Why the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope failed on TV
The stereotypical ‘dream girl’ has been a staple of cinema, but why is her kooky presence missing from the small screen?
During this ludicrously indescribable lockdown period, i’ve taken the plunge and committed to broadening my TV horizons. I started with popular US sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine almost 4 months ago… and here we are today. Instead of moving on to the next show as a normal person would, i’ve rewatched the same cop-based comedy dozens of times from series one to seven. And yes, I also skip the first few episodes where the comedy was seriously lacking.
There’s a fascinating theory doing the rounds that the reason so many of us prefer to rewatch the same shows rather than venturing onto something new is down to latent anxiety. This could be an apprehension of not knowing where the series will go, or as I suspect, a genuine fear that our favourite shows will decline in quality. It has been a personal worry for me with every new season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia which almost certainly came about with the shambles that was the end of Game of Thrones.
Anyway, upon my most recent viewing of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I wondered more about what made the show work. The police aspect is present, but minimal. The criminal investigation genre is something I enjoy, but you can’t really label the best episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine as falling into this category, with a few notable exceptions. Ultimately what makes this series work, as with all the best forms of entertainment, is the excellent writing and wonderful cast of characters.
Any Samberg’s Jake Peralta is the de facto main character. His man-child like antics and obvious ‘daddy issues’ are relatively common ticks given to male protagonists in both film and TV. Think of any Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell big screen character and you get a version of Peralta. It then struck me that the show’s main love interest is not the typical girl a guy like Jake would end up with if he was in a cinematic adventure. Who is his dream girl?
Melissa Fumero plays Amy Santiago, a hard-working and determined detective who is as ambitious as they come. There is obvious chemistry between her and Jake, and it makes for compelling viewing over the course of the 7 seasons we have seen so far. The pair are now married and with a newborn in tow. But Amy is a million miles away from the fantasy woman you would see coupling up with the lead in a movie. The latterly derided trope of a manic pixie dream girl is nowhere to be seen in this show, and then I started thinking. Has there ever been a successful depiction of the elusive dream girl on TV?
The fact is the trope just doesn’t work on a long-running episodic TV series due to how shallow the idea is in the first place. We like Amy, and by extension her relationship with Jake, because she grows. He grows. They grow.
We learn about her family, from her domineering cop father to her overachieving cop brother. We find out about her quirks, her childhood, her uneasy first few years on the force. We see her home life and her work life. She is… real. And she needs to be. We can’t invest in someone who will meander on screen to drop a few glances at our main character and then disappear again. We need a character like Amy to have agency, and boy does she. She has friendships in the workplace that reinforce her life away from her partner. She is obsessed with impressing her bosses and will do so regardless of what our Jake is doing.
Interestingly, the closest I can find to a small screen pixie dream girl is Zoe Deschanel as seen in New Girl. This is fascinating because the talented actress portrayed what many considered to be the ultimate depiction of the trope in 500 Days of Summer.
Elsewhere, i’m struggling.
In Friends, arguably the most successful TV sitcom of all-time, none of the main three female leads fit this characterisation. The closest would be Phoebe, but she’s just comic relief in a comedy sitcom! The show doesn’t aim to portray her as being aloof in any way. I think back to Cheers, where again, none of the main love interests are what you would think of when thinking of the stereotypical manic pixie dream girl. Sure, both shows would drop in minor subplots involving such characters, but these were just filler. Think of the introduction to the awful Elle McPherson roommate in Friends, and you’ll begin to see why TV writers hate the trope.
The manic pixie dream girl has slowly been written out of the big screen too. She is too much of an easy target for critics. She is too flat and unengaging for audiences who are now savvy to her tricks.
It’s just fascinating to me that this trope never worked on TV… unless B*Witched counts?
