Positioned high over the La Brea Avenue stoplight, a billboard advertising Hulu’s dramedy Shrill, featuring the SNL’s endlessly lovable Aidy Bryant, stops traffic cold.
In her magenta bathing suit, knocking knees together, Bryant is a sick-thoughted modern take on Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.
But if her character, Annie, is Shrill’s Venus and goddess of love and beauty, then who is the show’s Adonis, her doomed mortal lover?
Annie and Ryan discuss their relationship in “Shrill”. Courtesy Allyson Riggs/Hulu
It turns out he is Ryan.
And
Ryan sucks.
Immature, inconsiderate and incompetent, Ryan is the kind of guy who sends our heroine one-word texts reading “Fuck?” and expects her to leave through the back door when they’re finished so as to not annoy his roommates.
He’s a bona fide schlub, the definition of the emotionally stunted bare minimum with no discernible ambitions, and yet Annie keeps going back as he dangles commitment over her head.
Ryan isn’t malicious per se. The emotional damage he causes Annie seems the simple result of deep ignorance, but still, as viewers on Annie’s side, we desperately want her to kick this loser to the curb.
She develops into a more brave assertive person throughout the series. But despite us yelling at Annie to dump him and occasionally throwing our laptops across the room when she gives him yet another chance, we all know a Ryan.
I do.
Most of us have dated a Ryan, haven’t we? Ryan is Annie’s Adonis.
Who’s yours?
In the Shakespearean retelling, the goddess Venus is drawn towards Adonis, a mortal hunter, by his incredible beauty.
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor ‘gins to woo him.
In the world of Shrill, Annie is clearly not drawn to Ryan by his looks—Lucas Jones’ portrayal of the character has the bushy beard and sparkling eyes of a particularly charming feral dog—but there is definitely something that draws her toward him.
So soon was she along as he was down,
Each leaning on their elbows and their hips:
Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,
And ‘gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips;
That something feels impossible to tease out and parse at first, but we all know why we stuck with the Ryans in our lives. Right?
Deep down we can see Annie’s reasoning, the strange math that leads people — especially women — to treat themselves like romantic trash even when they have incredible confidence in every other part of their lives — to drop everything for a love interest.
Even if that love interest is emotionally exhausting and has a shitty podcast.
“Venus and Adonis” (oil on canvas, 1555-60) by Titian. Courtesy the Getty
At one point in the second episode, Annie’s roommate Fran asks her why she never stands up to Ryan, and Annie’s answer feels devastatingly honest: “he liked me and I didn’t want him to stop liking me so I just…went with it.”
The thing that draws Annie to Ryan is the simple (how easy to say “simple”) fear that she cannot do better, that he will be the only person to love her enough. That fear, and its corollary hope for change, outweigh any emotional bruise a Ryan can inflict, and causes Annie (and all of us) to ignore the non-Ryan sources of love in our lives—the parents, the friends, the romantic interests that show actual interest—because they feel too easy.
A good TV show gets the audience to sympathize with a character. A great TV show can make the audience genuinely frustrated with a character, screaming at them through the screen not to open that door, not to tell that secret, or not to get back with that boyfriend. Alexandra Rushfield and Lindy West, the show’s developers, deserve immense credit for creating a character as real and frustrating as Annie. West’s 2016 memoir, “Shrill: Notes From A Loud Woman” served as the base, and four other writers (Craig DiGregorio, Samantha Irby, Dave King and Ali Rushfield) contributed to the show.
Annie’s life is fairly mundane, as far as heroines go — she’s not saving the world or taking down an oppressive regime. And her flaws don’t consist of addiction or a thirst for blood — yet she remains engaging.
Annie lets loose at a pool party in “Shrill”. Courtesy Allyson Riggs/Hulu
There’s a depth to her portrayal that usually isn’t afforded to female TV characters, who can be lumped into two main categories — those who are incurably flawed (Hannah Horvath on Girls, Fleabag on Fleabag) and those who are morally unblemished (Jane on Jane the Virgin, any given sitcom mom). Shrill’s Annie is one of the few TV characters I could bump into on the street — a subtle, honest portrayal of a 21st-century woman, insecurities and all.
West was wise in her restraint around Annie’s unsatisfactory relationship, avoiding the unfortunately common plot shortcuts of abuse or adultery to stress that she needs to get out. Instead, instead West explores the smaller, all-too-real reasons that people stay in shitty relationships. She makes the audience grapple with those subtler forces.
Spoiler alert, but I must regretfully inform you that at the end of season one, Annie remains with Ryan. She manages to reform him a bit (he goes on actual dates now and doesn’t sleep with other women, gold star for him), but even as she has gained confidence in her work and her body, her self-worth issues are still visible in her romantic life. It seems that ditching her Ryan may be her final and most difficult challenge.
So here’s to our Ryans: may we date them, may we learn to ditch them, may they eventually be gored by an Athenian boar.
Shrill season one is streaming now on Hulu; the series was renewed for a second season on April 15, 2019.