Big Boys is going to be your new favourite TV show

"It doesn't matter how hard your dick is, it matters how kind you are..."

*This post contains spoilers*

Big Boys (2022) is beautiful. It’s tender, it’s funny and the writing is phenomenal. So much so that I’ve been struggling to write this post for over a month because nothing I say is going to do justice to your viewing experience.

Created and narrated by Jack Rooke, this sitcom centres on Jack and Danny, two boys who end up becoming unlikely best friends during Brent University freshers’ week.

It is so rare for a story to explore the full spectrum of what it means to grieve and be joyful. This show is about a lot of things. Well, in many ways it’s actually about everything: growing pains, grief, love, sex, family. But at its core, this is a show about friendship and masculinity.

I think I would like more men to watch this show, to see what genuine friendships between men can look and feel like. Real friendship is not emasculating, nor is it something reserved only for women or the LGBTQ+ community.

A 2019 YouGov survey “found that one in five men have no close friends — twice the proportion for women.” Similarly, 2021 research by Movember revealed “nearly a third of men feel as though they do not have any close friends – or any friends at all.”

As someone who is both observant and analytical, it’s not news to me that most straight men have their social lives organised for them by their partners. Men’s friendships are often activity-based, revolving around alcohol or sports. This is a stark difference to how the women in my life form and nurture their friendships, which are often based on emotional support, two-way dialogue and communicating shared values.

A 2021 study from the University of Michigan summed it up best when it concluded: “women are no more emotional than men… this is largely because of centuries of sexist language used to describe women’s feelings. Men may also appear less emotional because of societal pressures: as for generations, they’ve been told both explicitly and implicitly to be stoic, resilient, and tough, and suppress traits like sensitivity, patience, and tenderness — which in turn precludes any real chance of men fostering genuine, deep connections with one another.”

This Harper's Bazaar article goes a step further, arguing that men need to take it upon themselves to reflect and seek the necessary support in order to ensure their partners do not play every role: “best friend, lover, career advisor, stylist, social secretary, emotional cheerleader, mom — to him, their future kids, or both — and eventually, on-call therapist minus the $200/hour fee.”

What is love? My long-distance friends and I have spent the past few months reading Bell Hooks in the hopes that she has the answer. Hooks argues that love should be conceptualised as a verb, not a noun. It is an action, a choice, a commitment. To show up, to respect and to support.

In season 2, Danny storms out of his party after he has a big fight with his neglectful, absent father. Jack Rooke makes a faceless cameo, as he usually does during Danny’s lowest points, addressing his friend in second-person and telling him he isn’t a burden to anyone, no matter how much his parents made him feel like he was during his childhood. The twist in this scene, however, is that Danny actually hears future Jack — similar to how The Priest in Fleabag (2016) was able to see her break the fourth wall. This scene captured so beautifully how much people and their words continuously impact us, for better or for worse, even when they don’t realise it.

The love I have for my friends is the purest form of love I have ever known. Jack and Danny know this, too. I’ve survived my hardest days because of my friends. Some of them know this and some of them don’t.

I’m not sure if this was Rooke’s intention, but I see Big Boys as both a love letter and an apology to his friend; perhaps even a plea to turn back time to their darkest moments in order to comfort his younger self and everyone else around him. Within the show, his future self shows up for his friend in all the ways his past self couldn’t, in all the ways his past self didn’t know how to.

Friendship is depicted as an ever-evolving act of showing up, of figuring out ways to support each other. Again and again, no matter what. Through its exploration of chosen family and unconditional platonic love, Big Boys ultimately shows its audience that our friends will always and forever remain the most important people in our lives.

In many ways, Big Boys is also what season 3 of Ted Lasso (2020) wishes it was.¹ In episode one, Danny discovers that Jack is gay. He proceeds to research everything about the LGBTQIA+ community to ensure he can keep Jack safe on around campus and on nights out.

This was a surprising twist for me, the audience member, as I was almost certain Jack was going to be bullied by Danny the Lad.

My initial fears as to how this episode would play out isn’t necessarily surprising, considering television is rife with representations of masculinity that are inherently entitled, void of emotion and even violent — which has only served to reinforce harmful gender stereotypes.

For example, Game of Thrones (2011) “seemingly couldn’t finish a single episode throughout its first few seasons without a gratuitous rape scene or some other violent manipulation of women characters.” What is more, Lindsay Roberts’ thesis titled ‘Toxic Masculinity on Television: A Content Analysis of Preferred Adolescent Programs’ revealed “toxic masculinity occurs within 36.8% (n = 869) of scenes in adolescent television shows.”²

Similar to what Sudekis was trying to achieve with the football boys of Ted Lasso, the character of Danny is ultimately used by the writing staff to confront toxic masculinity. But unlike Jamie Tartt, Danny is sweet to the bone from the very beginning, and he doesn’t know how to be any other way.

His character development doesn’t revolve around him changing because of the good influence of The Man in Charge. Instead, Rooke grants this character a journey that is more psychological. Throughout the seasons, Danny grieves his grandmother and a teenage-hood he never had, as well as learns how to lean on his friends during his depressive episodes.

This is not to say the fictional football boys of Ted Lasso haven’t been a good influence or haven’t contributed to the gradual destruction of toxic masculinity on screen, but Rooke is so wonderful at not being preachy. His writing does the incredible thing that TV writers simply don’t do enough: he shows, he doesn’t tell.

Both Jamie and Danny and their representations of what masculinity means are important, and both can exist alongside one another — precisely because there’s just not enough representations of male characters outside the romance genre who are secure in their masculinity, friendship and identity.

When researching Big Boys, one of the first reviews that appeared on Google, written by a father, said the following: “I hope I raise my boys to be just like these ones. Supportive and caring to each other. Not afraid of anything.”

I learnt so much about how to love from Jack and Danny in Big Boys. It’s safe to say that these characters and their stories have deeply impacted everyone else who has seen it, too.

1. My examination of Ted Lasso’s shambolic season 3 is a post for another time.

2. They sampled the following shows: SpongeBob Squarepants, Big Bang Theory, Pokemon, Stranger Things, Riverdale, The Office, The Walking Dead, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Flash, Game of Thrones, Supernatural, Gravity Falls, Modern Family, Arrow, The Umbrella Academy, This is Us, Bluebloods, Teen Titans, Rick & Morty, Power Rangers, Friends, Law and Order SVU and Empire.