Review CXXXII - Please Like Me

Review 132
Please Like Me (2013 - present)

Hey guys! Long time no see. Life has been hectic since I finished school given some pretty scary events, as well as a (temporary) move for the summer. While my last week back home was about seeing as many people as I could, I've spent the past week relaxing as soon as I get home. It's amazing how different work and school are, being able to clear your mind when you get home, unless you're your own boss, of course. Anyway, my friend recommended a site that is kind-of like the pretentious version of Netflix, and trust me when I say I've had great fun (although I have to say, the films I've watched so far are no substance and all emotional and artful views - but I put the site up in case you're looking for a new film). He also recommended a show based in Australia called Please Like Me starring Josh Thomas (also the creator of the show), Thomas Ward, David Roberts, Debra Lawrence, Renee Lim, and Caitlin Stasey. I was willing to give it a shot - I mean, I'm always looking for weird shows. Plus it was Australian, which I thought could be interesting.

Josh (Josh Thomas) is faced with a difficult decision after his girlfriend, Claire (Caitlin Stasey), breaks up with him over a nineteen-dollar sundae as she believes he is gay. Initially oblivious to the idea, he is soon faced with a potential love interest at his roommate's, Tom (Thomas Ward), work. In the meantime, his mother (Debra Lawrence) attempts suicide, distressing his father (David Roberts) and stressing his new girlfriend, Mae (Renee Lim), and it seems like Josh will be in the middle of more drama than he wants.

I was really hopeful, guys. I really was. I checked out the first episode, and it had the awkward cute humour of Short Poppies. I was down, so down. It was a bit more oddly executed, but it was similar enough. So I checked out the second episode. Again, I laughed at the Montagues and Capulets scene with Geoffrey (Wade Briggs), so I checked out the third episode... But it was stale, and turning sour. And then I finished the season, but it felt so... pathetic and melodramatic. So I checked out the first episode of the second season, and I checked out a season in the middle of the second season, and I watched the last episode of the third season, and I dropped it. What the hell? What happened? What happened to the cute humour of the first and second episode? It was gone - just gone! I was so hopeful, and it was just obliterated!

The reality is, while Short Poppies was awkward and thus cute, Please Like Me just got less awkward and more infuriating. I won't continue with the Short Poppies comparison because that show doesn't deserve it, so I end it here. Basically, Please Like Me spews out asinine characters who are the most incompetent cardboard cutouts I have ever seen in my life. Literally, I can separate the men and women into categories: men are pansies who belittle themselves, and women are super dominant to the point of insanity. The only exception is maybe Josh who gets out of the formula a little bit, but basically, any man who is attracted to a woman is getting his balls curb-stomped. And I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. Tom, the roommate, is the most horribly undermined, weak, pathetic, FLACID excuse for a man I have NEVER seen in my life. No man - or woman for that matter - is as two-dimensional as this guy. The series starts out with him going out with the lord of bitches (we'll get to this). He always says he'll break up with her, but never does with fear of rejection and never finding anyone else. In the end, he makes out with Claire and, after a baby scare (because he's an idiot, if I forgot to mention), he dumps his girlfriend. But then he continues to sleep with her after Claire leaves for Germany. I get that Josh Thomas, the creator, was gay, but are you seriously telling me he doesn't understand how women AND MEN act in relationships? I feel like the show almost promotes being gay because then you aren't dealing with shit women - instead, you get to deal with super hot guys who will sleep with you at a moment's notice.

Anyway, Tom, while the epitome of the weak guy, is not the only one. Josh's dad is also a poor excuse for a man. He is dating a Thai woman who treats him like shit. She bitches about everything he does. Check it - I complain about my boyfriend (more jokingly than anything), just as he complains about me. But literally, I feel like this woman was just using him in order to get citizenship. She insults him in Thai to her parents, and he just waits on her and says he's sorry for thinking so much about his ex-wife and her depression. They end up having a baby together (great) and I think she admits cheating on him, but I didn't see the episode. But in the last episode, they're still together, so I think she just wrapped him around her finger, just like every woman's plan, muahaha. Seriously, where are the balls? I need balls! I need some women-smacking men in here!

Before I drop this (because those are our main male characters, folks!), I have one last comment to make about how disgusting this whole thing is. It's related to Tom again (spoilers). He ends up going out with this eighteen-year-old woman and they have a rabbit or something and the rabbit ends up dying... somehow (it's never explained). Tom calls up the girl, tells her the news, and she says, "Come over, we're having a funeral now!" Tom puts the rabbit in a birthday bag (I don't see the humour, at all), brings it on the train, and they bury it the girl's backyard (as she commands him to dig a deeper hole). In the end, they go to her room, and she slaps him, kisses him, slaps him, and tells him to take off his clothes. She then has intercourse with him BAREBACK (i.e. no condom. Jesus Christ, freakin' idiot) while she sobs and whatever. He ends up cumming quickly because bareback, and she calls him pathetic and tells him to leave. He does, and on the way back, he sobs after being "raped". Now, I'm not saying men can't be raped - they can. But this? This is rape? This is the equivalence of a little boy commanding a full-grown woman to take off her clothes, i.e. SHE CAN KNOCK THE SHIT OUT OF HIM WITH A SIMPLE WHACK. At no point does he make any initiative to say no. He could easily have walked out - Thomas Ward towers over this girl. If she had tried to stop him, he could have easily have overpowered her and held her down. A man IS STRONGER THAN A WOMAN in more cases than not. This? This is not raped. This is being so psychologically submissive to women that you make bad decisions. Had she drugged him and he woke up naked and psychologically scarred? Yes, rape. This? Not rape. NOT RAPE.

Now that I have the men out of the way, what about the women? Well, you know by now since it takes two to tango that the women in Please Like Me are bad. It's insulting how bad they were. Tom's first girlfriend, Niamh, as I said already, is a bitch. But seriously, you need to understand that she has no saving grace. NONE. Any time she opens her mouth, she is complaining, saying something bitchy, being a complete whore. People are not all bad, for god's sake. Yes, you have bitchy women, yes, you have annoying ones, but she is literally always angry and being a bitch. Do you not see how many times I used the word bitch?

Claire is just... I don't even know. She makes out with her ex-boyfriend's roommate and it's all cool somehow, and she fights with Niamh and ultimately makes Tom's decisions (from what I saw). She tells Josh they are still friends, and somehow this is cool again. Honestly, she wasn't saying enough for me to complain that much because she mostly just made out with Tom. In fact, she makes out with him while he may be a father. "But he did it too!" you cry. Yes, they both kissed, but she felt NO REMORSE.

As for Josh's mom, I, shit, well, I have nothing to say. She doesn't act like she has depression - unless she is bipolar and always feeling manic or something. At first she was okay, staying at home (though she really doesn't care for her son, but anyway), but the moment she started this Internet dating and started talking, it was gone. She is an idiot and honestly, I'm done with her.

Finally, Mae. As I said already, she is a bitch to her boyfriend/husband, Josh's dad. She was okay at first, but again, the moment she started talking more, including that Skype chat with her parents, it was over. It was over. I had not a single female character who was normal. The only thing is that the one female mental patient, Hannah, is okay from what I saw, but you want to know why? SHE DIDN'T TALK. But even she was bitter all the time. So really, I had no one. It felt like The Social Network (which I hated, by the way) where every single female character is a bitch, except I think for one girlfriend who we see only at the beginning. Yeah, I still remember that and I saw it in theatres in 2010 - and I will always remember this about this show.

So what about Josh? I have refrained from discussing him so far. Well, as I said, he doesn't quite fit into the pathetic man category, but he's an idiot as well. Guys, WHY. He is so two-dimensional AGAIN and just a jerk in situations where it is completely uncalled for. And honestly, this series just sees him hooking up with the most random guys, and I got the impression it was just because he was gay and they were gay, so hey, hook-up time. Seriously, he's a jerk. I actually liked Geoffrey, though a bit uncalled for sometimes, coming out of nowhere and being weirdly jerkish, like during the baseball game. Anyway, Josh is shit, and while I thought his attitude initially might be funny, it turned disastrous. DISASTROUS.

Please Like Me is bad. The first two episodes were okay, but I feel like the writers just put in the most unbelievable characters in order to get the story that they wanted. Seriously, watch the last episode of season three and tell me you know people like that. It also brought in pretty unimpressive views of life, like just settling for who you are now and never improving (what?). It also had great fun telling me about the war on terror and Syria (the show just copy-pasting the media - yay!) to try and make it seem like the show cares... NO ONE CARES, OR THIS SHOW WOULD NOT EXIST. Please Like Me? No. I will not.