Implausible TV Frenemies

[Wheelz]

In the “Terrible characters from great shows” thread, Carla from Cheers came up:

@Clark_Cello

I am watching Cheers for the first time in 20+ years, and I really dislike Carla. She is a terrible person, and rarely funny. I really think the writers got lazy with her, just giving her easy put-downs. One of the impacts of this is that Cliff, would was sometimes a very interesting character, more often just became someone for Carla to make fun of in an unfunny way.

While I don’t happen to agree that Carla wasn’t funny, it’s true that she wasn’t very nice. And I wanted to steer the conversation in that direction without hijacking the other thread.

We’ve all had people in our lives that we just don’t like, but we’re forced to work with them. Or we tolerate them because of a shared social setting or other circumstance. Sometimes adversarial – or even indifferent – relationships are portrayed realistically on TV shows. But more often there’s a tendency to make an ensemble cast into One Big Happy Family, even though a character may constantly say and do hurtful things to another.

So Cliff might put up with the bitchy waitress at his favorite bar in order to get to hang out with Sam and Norm and the rest of the gang. But I find it hard to buy that he would go to her house for Thanksgiving, or attend her wedding, or any other of the extracurricular activities these characters who don’t like each other ended up doing together.

I’m not necessarily talking about complex love/hate relationships, which can be interesting, but about characters who should have no business getting along at all, but do for the sake of the script. It’s the “frenemies” trope, which, in my opinion, exists much more in fiction than in real life. You might have to put up with the office bitch while you’re at work, but you’re certainly not going camping with her next weekend.

What do you think of this dynamic, and what other examples are there?

[hogarth]

In Season 2 of Damages, Glenn Close’s character reveals she tried to have Rose Byrne’s character murdered. Personally, I would take that as a big hint to stay the hell away from Glenn Close, but they managed to milk out another three seasons of the show somehow.

[Spoons]

@Wheelz

We’ve all had people in our lives that we just don’t like, but we’re forced to work with them. Or we tolerate them because of a shared social setting or other circumstance. Sometimes adversarial – or even indifferent – relationships are portrayed realistically on TV shows. But more often there’s a tendency to make an ensemble cast into One Big Happy Family, even though a character may constantly say and do hurtful things to another.

So Cliff might put up with the bitchy waitress at his favorite bar in order to get to hang out with Sam and Norm and the rest of the gang. But I find it hard to buy that he would go to her house for Thanksgiving, or attend her wedding, or any other of the extracurricular activities these characters who don’t like each other ended up doing together.

Might as well talk about plain, ordinary, everyday families. Haven’t you gone to weddings of relatives you don’t care for, and you’ve even given a gift? Or funerals, where you send flowers and sign the Book of Condolences and are pleasant to the bereaved family, all the while thinking, “Rot in hell, Uncle So-and-so”? In such cases, you suck it up in order to maintain family harmony.

Work at a place long enough, and your co-workers become family. Even better, drink at a place long enough (as your Cheers example illustrates), and your fellow patrons, and even the staff, become family, and thus family dynamics happen. You attend outside events not out of affection for the person, but out of a sense of familial duty.

Heck, I remember when one of our regulars at our local pub died. Roger had a biting, sarcastic wit; and there wasn’t a one of us who had not been subject to an insult (or fourteen or sixty-three) from him over the years. But he was family, and we regulars–family, remember–dutifully turned out for his funeral. I was a frequent victim, and let his insults just fall away, but some people were not, and did not like Roger very much. Yet they showed up anyway.

My point is that people who may not like each other do end up doing things together in real life. Yes, Cliff might go to Carla’s wedding–because she’s family. The guys on WKRP might tolerate Herb wanting to become a swinging bachelor after separating from Lucille, and interrupting their own lives–because Herb is family. And similarly, we’ve all attended weddings and funerals and housewarmings of relatives, workmates, and fellow drinkers at the bar, because they are family too.

Family is not just blood relations. It can just be a group of people that you are close to, in whatever setting. And you do what it takes to maintain family harmony.

[psychonaut]

@Wheelz

So Cliff might put up with the bitchy waitress at his favorite bar in order to get to hang out with Sam and Norm and the rest of the gang. But I find it hard to buy that he would go to her house for Thanksgiving, or attend her wedding, or any other of the extracurricular activities these characters who don’t like each other ended up doing together.

I can totally buy Cliff going to Carla’s house for Thanksgiving or attending her wedding. Cliff is depicted as being socially awkward (in his own special way) with few friends and other meaningful relationships. He is submissive to his domineering mother. He desperately wants to be liked and respected, even by the likes of Carla, and to feel like part of a group. So it’s completely believable that he’d accept a social invitation from her.

What I find much less believable is that Carla would have issued any such invitations to him to begin with. Carla is such a misanthrope, and is particularly wrathful to Cliff, so it wouldn’t be out of character for her to exclude him from her personal life. Then again, she does seem to place an importance on family relations, and so perhaps (reluctantly) considers him part of the extended family she knows at Cheers. She also deeply respects the much more personable Sam, and would probably want to keep him happy by inviting all the staff and regular customers to her events.

[Grrr]

Rodney Mckay from Stargate Atlantis.

I can believe he MIGHT make friends with the other nerds. No way in hell would he be able to make friends with any of the other “soldier” type characters.