terrible, traumatic experience she didn’t ever want to repeat; so naturally, she immediately became pregnant with twins. By series end, this is Lane’s life: stuck in Stars Hollow with two infants and a man-child husband to raise, her music dreams left largely unfulfilled and presumably no orgasms to look forward to on the horizon. I’m just saying – if I were Helen Pai, I’d be asking myself what I ever did to make my childhood friend Amy Sherman-Palladino harbor so much pent-up resentment towards me.
Blair Waldorf ❌ Chuck Bass
Chuck attempts to rape an underage character (a 14-year-old) in the pilot.
You can’t use the excuse of early characterizations not being set in stone because sexually harassing and objectifying women – particularly those he has power over – is a consistent and fundamental aspect of his character.
He literally sells Blair to his uncle for ownership over a hotel.
He refuses to commit but sabotages all her attempts to move on, trapping her in a cycle of manipulation and no closure.
He nearly attacks her and gets very physically violent with her when she tells him she doesn’t want him anymore.
Misguided teens who romanticize toxic, abusive relationships because they don’t know any better is one thing, but a writers’ room of fully grown adults is another. We could’ve had it all, Blair and Dan enthusiasts.
Lydia Bennet ❌ George Wickham
Lydia Bennet is vain, shallow and deeply silly. She’s also 15 years old. I doubt any of us would want to be immortalized in fiction as the people we were at 15, but that’s the deal Lydia gets in Pride and Prejudice. Her punishment for immaturity and impropriety is getting stuck with Wickham, a morally and financially bankrupt predator, before she’s even matured into an adult. It’s a sobering reminder of the consequences of courting ruin in Regency England as well as the era’s unjust double standards of socially acceptable behavior for men and women. Wickham can cavort around the country to his heart’s content and attempt on multiple occasions to lure minors into his trap, but the second he gets one in his clutches, it’s her honor and reputation at stake. The point Jane Austen was trying to make with Lydia and Wickham is that they’re a bad couple, so I’m just pointing out the obvious here, but they’ve undoubtedly earned their spot on the list.
Renesmee Cullen ❌ Jacob Black
A “romance” involving some old dude hungrily keeping watch over a much younger woman is par for the course in Twilight, so Stephenie Meyer had to come up with something even more extreme for Jacob. Why not make his love interest a newborn baby, to really spice things up? STEPHENIE NO. No!!!!!! I don’t care how she tried to justify it, by saying things like Jacob will be a platonic figure in Renesmee’s life until she comes of age and only then will he see in her in a romantic light or that imprinting is a profound, intimate process that outsiders to the shape-shifter community can’t fully comprehend. It’s so creepy and gross that even I, in my most devoted Twihard years, didn’t want to think about it for too long. Bella should have ripped Jacob’s head off the moment he told her that he only thought he was in love with her because of the unfertilized eggs in her body that would eventually become Renesmee. I’m not putting a picture of them here because I hate it so much and also I don't want to end up on some FBI watchlist for Google Image searching them.
Elizabeth James ❌ Nick Parker
The Parent Trap is many things – Lindsay Lohan’s undeniable arrival as a star screen presence, the reason I dreamed of discovering a long-lost twin at summer camp and the origin story of yet another unfairly maligned woman of the ’90s, to name a few – but above all it’s a story about two people who should have absolutely stayed divorced from each other. Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid as Elizabeth and Nick, respectively, imbue their performances with so much easy charm that it’s tempting to ignore how fucked up their characters’ choices are. And if you’re like me and love a second chance romance (Persuasion hive let me hear you), their dynamic is perfectly calibrated to hit all your trope-y pleasure centers. The more time the angst and yearning have to simmer, the more satisfying the reunion.
But make no mistake – Elizabeth and Nick are not built for the work it takes to make a lasting partnership work. At each stage in their relationship, they demonstrate a reckless disregard for long-term consequences. There’s the whirlwind marriage to someone they met days ago on a cruise, the hasty divorce where each one gets an identical twin and henceforth acts like their other kid just doesn’t exist, the failing to immediately notice that the kid who came home from camp is not the one they raised and the getting back together 11 years later without addressing whatever fundamental differences that made them so incompatible in the first place. If The Parent Trap had an epilogue, it would just be Annie and Hallie in therapy trying to unpack the emotional baggage of knowing that one of their parents had been willing to deny their existence forever had it not been for that fateful summer camp. Also, just logistically speaking, how would this transatlantic marriage work, when Nick has his California winery and Elizabeth her London wedding dress business to run? And did neither of them ever provide financial support to the twin they didn’t take, despite both being rich enough to afford live-in servants? How did 11 years worth of uncompromising resentment and bitterness just melt away the instant they locked eyes again? Make it make sense, Nancy Meyer!
Every Pairing in He’s Just Not That Into You
The grand prize for worst of the worst goes to Anna the yoga instructor (Scarlett Johansson) and Ben the adulterer with an ambiguous office job (Bradley Cooper). Somehow Bradley Cooper makes Ben Affleck’s character seem like a decent guy in this movie, which is a feat that frankly should’ve been recognized by the Academy.