The Breakfast Chode: A Retrospective
Let’s talk about douchebags and the women who love them, if we could for a moment. You see it time and time again; it pushes the mind to the brink of understanding when we see a perfectly nice lady in a relationship with a skuzzy, dumb-as-shit dude who also treats her like garbage. If you are a woman, you have a friend who is in one of these relationships and constantly have to listen to her complain about her awful boyfriend that she refuses to leave (and if you don’t have one of these girlfriends, bitch, it’s probably you. Go survey your friends if you don’t believe me). If you are one of those self-identified nice guys who is into the girl, this shit drives you up the goddamn wall. You think to yourself, if I just show her how nice I am and what it means to be treated right, she’ll leave him for me. It’s practically science. And pop culture has reinforced this idea over and over. Meet the Breakfast Chode: Also known as the dick the dream girl dates before Mr. Perfect entered her life.
Don’t you just want to reach through the computer and slap each one of these turds?
He is called the Breakfast Chode because he is inspired by Jon Bender, Judd Nelson’s character in The Breakfast Club, who inexplicably gets the head cheerleader at the end despite being a total dipshit to her for the entire movie. He has become one of the most overused clichés in romantic and comedic movies. Normally it’s the hiccup in the boy meets girl story, because he has to woo her away from her stupid boyfriend, who is such an over-the-top asshole that you root for his failure. He has to be because it makes it okay for the protagonist to steal his girlfriend, which I think we all can agree is ordinarily a dick move. But the hero will never get called out on it, ’cause fuck that chode. Take for example Glen from The Wedding Singer. He would unabashedly cheat and generally be terrible to the sweet, kind, goodhearted Julia in front of the sweet, kind, goodhearted Robbie. Does anyone who sees that movie think it’s wrong that Robbie goes after an engaged woman? Sometimes the BC is main conflict. Prince Humberdinck from The Princess Bride was going to have Princess Buttercup murdered the night of their wedding. Imagine how fucked up that movie would have been if he was a nice dude who was in love with Buttercup. Wesley would have been the bad guy and you would have felt totally bad for Humberdinck. Some of the most hateable characters in history have been this character: Ethan Hawke from Reality Bites, every guy except Brett Farve in There’s Something About Mary, Troy from The Goonies, Anthony Michael Hall’s character from Edward Scissorhands, to name a few. Hell, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is about Breakfast Chodes. How many seasons did we have to watch Jim’s long face mugging for the camera at the sight of Pam and Roy on The Office? And of course I have to make special mention of Paul Rudd’s portrayal of Andy in Wet Hot American Summer, who is the quintessential Breakfast Chode.
Breakfast Chode Rule: Always be chillin’
But here’s the thing no one ever talks about. What, really, is SHE doing with HIM? In the movies and on TV, there is never any time dedicated to the explanation, possibly because it would make you sympathize with the BC’s character. That time when he was on his best behavior, taking her out and buying her flowers. But either that happened and something went wrong, or she simply likes assholes. Some girls have a bad boy complex; even though it goes against all rationality and what we know about people’s personality, she thinks she can change him. All he has to do is show a little vulnerability for her to see that soft underbelly beneath that tough shell. My point is, she picked him knowing full well what he is like.
The ultimate bad boy
Is there something wrong with her? It’s true that we accept the love we think we deserve. Movies like this do not depict the reality of the woman who is into this douche. She is an autonomous being who has made her decision, and you, Mr. Nice guy, aren’t her type and will be directed to the friend zone almost immediately. The fact that she is with him means she doesn’t want a relationship with an equal or she doesn’t value herself enough, or worse still she is just a raging cunt and he is actually her perfect match. Or he is really, insanely out of this world hot and/or good at sex. However, this has already been said, and said way better than anything I could attempt, so I will leave you with Katie’s speech to her nice guy friend at the end of Wet Hot American Summer. Ciao!
-Stephanie Rose