They’ve hurt people in sudden fits of rage and calculated, premeditated attacks. They’ve blackmailed, threatened, lied and seduced.
Now, they’re starting to face the consequences.
After years of showing toxic male behavior onscreen, this TV season has seen plenty of badly behaved men — well, at least the fictional ones — receive retribution. Netflix’s “You” ends with white-knight-in-his-own-mind Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) behind bars. During the final season of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Nick Blaine (Max Minghella) and Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), onetime functionaries of the fundamentalist post-America known as Gilead, realize that oppression based on one religion’s beliefs may not be a good idea. “Black Mirror” sequel episode “USS Callister: Into Infinity” showed just how deep the toxicity of an abusive captor can run. And after four episodes of Netflix’s “Adolescence,” baby-faced teen killer Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) finally admits fault.
“Handmaid’s,” the 2017 drama series Emmy winner that many saw as a coded message about President Trump’s first term, is a particularly potent example of the shift.
“There’s no such thing as a good commander,” says Yahlin Chang, who with Eric Tuchman serves as this season’s showrunner. “If you are commander in Gilead, then you are by definition this toxic, poisonous force that needs to be rooted out from top to bottom.”
In a world where the powerful increasingly act with impunity, taking fictional villains to task makes sense, a form of Hollywood wish fulfillment for those who feel stuck or hopeless. Programs such as Prime Video’s “The Better Sister” and Apple TV+’s “Bad Sisters” further the conversation by showing the domino effect male toxicity has on others.
The first season of creator and star Sharon Horgan’s dark comedy “Bad Sisters” is about a family of women who hate their sister’s emotionally and physically violent husband almost as much as they want to save her from him. In the second season, which premiered last November, the sisters learn there’s more to it than simply removing him from the situation.
“Something I was really drawn to write about is that, in the end, they didn’t save her,” Horgan says of the battered Grace, played by Anne-Marie Duff. Instead, with years of trauma to work through, she retreats into herself — exactly the outcome her sisters hoped to prevent.
“She couldn’t reach out to her sisters, who were heroes to her, and who she knew, deep down, would have done everything for her,” Horgan says. “But she couldn’t quite save herself. And it, structurally, gave us this journey for them.”
With “The Better Sister,” creators Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado look at all the people affected by Corey Stoll’s Adam, a husband and father who’s only perfect in the public eye. This isn’t just about the abuse he inflicts on his wife, Chloe (Jessica Biel), a media personality known for her cutting feminist wit. It also includes Adam’s mockery of teen son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan).
“Ethan is at this intersection of childhood and adulthood, and he has this innocence as well as this somewhat complex understanding of adult relationships because he’s been witnessing this tension unfold with his parents,” Milch says.
Like a lot of teens, Ethan seeks guidance in the online manosphere, going down a rabbit hole of misogynistic comments about his stepmother. Ethan could easily label Chloe a hypocrite in these forums or at home. Instead, the other users disgust him.
“We wanted to talk about how there was a healthy aspect to it for him … that he needed to get it out … and that this was something that was cathartic for him,” adds Corrado.
By contrast, the British series “Adolescence” delves into the ways the internet can push boys in the wrong direction. But co-creator Jack Thorne stresses that collaborator Stephen Graham, who stars as Jamie’s father, didn’t want this to be the only factor.
“I know that, when I was 13, if I’d read or been told “80% of women are attracted to 20% of men” — a common misogynist talking point online — “I’d have said, ‘Yes, I believe that,’” says Thorne, who is in his 40s.
He adds that he also would have acted on the idea that “your job is to make yourself attractive; your job is to get yourself fitted; your job is to learn how to manipulate the situation.”
Thorne says he, Graham and director Philip Barantini weren’t just concerned with younger men, though: “We wanted to examine ourselves in this a bit.”
“We’re three men, all of the same age,” Thorne explains. “We’ve had different lives, but we’ve all exhibited cruelty. We’ve all behaved in ways that were less than perfect. We’ve all got a relationship with our own shame.”
The reason “You” worked for five seasons is that Badgley’s love-obsessed stalker has the charisma to gaslight himself and others into believing he’s a good guy. He is incapable of self-examination.
“Performatively, he’s a feminist,” says co-showrunner Michael Foley, noting that Badgley’s Joe sees himself as a lover rather than a killer — albeit a lover who will kill anyone who keeps him from the object of his infatuation.
“You” premiered in 2018. Co-showrunner Justin Lo says that, if it premiered now, “Joe would have started off a lot meaner.”
“The toxicity would be more unapologetic, more front and center,” Lo continues. “Our Joe’s toxicity began in a way that was more buried, more covert. And as the series and our culture has progressed, it’s gotten more pronounced.”
In fact, Joe’s final words to his viewers are that he isn’t to blame for his actions. You are — for watching.
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