Oh, geez. Adam. If you’re going to create a winning television villain, why not make him as unlikable as possible, but with enough agog incredulity and cringe-inducing hyper-realism that you just can’t look away. Adam is this punchable, unavoidable being and we love to hate him. Or maybe we just hate him.
Girls’ writer/director Lena Dunham and producer Judd Apatow have reached into the deep, dark place where many women have a hidden story about their own “Adam” and conjured a shirtless, shameless, boogey-man that makes perfect sense.
Call him an emotionally unavailable douche, or a narcissistic cretin, or, yes, a sensitivity chip lacking jerkoff, and you’d be right about it all. And the unsurprising thing is that many women have met and dated an “Adam.” Oh, yes, this guy has lived and breathed and made many of us wring our hands because he is just that much of an enigma, or so it seems. This is the dude who will hook-up with you, not call, not text, not want to “label your relationship,” thinks conformity is lame, thinks being considerate is maybe wiping the rim of the beer bottle with his t-shirt before handing it to you, and who’ll want to hook-up just after your dog died. Even with this stellar display of gentlemanly awesome many of us flock to “Adam.” Why is this guy so irresistible?
I think one of the easiest ways to break it down is to say that “Adam” is the quintessential pseudo bad-boy. He’s safe enough that the only real damage he’ll cause is heartbreak, even if he thinks he’s the frontman of a badass Williamsburg Hip-Hop group called the “One BJs” or the “Lipstick Moans.” He’s not usually into any real damaging shit, but just harmful enough to use his swag to affect an air of superiority with great drama and passion. Oh, yes, the passion. There is always a great passion that seeps out of “Adam” while he waxes poetic on all things from politics, and film, to astronomy and maybe even oven cleaner brands, all with knowledge beyond his years, or so he’ll attempt to demonstrate. Maybe he likes jazz or classic punk, or maybe he’s into woodworking or glassblowing, or maybe his humor is just so ribald and prophetic that he believes most people he encounters stand a little in awe of the way his cluttered but glaringly honest brain works. And let only Odin save you if you don’t get it. Then of course, you’re profoundly, erringly, incurably lame. And we the “Hannahs” of the world have fallen for it.
Oh, there’s no shame in it. An “Adam” lurks in nearly every college campus and studio apartment the entire world over. He’s like furniture, an IKEA bookcase or a potted plant in a Bursar’s office. He is the bland, one-eyed unicorn that best girlfriends debate and fight over in a world riddled with commentary like, “He’s such a loser! Why do you date him?!” “I don’t know! He’s funny and took me to the Washboard Music Festival last week. It was sooo cool! It’s like I see things for the first time with him!”
What this translates into regarding relationships is “Adam” as the selfish lover, an espouser of bullshit, a clumsy articulator of feelings who often hasn’t mastered the art of “being friends with a girl” feeling safer to treat her like a “thing” because all else goes hand-and-hand with a certain level of responsibility. Which is why the “Adams” of the world are horrible boyfriends, or hook-up buddies, or label-less pals, or whatever new fangled thing Adam has convinced girls to call him. But we already know this. We all know that “Adam” is a horrible boyfriend.
The worst “Adams” will point out that you hang out with him for the wrong reasons, and he’s right. We can talk ad nauseum about self-esteem issues, low self-confidence, not thinking you deserve anything better, blah, blah. This is nothing new when you’re just figuring out what relationships are and why you’re attracted to certain people and what to do with those feelings once you’ve uncovered them. But this won’t be a whole laundry list about young women and why they choose the “wrong” guy. Many, many women choose an “Adam” or someone like “Adam” because he’s charming, confounding, a challenge, and underneath the loathsome jackassery, perhaps is self-conscious, doltish, and an insecure animal in his own right. So in that regard, like may speak to like. Yet, if you never chip away at that other more redeemable part, then “Adam” is often an experience in figuring out exactly what you don’t want and what you won’t settle for.
Girls’ Adam draws on all of this and makes the character someone you can’t mistake for any other kind of guy. The mix of repulsion and affinity for the subtle nuance that he embodies has taken off. His chest even has a Twitter account. On the show he is part hurtful creep, part hilarious buddy comedy sidekick, and thinly-veiled insecure drifter. He likes Hannah. Even when he’s bawdy and odd, an asshole and a weirdo, he likes his and Hannah’s strange, awful, exhilarating relationship. We can see how the show is slowly building up to make Adam more likable and attainable in Hannah’s world. After last Sunday’s episode where they share a moment that has nothing to do with sex, we’re already seeing Adam begin a friendship with Hannah, and that’s the whole key.
The “Adam” kryptonite is always a powerhouse girl cut from no-nonsense cloth who can see through all his bullshit and thinks he’s a complete asshole, and, yes, this is the girl he’ll cut the crap for — and become vulnerable with. Ten years later when you see “Adam and Hannah” coming out of Gymboree with a little babe in tow, you’ll remember how he twisted up your world, where you wrote about him in your journal only in black permanent Sharpie while listening to Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill”, and yeah, you’ll still want to punch him, but maybe not as hard.
