Soredemo Ore wa, Tsuma to Shitai

This drama isn't an all-timer, but it has a lot to say about marriage that is worth listening to.

On the surface 'Soredemo Ore wa, Tsuma to Shitai' is a story about a failed screenwriter husband whose only motivation in life is to do the bare minimum so he can beg his wife for sex. She rightfully despises him for it, and their loveless marriage is emotionally hostile and outright abusive at times. However, I found the show to be about things far deeper than that.

The main character is genuinely an insufferable, simpering, milquetoast loser. The character is written to embody these derogatory designations so expertly at times that you want to lean into the screen and strangle him, and if that doesn't work, push him down the stairs. He fails at EVERYTHING. Equally as confronting is his wives endless contempt for him, snide and explicit meanness, the actress MEGUMI does an impeccable job of showing us how much this character hates her husband, thinks he's a loser, and only ever expects him to do everything in the worst possible and least dignified way. Her husband begging her every night for sex amplifying all of these things 10 fold.

Her saving grace as a character is that it's hard not to think he deserves her derisions, put downs, and contempt for him. She can't even have a bath in peace without him asking for sex, or a blowjob as a consolation.

They bicker and argue constantly about his failings as a screenwriter, and how his few measly successes(getting work) have been salvaged by her editing his scripts and doing the work for him, on top of her own full time job. On top of all this, they have a neuro-divergent son (Taro) who rarely goes to school, and is obsessed with a comedy group called 'Doburock' who sing songs about old men getting erections when they see women in yukata, amongst other obscene themes. Taro is the comedic relief in this show, but not in a derogatory or stereotypical way. He is just plain funny, and his sub-plot about his obsessions with Doburock is my favourite part of the show.

The show is heavy handed on these characterizations sometimes, but the depth I speak about in this show is that it does a great job of illuminating the pressure and pitfalls that marriages can have on people. When people marry each other based on expectations rather than love, trust, and confidence, it leads to these incredibly toxic situations where people are stuck together but cannot see a way of separating cleanly when they realize the issues cannot be resolved. There is no positive outcome for the situation these people are in, but they are trapped by their own routine and are so used to the toxic situation they are in that they simply cannot conceptualize a way out that isn't worse.

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