Daisy Klaber: The New Adventures of Old Men, or, Designing Men

by Daisy Klaber

There are plenty of parts for dudes to play, and lots of them are complicated and interesting, I guess, but that doesn’t make most of those roles any more satisfying than the two-dimensional girlfriend parts available for the ladies. Even gay-man characters, whose “emotions” get screen time because gays are like girls, give me heart failure because most TV writers just don’t believe that I like men. But I like men!

I like hearing from nearly half the world’s adult population-people who used to be boys. I like men so much that I take that back, because there is no such group. I don’t like it when you’re collected and dismissed as hunky, immature idiots. You are not an idiot, Individual Who Is A Man. I mean sometimes you are! But that’s because you’re a person. Being a man does not make you a Penis.

It does not even make you lost, or out of touch with your feelings. You do that all on your own, Individual Man Who’s Checked Out.

There are two reasons I watched Men of a Certain Age on TNT We Know Drama: my Homicide lifetime membership, and because it was on right after The Closer. (Hi Fritz!) My initial impression was that I could have done without the show’s distraction of Ken Jeong because, for one, I sat through The Goods on a DIY ride-all-day movie pass, but you know what? I was pleasantly surprised that the other Men let me cop a feeeel (get it?)-on the first date even. With our eyes open.

Terry (Dr. Sam Beckett, also known as Scott Bakula) and I are taking it kind of slow because even though he’s temping for Blaine town councilman Steve Stark at an accounting firm while having trouble getting it up for acting anymore, he’s also unimaginatively trying to date much-younger barista/writer/Peggy Olson roommate Carla Gallo.

But Owen’s (Dr. Nolan, AKA Andre Braugher) “forty-mother-shit-eight”-year-old, diabetic self has already showed me the pain of being the person you are instead of the person your dad thinks he wants you to be, and also the peace of having created your own family with a wife who loves who you are and shows it. I want to watch him deal with stuff.

Ray Romano, though? He gets my final rose because I bought every word that man uttered, along with every look, movement and depressingly optimistically-depressed shrug. Maybe when you’ve earned a pile of money and you’re an executive producer on a show, you get brave enough to commit fully to Dull. Whatever it is, I’m glad he’s playing Party Depot-owner Joe, because he understands the power of small moments for somebody who thinks maybe there’s a chance either that his life is not a disappointment, or that nobody else has noticed.

I like Men of a Certain Age! They have actual friendships with each other; they’re one another’s nontourage. The show is light without being silly, and, as with most actual men, the only thing that’s edgy about its real-ness is that it’s really not edgy at all.

Seven-year-old Daisy Klaber would have told you she liked men of a certain age, in between worldly swigs of apple juice on the rocks.