It let its female stars—especially Lizzy Caplan—be unapologetically funny screw-ups at a time when many comedies relegated women to scolding and frowning at the men around them. And it completely skewered Martin Starr’s Roman, the kind of arrogant nerd who takes pride in, well, liking a TV show before it becomes popular.
2009 was a weird and confusing time for nerd-dom. You could call it the “LOL le epic bacon pwnz!!!1” period, if doing so didn’t cause physical pain, but we were definitely starting to transition from “nerds are smelly and gross” to “actually, being a nerd is cool.” And transitions can be… difficult.
Let’s travel back. The first two Marvel movies had come out, and one of them was even good. Star Trek had just been rebooted with a movie that was less about tachyon emitters and more about Chris Pine driving motorcycles. Seven of the year’s 10 bestselling games were made by Nintendo for the Wii, because every household had become a gaming household. The Big Bang Theory was becoming a massive hit by making undiscerning audiences say “Ha, that adult man said ‘Thundercats.’” Nerd culture was becoming mainstream and far more accessible.
Enter Roman who, a few years after Party Down ends, would absolutely be on Twitter screaming horrific things at women because they didn’t mind the Mass Effect 3 ending.
A frustrated “hard sci-fi” screenwriter who can’t sell his work, Roman was a ruthless skewering of the kind of fan we’d later recognize as toxic. He’s someone who insults his co-worker for not getting his Repo Man reference, then complains he can’t sell his scripts because producers and audiences are too stupid.
Think of an obnoxious behavior you see online, and odds are that Roman exhibits it. He complains when a comic book movie revises its source material to fit the screen. He dismisses any movie he doesn’t like as crap for children and morons. He’s an oblivious annoyance when he meets George Takei. He thinks he’s a misunderstood genius even as he churns out garbage, he takes any criticism as an attack on himself and his interests, and he blames his every failure on the industry or the cruel vagaries of the universe instead of taking a look in the mirror.
‘Party Down’ Knew What Toxic Fandom Was Before Anyone Else
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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