Ah, yes, rom-coms. Aren’t they the best when you’re lying in bed, single, lonely and plagued with a lack of love at 2 a.m.? Sometimes, I find that romcoms feature the cutest, most butterfly-inducing scenarios. Other times, I reel back, eyebrows wrinkled, with one thought on my mind: Is this really meant to be a romantic story?
A rom-com, of course, is a romantic plot with comedy elements that catalyze the relationship. These plots are usually chock-full of cliches and a mix of tropes, including ones like friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, love triangles and many more. The characters mainly consist of archetypes, such as the airhead main character and the ice-cold CEO with a traumatic backstory.
I started watching rom-com shows and reading rom-com novels out of sheer boredom during the pandemic. Most of the shows I watched included many of these cliches, and I gradually formed an opinion on which ones deserved the hype. The classic, awkward meet-cute? Sure, why not? The annoying friend zone that appears in almost every romantic show? Maybe, if it’s done in a specific manner. The nerdy girl who’s considered the ugly duckling until she removes her glasses and becomes a beautiful swan? Ew, with 10 w’s.
A cliche I’ve grown to love over the years is mutual pining. Everyone knows they love each other — their friends and family, their coworkers and so on. But no, the leads are too dense and in denial, harping over relationships with other people and saying they “don’t want to ruin their friendship.” Bonus points if they’ve been pining since childhood and realize they’re in love only when they’re full-fledged adults, realizing all the years they’ve lost by simply not taking a chance. A series that embodies this trope is “One Day,” exploring a 30-year love story from when the leads were teenagers.
Another popular cliche I love occurs when the two leads hate each other’s guts, as when Lucy hated Joshua in “The Hating Game.” Whether it be characters from rival sports teams or a skirmish based on a misunderstanding, the witty banter is fun to watch. There’s something hilarious about the characters trying to one-up each other and falling in love in the process, tying into the whole point of rom-coms — to use comedy elements to create a romance plot. A famous example of this cliche is the show “10 Things I Hate About You.”
However, rom-coms can be a double-edged sword. While cliches such as these are cute, others are plain unhealthy and wrong.
For example, something that drives me away from watching certain romantic comedies is portraying stalking and harassment as acts of love. Examples of this cliche include movies like “Love, Actually” and “The Notebook.” In popular media, stalking is often normalized or even romanticized as long as both parties end up in a loving relationship by the end. This behavior encourages toxic relationships in the real world, especially for unknowing young viewers. It should not be used as a method of forcing an unwilling character on the other and making it seem like a sweet romantic pursuit.
Perhaps I hate too much here because I resent that even the badly written characters aren’t as single as me. Either way, my selection of good romantic comedies has narrowed since I was a middle schooler. No longer are there the rose-tinted glasses that can’t discern between crappy and quality.
Of course, these are only my current views on rom-com tropes. Since I’m going to be watching rom-coms until the day I die, my opinions of different tropes will change with time, but until then, I’ll continue wondering whether true love really exists.