According to Hofmann: Gentlemen, don’t get Jacked!
Attention: This column contains plot details of the television show “This is Us” so there are spoilers — nothing big like finding out that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father in “The Empire Strikes Back” — oh crap. Well, in that case, this warning about spoilers has a spoiler, so you’ve been warned.
Every Tuesday evening, my wife leaves me to go to her TV husband, Jack, the patriarch (a.k.a. big daddy) on the show “This is Us.” Well, to be technical, she doesn’t leave me to go to Jack, I tag along for the ride as I, too, watch the unfolding story of Jack and the Pearson family during the second season of the show for every … torturous … episode.
Don’t get me wrong, “This is Us” is fine show, and I really enjoy it. I mean, it’s no “NYPD Blue” or the made-for-TV movie “Trial of the Incredible Hulk,” but it has a good cast and good stories with some touching twists and surprises.
My problem with the show is the fact that my wife, Amber, consistently points how great Jack is, how sensitive Jack is, how romantic Jack is, how Jack says the sweetest things, how Jack doesn’t fart around his wife, how Jack doesn’t sing along to obscene Australian drinking songs in front of children and how Jack doesn’t start sentences with the word “and”.
And normally, I have to point out to Amber that I am not Jack, and Jack is a fictional character like Harry Potter, Rocky Balboa or Benjamin Franklin.
Yes, sorry to burst your bubble, ladies, but Jack was born and raised in a room full of writers tasked with making his character likable and complex while putting him on a pedestal above all living, breathing men in an effort to attract more female viewers.
It’s bad enough that I get crap from Amber on a regular basis after she tells me about her friends’ husbands who do things I don’t do like say “I love you” every once in a while, listen to them when they talk or drive them to the hospital when they’re profusely bleeding, but now I’m getting compared to a fictional character from a network TV show.
She might as well say that I don’t do genius stuff like they do on “The Big Bang Theory,” or that I don’t save lives like the guy on “The Good Doctor,” and how I never lift a finger to hunt down serial killers like the team on the show “Criminal Minds”.
“That doesn’t matter,” is Amber’s response, and that’s also the same answer she gives me when I point out Jack’s flaws.
For example, Jack gets a pass for being an alcoholic while I get the third degree when I order a beer at a restaurant on my birthday, and it’s no big deal that Jack actually attempted to rob a bar, but it’s an issue when I shake quarters out of our change jar at home when I need some extra money to buy a beer on my birthday.
So, with that said, I hope this week’s column reaches one of the writers for the show, especially one of the male writers. Listen, you need to give Jack a darker side. Don’t turn him into a serial killer or anything, but maybe have him kick a dog on his way to meet his mistress.
If I’m lucky and that happens to happen, then I’ll finally have my wife leave her TV husband and come back into my arms while comparing me to Ben Franklin on the “John Adams” miniseries the way a healthy marriage should.
According to Hofmann is written by staff reporter Mark Hofmann of Belle Vernon. Watch Mark’s video series at heraldstandard.com and YouTube. Like and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.