The Rise of the Manic Pixie Mean Girl

ARE WE, as a culture, kind of over the whole mushy gushy love thing? Some of the most popular TV characters in recent memory are love interests who aren't so much telling male protagonists how great they are, or how they can do it; instead, these characters have a bit of an edge. Words of endearment and affirmation are out. Giving a little shit, doing a little ribbing, and generally being ice cold 99% of the time (with the tiniest hint of love and interest keeping us entranced and on the hook) are in. This emerging trope represents what I like to call a Manic Pixie Mean Girl.

That phrase, of course, is a play on the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope found in movies released in the mid-2000s. It's a phrase coined by writer Nathan Rabin when describing Kirsten Dunst's character in the largely-forgotten 2005 romcom "Elizabethtown." These are characters who exist solely as plot devices to wake the (boring, lame, square) male protagonist out of their funk; Natalie Portman introducing Zach Braff to The Shins and making strange noises and movements in Garden State, along with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Kate Winslet having the audacity to dye their hair wiiiiildddd colors in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are some of the most commonly cited examples.

Rabin put it succinctly in his Elizabethtown review:

But we're in a different era now. The mid-aughts are long gone, the creative yearning of that era's characters (and viewers) instead replaced by characters (and viewers) looking for a bit of validation from on-screen love interests: things suck, and that's OK. We're in this together.

Enter the Manic Pixie Mean Girl. These are characters who are, to put it simply, not nice. At least not initially. A Manic Pixie Mean Girl puts up a cold front but has just enough bubbling underneath that you can be sure they do like you and don't actually hate you. The Manic Pixie Mean Girl will give you shit and make you feel bad and ultimately send someone on a wild goose chase... and then crack the slightest smirk when their love interest walks away. There's a mystery and a code to be cracked.

While this new trope has become more and more popular of late, there's one performer who's been perfecting the Manic Pixie Mean Girl art for her entire career: Aubrey Plaza. From Plaza's first major big screen role in Judd Apatow's Funny People to her long-running turn on Parks and Recreation as April Ludgate, she's been tearing her love interests—whether it be Seth Rogen, Chris Pratt, Robert De Niro, or anyone in between—down a peg, staring bullets into their eyes and shooting cupid's arrows into their souls.

If you've noticed Plaza's been everywhere lately, it's probably thanks to her starring role in Season 2 of HBO's satirical dramedy hit The White Lotus, where she played Harper Spiller. Harper is defined in the series not by any kind of flirty relationship—her relationship with her husband (Will Sharpe) is actually fairly dead—and yet one of the key dynamics of the season comes from other main characters (primarily a huge douchebag played by Theo James) seeming to find her constant deadpan ribbing (and, at times, what seems like genuine hatred) to be irresistible; the season reaches a point where Harper's husband accuses her of having an affair. Show viewers end up needing to draw their own conclusion, but can come away with one main certainty: it's kind of nice to have someone give you shit.

'Giving shit' is basically a love language for Manic Pixie Mean Girls like Kate Galvin, played in the new season of Netflix's darkly comedic stalker thriller You by British actress Charlotte Richie. Kate enters the story via her doomed boyfriend Malcolm, becoming an acquaintance, and, eventually, somehow, the love interest of the main character Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). That somehow does the heavy lifting, because Kate is another character defined by what appears to be contempt for just about every living being in her orbit. She barely seems willing to put up with her friends, let alone an unknown American (who, of course, just so happens to be a stalker/murderer operating under a fake identity, but that's a whole different conversation).

But, yet again, despite her frigid demeanor, Kate is someone that Joe—along with his captive audience, us, the viewers—eventually finds irresistible. It's not super hard to see why: Richie plays Kate with a sense of sarcasm, and, honestly, a similar-enough look that brings Phoebe Waller Bridge's Fleabag, one of the funniest and most sexually-charged series of the last decade, to mind. Walls are up, but we can see just enough beyond to know there's more trickling through.

Kate's actions in the show explicitly reflect this duality: she tells Joe that she can read the ulterior motives behind his perceived quiet American charm. And then the two of them hook up in the middle of a forest. Not nice, but there's just something about Kate Galvin's frigid demeanor that Joe can't move on from—and we're along for the ride with him.

Just a few remote clicks away from You in your Netflix app will get you to Wednesday, which, months after its initial release, remains one of the streaming giant's most popular shows. Wednesday Addams has long been a character of deadpan comedic perfection—perhaps played best by a young Christina Ricci in two '90s films—but as Wednesday ages her up to a teenager, so too does her potential as a love interest.

Actress Jenna Ortega does a wonderful job embodying a character who's certainly aware of the effect she's having on some of her male friends—and uses it to her advantage—while never particularly showing any real interest in return. She plays along with one love interest whom she is actually suspicious of being a supernatural monster. She plays along with another who actually is a supernatural monster. Both have no idea; they're just drawn to this girl who is only ever unwaveringly frigid toward them. It only seems to make them like her more.

Why is all of this being depicted now? There are a lot of different explanations, but I tend to fall on the side of the evolution and mainstreaming of a certain brand of dry humor. Sitcoms in the '80s and '90s, for example, were largely filled with set-ups that were followed by punchlines that were followed by a laugh track. Rinse and repeat.

Shows like The Office, Arrested Development, and Parks and Recreation—available to stream over and over again and without a laugh track pointing viewers in any specific direction—are about more than just making us laugh. These shows represent a mirror into our own lives where we feel especially connected when we see something on screen that we recognize.

The idea of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in the mid 2000s was essentially sending a message that male characters (and, thus, male viewers) needed to just open up a bit more, live life and not be such a damn square. Manic Pixie Mean Girls seem to be guiding their love interests (and, again, those male viewers at home) to embrace the dryness that real life sometimes hoists onto us.

But is the Manic Pixie Mean Girl a real thing, something that can be found in the world? Or is it just another trope, ready to be forgotten just as quickly as Elizabethtown? It doesn't matter. Tropes are tropes for a reason: they can be useful when breaking down a story, but it's more important at the end of the day that we find something to take away from the stories we take in. And the Manic Pixie Mean Girl is reflecting that sometimes we're not looking for the earnest, Disney-style storybook mushy gushy dream come true. We're more cynical, and maybe, in this day and age, what we're all looking for is a little bit of tough love.

Only time will tell if these sorts of characters continue, and how they will ultimately stand the test of time. But until then, we approve of anyone just looking to be on the receiving end of a little bit of good natured shit.

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