by Jordache Kitty*
*Jordache Kitty is my new pseudonym. Regards, Brad MacDonald
Yeah, I’ll admit it: I sometimes enjoy romantic comedies. It’s not like my favourite genre or anything – that accolade goes to the megashark vs. giant octopus genre – but, like many among us, I do enjoy watching attractive people smile at each other/things/cats. Back in 1977, romantic comedies, in my opinion, reached their critical peak, marked by Woody Allen’s brilliant, Annie Hall and Mario Caiano’s tearjerker, Nazi Love Camp 27.Today we watch a baby poop on Katherine Heigl while the latter smiles out of a giant facehole in her giant facehead. Moreover, in these contemporary movies I watch distractedly for no reason on netflix at 5am from my couch, wearing my favourite pair of jogging paints (the ones with the dorito stains) while eating some old fudge I found in my cupboard that may or may not have been given to me by my mother during the Christmas of 2008, there are always male characters who start as total pricks and end up as Danny Motherfucking Tanners.*
*Danny Tanner was a character on the 90s sitcom, Full House. His entire personality can be encapsulated through the following clip:
Sidenote: I understand the oddity of using Danny Tanner as a symbol of successful romance given that his wife died tragically on the show. How did she die you ask? Let me begin a recitation of the facts: While Mrs. Tanner is clearing out the attic for spring cleaning, she stumbles upon an old photo showing her young daughter DJ Tanner in a soccer uniform, leading her to say, “They grow up so fast,” which is followed by the audience’s collective “ahhh.” Suddenly, famed comedian Joey Gladstone comes up behind her, whispers his trademark catchphrase of “cut it out” and then, in a moment of derangement which would be later explained away as a result of Joey’s drinking too much soda that day, cuts out her heart with a pair of scissors and eats it, vowing to take her powers and live forever.
This episode was, sadly, mercilessly, banned in Abu Dhabi for 14 years due to its extreme violence. Dhabi got fucked on that one; I’m sure that, for 14 years, tourists came there just for the pure joy of spoiling the identity of the “Full House murderer” to the citizens of the city. And the Abu Dhabians would be all like covering their ears and stuff and saying “Stop it! Spoiler Alert! C’mon!,” but the tourists would keep right on taunting them.
Sidenote to the above sidenote: Mrs. Tanner would later come back as a dancing phantom in episode 146 of season 23. When a sleepless Danny sees her ethereally dancing through the kitchen after he comes downstairs for a glass of hot cocoa, he exclaims to his long deceased wife, “Tammy! How did you come back from the dead?….And how did you learn to dance like that?”, to which Tammy replies, “Well, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands.” This joke, from the episode entitled “3 years tap, 5 years jazz, 8 years dead,” remains legendary for its fanatical audience response of laughter, registering a respectable 3.7 on local seismographs in Burbank, California, home of Warner Brothers Studios.
As I was saying, the male stars of Romcoms begin as stank ass, homeless men who eat adorable orphans so as to satisfy their cannibalistic hunger for tender flesh, followed by their ceremonial weaving of the orphan’s collected eyelashes into fashionable and affordable necklaces with a touch of decadence and a hint of bohemian flair. Of course, they don’t actually do this but what I’m getting at is that they’re jerks. By the end of the movie, however, these horrible lead men are clean shaven Jesuses, healing sick puppies through hugging.
But what really gets me is that the secondary characters in these romantic comedies represent, not only the most interesting personalities, but also the most subservient people on earth. Inhumanly obsessed with every twist, turn, and tryst involving the main characters, these lackeys constantly fawn over the emotionally indulgent leads. Just once I’d like to see the following:
“Listen up my current roommate – I don’t know who to choose, Sarah or Sarha? Sarah’s beautiful but her Dad hates me because I once set his lawncare sprinkler system off by mistake when he and his wife, Debbie, were enjoying mojito Fridays at their backyard barbeque attended by all the neighbors – their clothes got wet and the tiny quiches were ruined – I just, I just, wanted to die. And, as for Sarha, she lets me use her jetski but she also….lets me use her jetski if you know what I mean. It’s complex. Let me explain: Jetskis are a double edged sword. Sure they’re fun but they can also take up a lot of your time, time that would be best spent on more serious pursuits, like life y’know? Sometimes I just want to watch a bee pollinate a beautiful flower or research the history of velvet – I want to learn more about the world. If I spend all my time jetskiing, I’d have to sacrifice those dreams. So, basically, at the end of the day, I’m torn between these two ladies. What do you think roommie?”
“I don’t give a fuck. Just clean the dishes you left in the sink and pay your rent.”
In a perfect world, that’s what we’d hear. Til then, we must continue watching romances that make no sense which feature secondary characters “really pulling” for Zooey Deschanel who plays a love-sick yet oh so endearingly quirky hoola hoop instructor.
