For some time now, I've been following the comic "Luann" by Greg Evans. I'm not sure why, really, because most of the storylines (predictably enough) center around a teenage girl named Luann who can't seem to pull her head out of her shallow ass and find a boyfriend. I guess what hooked me was the storyline about her older brother, Brad. Near as I have it figured (I came in a little after the start of the storyline), Brad was involved in some sort of life-saving rescue (as the rescuer, not the rescuee) with a school-mate named Toni Daytona. Toni is, for a comic character, a stone fox, and she seems pretty bright. Brad is kinda a schlub. They apparently share a passion for cars, and they both went to the fire academy and became firefighters after their dramatic shared rescue experience.
During the early parts of their fire academy time, Toni was dating an obvious jerk named Dirk. He drove a hot car, worked out a lot, and was generally a controlling, jealous prick. The good news is, Toni's dumped Dirk. The seemingly better news is that in the past couple of months, Brad's managed to develop a more-than-friends (maybe) relationship with Toni. He's turning out to be thoughtful and romantic, and she's turning out to be not as shallow as she started out seeming, and they've shared a kiss after ditching the firemen's ball.
I am completely rooting for Brad. He's shown a little jealousy over Dirk, but mostly, his problem is self-confidence. Anyone can tell that based purely on looks, Brad and Toni aren't well-matched. It's not quite as bad as the "fat lunkhead / hot wife" pairing so common in sitcoms (Still Standing, According to Jim, King of Queens, Grounded For Life, etc.), in that Brad is fit enough to be a firefighter, and he's clearly a better catch than his smarmy pal T.J. Toni's beautiful on the outside, but she shows some capacity for shallowness. Taken as whole people, you figure that Brad and Toni are pretty evenly matched, but Brad feels outclassed.
Evans hasn't really let us learn too much about Toni's inner workings, preferring to let us see her mostly through Brad's eyes. She doesn't get any of the "sitting around being introspective with her friends" time that Luann does (come to think of it, we don't even really know if Toni has friends, or who they are...the only characters we've seen associate with Toni are Dirk the Dick, and Toni's niece Shannon), but we get to hear Brad bounce his love life off of his sister Luann and his buddy T.J.
So, I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that I'm Brad (well, really, I'm more like Kevin James' character in King of Queens, physically). I always have a hard time believing that insanely hot women could/would find me attractive. Not that I don't have very good qualities, just that I know that physical attraction makes up a good bit of how couples get together, and that's almost always one-sided. So, being Brad, I want my fictional counterpart to do well. I cringe when he lets T.J. talk him into some stupid, gooberish plan to woo Toni (thankfully, Brad's started realizing what an immature tool T.J. is), I smile when it's clear that Toni's digging him, and I nearly yell out loud when Brad nearly takes himself out of the game because of the disparity in their looks.
A side note...readers of Luann will note that there's another "beauty and the beast" kind of storyline between Luann and Gunther. Gunther's almost the opposite of Brad, in that Gunther has TONS of self-confidence. He is who he is, and while he is attracted to Luann (for reasons unknown, she's kinda spacey and shallow), he's standing his ground even though Luann has flat-out told him that she thinks he's a nerd. Gunther doesn't resonate with me the Brad does, probably because I don't know what that kind of self-confidence would feel like.
Nope, I'm a Brad, and I keep looking for a Toni. And while I know it would mess up the wonderful will-they-or-won't-they tension he's got building, I keep hoping he gets her. It'd be nice to see one of us succeed.
P.S. - It occurred to me that part of the reason the pairings in most beauty-and-the-beast sitcoms don't resonate is that you pick up the relationship after it's established, and if you do get the "origin story", it's usually very rushed and hinges on some highly-contrived pivotal comic moment where "beauty" sees "beast" in a new light. That's great and all, but a moment does not a relationship make. I think that's the fun part of the Brad/Toni storyline in "Luann"...if they do have a romantic relationship, we've seen how it developed...the fits and starts...the mistakes and makeups...and it will seem more established for having built gradually.
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