In a World of Stephens, We Desperately Need More Garretts
After rewatching Off Campus a FEW… too many times, I painfully realized television really gave us two types of men this year, and of course the internet responded accordingly. On one side, we were all SCREAMING at the screen watching chaos unfold with the emotional self-awareness of a BRICK wall. On the other, we were introduced to a man who communicates, listens, respects boundaries, and apologizes without being held hostage first… and somehow THAT felt more unrealistic than the toxic one we’ve all unfortunately met before.
After rewatching Off Campus a FEW… too many times, I painfully realized television really gave us two types of men this year, and of course the internet responded accordingly. On one side, we were all SCREAMING at the screen watching chaos unfold with the emotional self-awareness of a BRICK wall. On the other, we were introduced to a man who communicates, listens, respects boundaries, and apologizes without being held hostage first… and somehow THAT felt more unrealistic than the toxic one we’ve all unfortunately met before.
Tell Me Lies and Off Campus basically said “pick your fighter.” Your options? A man who would emotionally ruin your life for SPORT, or a man who asks for consent and communicates his feelings in complete sentences. Unsurprisingly, the internet had very normal reactions to both. The funniest part is that Stephen DeMarco GENUINELY feels horrifyingly realistic, whereas Garrett Graham is essentially the romantic equivalent of seeing Jon Snow riding a dragon for the first time in GOT. We all understand what we’re looking at, but there’s still this collective feeling of… “Okay, but there’s absolutely no way this would happen to me personally??”
And while the internet has mostly turned this into a meme, the reactions themselves are DEEPLY fascinating. Because people aren’t responding to Stephen and Garrett in the same emotional way at all. With Stephen, the response is usually recognition. When I was covering Tell Me Lies, I came across SO many “Stephen DeMarco horror stories.” Meanwhile, with Garrett, you’re seeing posts like: “Me reminding myself that Garrett Graham is indeed fictional.” Those two responses alone tell you everything about how audiences emotionally process these characters.
Nobody watches Stephen and says, “I want that.” Instead, the conversation becomes: “I’ve met someone like this,” or worse, “I didn’t realize what that relationship was until after it ended.” Stephen feels “real” because he’s built around patterns people unfortunately recognize: charm mixed with inconsistency, and control disguised as vulnerability. That’s why he feels so unsettlingly believable, even as a fictional character. He’s not fantasy…he’s familiarity.
Garrett Graham, meanwhile, creates the complete opposite reaction. People don’t watch him and think, “This reminds me of my ex.” They watch him like he was scientifically engineered in a romance laboratory by emotionally EXHAUSTED women. Because Garrett isn’t really tapping into recognition… he’s tapping into aspiration. He communicates CLEARLY, he listens, he grows, and his emotional labour is visible. Somehow, audiences reacted to that with more suspicion than the walking red flag actively destroying lives two streaming services over.
Which honestly says a lot. Stephen feels “real” because he resembles patterns people have survived. Garrett feels “fictional” because he resembles consistency people don’t always experience. And maybe that’s why the internet reacted the way it did. One character made audiences say, “Unfortunately, I’ve met this man before.” The other made audiences say, “Unfortunately… I have not. But dear lord, let me come across a Garrett Graham….”
