Gonna write a long blog at some point about Dan Harmon's habit of writing white male protagonists whom he loudly declares as bad people but who the lesson seems to be, "They're lonely and you're a bad person if you don't let them stay so really you should."

I thought it was just a Rick from Rick & Morty thing but rewatching Community the exact same notes exist with Chevy Chase's Pierce Hawthorne.

It is not your job to take care of broken people who are abusive to you. Especially when they don't fix their shit. It's a trope I've grown a powerful distaste for in stories.

And no, them doing the occasional performative nice thing does not make up for that.

Just remembered how much this privilege of "Oh well I guess we gotta put up with them" is saved for dudes, as well.

There's an ep where Abed & Troy are both attracted to the same woman, so both flirt at the dance, and when she picks Troy, Abed is totally fine with it.-->

Almost immediately after, she says to Troy she thinks Abed is 'weird' and implies he should hang out less with him. Troy immediately goes "no dice" and chooses his friendship with Abed over the potential relationship. The woman is never seen again in the show.

It's supposed to be a wholesome instance of wholesome, positive masculinity, and it is. But it serves an interesting contrast: this woman calls Abed weird ONCE, and she's off the island forever.

Pierce is routinely racist, sexist, homophobic, manipulative, and rapey-->

but even after the rest of the study group has "had enough" of his antics and kicks him out, he's still on the show for two more seasons as a main character.

A conversation I see a lot online is, "Well, the show never tries to sell you on this idea Rick/Pierce are good people! They're terrible, and miserable because of it."

But the combination of what the meta-narrative says about how the characters 'should' react to them-->

how they never face any lasting consequences for being horrible (vis-a-vis being booted from a community/group), how ultimately they're sympathetic characters (bc we're told should be sad and take pity on them)... the whole "look how horrible they are seems performative at best.

Not to bring the whole thing back up again, but this continuous cultural narrative of, "They did terrible things, but look how sad and sorry they are now... we should let them back in"...

...has powerful, negative implications for how we prioritize dealing with bad actors IRL.

- Their redemption ("how will they ever learn?") is prioritized
- Their sadness/isolation is prioritized
- Their motivation/reasons for acting are enshrined as important

and more importantly, the actual, negative impact they have on others is minimized. And it shouldn't be.

Btw, as a powerful example of the above, rewatch the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons episode of Community from Season 2. Its resolution does NOT age well.

CW: depression, suicide, fatphobia, verbal abuse