Of course there are obvious ones like Rupert or Edwin Akufo. But do you have a least favorite character out of all the good ones?
I know this is a very unpopular opinion but sometimes I find myself so annoyed with Keeley. Her character is almost too loveable and her style is just terrible (in my opinion), I am pretty sure I have worn some of her same outfits back in the 90s. Sometimes I just don’t like her.
Jane Paine. I didn’t find her funny or endearing and I hated that Beard ended up with her. It became clear later that Beard has an addictive personality and is drawn to toxicity as we learn more about his background (that’s my interpretation anyway). I loved his stand-alone episode but her at the end kind of ruined it for me because we know how she is IRL.
On Brendan Hunt’s AMA here after S3 he clarified that he didn’t think that Jane was abusive.
I think he’s wrong.
Oh he is absolutely wrong. Genuinely a terrible take. Makes me question anything he would say about the show tbh, just because he was a writer on the show doesn’t mean he has good judgment or that they are incapable of making mistakes. A lot of people forget that and put people like him on pedestals
Ugh. He’s dead wrong. The lines about her breaking his stuff and stalking Keely and feeling threatened by Ted is her exhibiting abusive behavior. And it’s played for laughs.
I didn’t think she was abusive until the shredding of the passport that’s just insane
I was excited (in a dark way) because I was SURE they were going to address it in S3 and because it would have fit SO WELL into how the show handled men’s mental health – I have a male friend who was in an abusive marriage before I met him and the stories he’s told about people who didn’t believe him are horrifying, particularly the stuff that wasn’t physical abuse. Things like breaking his stuff, insisting on ALWAYS knowing where he was, insane jealousy – if Beard and Jane’s genders had been switched EVERYONE would have known it was an abusive relationship. Not just toxic – abusive. It would have been a great look into why people stay with and continue to love abusers, how abusers keep their victims in the relationship, all of it. Just a big swing and a miss.
Ugh!! I hated Beard’s standalone episode. Felt like they ran out of material and this was a bad interlude and they were killing time until they could show the next episode.
So, you’re not entirely wrong there. They filmed the entire series of 10 episodes and Apple ordered 2 more. So that ep with the Christmas episode was what’s called a “filler” episode.
Apparently it was an homage to a Scorsese film that I haven’t seen and it was meant to provide some backstory to the mysterious Beard because I feel like he was always a stock character. But it’s definitely a divisive episode.
I disliked the episode on my first watch, then liked it on the second. Knowing Beard’s backstory when he forgives Nate in season 3, helped me see Beard’s struggles with addiction and his neurodivergence. Re-watching Beard at Night felt like I got a glimpse of how Beard saw the world. I no longer saw him as the two-dimensional Mr-Know-It-All sidekick for Ted, but as someone who heard his own drum, for good, for bad, and for everything in between.
Good to know I wasn’t too far off base. And yeah, the Scorsese bit was lost on me!