After another Matthewless episode, we’re back with a vengeance, with the show’s first episode to have a subplot specifically about Matthew. I wouldn’t say it quite scratches the itch I had discussing his character in light of the first season, but it’s certainly more focus than he’s had before this point.
Jessi’s dad is moving out, and Nick, Andrew, and their dads combine forces to help him move into “Guy Town,” a gross bachelor/divorced dad apartment complex that’s the brainchild of Jay’s dad. Matthew shows up as well; he’s “exposéing” Andrew after a major dick move he pulled in the last episode, which has drawn protests from the girls at school. Against the dismal, grody backdrop of Guy Town, the boys all ponder what sort of men they want to be.
Fun lines: Nick telling Andrew, “You’re being creepy and weirdly formal, Professor Pervert,” Andrew describing his dad as “a one-star Yelp review come to life,” and Nick’s new Hormone Monster Tyler declaring, “Mommy titties are the sweetest.” We also get a catchy/gross song about Guy Town and Nick’s dad wearing a Rosie the Riveter back brace.
I really like where the episode ends up going. When it starts out, with all the girls picketing Andrew for his gross behavior, it feels like it might be heading toward a “poor guy raked over the coals for an honest mistake” storyline, and to be sure, it wasn’t Andrew’s intention to hurt anyone. But as the boys spend the day at Guy Town and look around at the different male role models available to them, it becomes a lot more about the messages that boys are fed about masculinity: what being a man looks like, how a man treats women, and what a man’s responsibilities to himself and others are. As Matthew points out in his exposé, Guy Town is basically the home of toxic masculinity, and while the boys are easily sucked into the idea of what they’re being subconsciously taught, they’re also given an opportunity to reckon with what this stuff really looks like and take a long hard look at whether that’s what they want for themselves (also, there are penis worms in the pool.)
Matthew is included in this theme. While conducting his exposé (“Harmless dweeb or disgusting sex monster? You decide!”), he happens upon the obligatory “sad old queen” of Guy Town, voiced by guest star Harvey Fierstein. Matthew is instantly ready with barbed quips to spare, but the man points out that being “young, gay, and mean” isn’t in itself a personality. This leads Matthew into an examination of both himself and expectations placed on him.
There’s some good stuff here, as well as some somewhat-trite stuff. I like that, as the other boys look at one another’s dads and try to figure out who they want to be like, Matthew has an older gay man to compare himself to. The initial scene of the two of them reading one another is also good. However, I’m a little uncomfortable with Matthew’s resulting (mini) existential crisis (it is only a subplot, after all,) in which he points out that he’s got “a whole backstory” that no one cares to hear anything about because all people want from him is a stream of sharp, catty retorts. There’s definitely truth to that archetype, although other characters Andrew Rannells has played have been able to strike a balance: bitchy comic relief and actual character with his own thoughts and motivations. If Matthew is still primarily a stock character, it’s ultimately because of the writers. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, he’s not one-dimensional, he’s just written that way.
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