Let’s Overthink: Nerdiness

Wherein our hero makes sweeping statements on the nature of post-feminist crisis in masculinity based on the existence of a couple of sitcoms.

The funny fat guy married to the hot chick is the classic sitcom trope, from The Honeymooners to According to Jim.
It’s a premise that insults the viewer in many ways: 1) A woman ought to care enough about physical presentation to pull off Maxim-style gender performance, but not enough to expect the same in her mate, 2) A sort of “fat guy” minstrelsy with a patronizing jokes-for-sex reward, 3) Plain old credulity.

Let’s Overthink: Law & Order: SVU

Let’s face it, friends, Eliot Stabler couldn’t be more of a stand-in for patriarchal order if he were a golden penis holding a gun. Just look at him: the receding hairline, the one-note justice-as-vengeance worldview, the willingness to bend some rules when it suits him while brutally and violently enforcing them on others, and the penetrating gaze that radiates both an asexual, paternal concern for the victims, and a barely-restrained desire to punch the next person who mouths off to him, be they bureaucrat or perv. Then there’s his relationship with Olivia Benson, which combines unrelenting sexual tension with older-brother overprotectiveness.