I’ve done a couple of posts talking about my favorite rerun couples, but I thought for this Valentine’s week, I’d mention a few of the couples that I don’t like.
After all, not everyone likes Valentine’s Day.
Calleigh Duquense and Eric Delko, CSI: Miami–Don’t get me wrong, I love them as friends and as coworkers. I hate them as a romantic couple. Delko has been portrayed as something of a player and Calleigh knows very well about his history. You would think she would know better. Alas! They end up getting together during the seventh season, only to break up after a shooting during the season finale and subsequent aftermath in the first few episodes of the eighth season. The break-up was in part because Adam Rodriguez left the show and was only in a handful of episodes. When he returned in the ninth season, they were on again/off again depending on the requirements of the plot, before going totally off in the series finale. It’s just a mess. I never bought them as a couple and they never really believed they were establishing a healthy relationship.
Thomas Magnum and Juliette Higgins, Magnum PI (2018)–I wrote a whole post about why I hate this. It’s the inevitable heteronormative narrative that prohibits the idea of platonic soulmates between men and women. I liked them as frenemies and even as business partners, but the minute they started straying into jealous-because-they’re-dating-someone-else territory, my eyeballs were in danger of rolling out of my skull. The show could have been interesting, but instead they chose the dull route of making them kiss, dragging them through some of the most worn out tropes in the process and didn’t even attempt to do something new with them. The will-they-or-won’t-they had no tension and when they finally got together, it signaled the end of the ride for me. I couldn’t stand the forced unresolved sexual tension; the rest of the show wasn’t enough to make me put up with their final season union. Their romantic relationship literally made me quit watching the show. You can’t get more hater-y than that.
Wojo and Wentworth, Barney Miller–This only lasted for a few of episodes, but it should have been zero episodes. To be fair, I am biased because as much as I love Linda Lavin, I never really liked the character of Wentworth. I think she fell victim to what a lot of women characters on male-written, male-centered shows did, which rendered her annoying to me despite Linda Lavin’s best efforts. (I acknowledge being in the minority on this because I know people who love the character.) The pairing of Wojo and Wentworth was a few episodes of unresolved sexual tension before yielding to a couple of episodes of Wojo and Wentworth as a couple before Wentworth went to vice because Linda Lavin left to do Alice. Because this was mostly second season Wojo, who had only started his evolution, it’s not the most nuanced or mature Wojo to watch operate in a relationship, which I guess is supposed to be played for laughs, but I don’t find much of it funny. It’s just obnoxious. I skip those episodes, thankful that there aren’t more.
If you love one -or two or all- of these couples, that’s great. I’m happy for you.
But I don’t, so don’t bother trying to change my mind.
aka KikiWrites 