What's With All the Creepy Guys in Sweet Magnolias?

TV shows employ a variety of tools to elicit the full range of emotions from people, both positive and negative ones. Character behaviour is one such instrument. It can make you relate to a given character, fall in love with them, or loathe them from the bottom of your heart. Sweet Magnolias features some exemplary loathsome characters.

Premiering in 2020, this Netflix show follows Maddie, Dana Sue, and Helen – three best friends who have maintained their friendship through many years – as they decide to open a spa together. Each is at a different stage of her life and represents a different type of woman, making Sweet Magnolias a truly female-centred show. It does feature some male characters. However, it would appear that every single man in Sweet Magnolias is a creep and a weirdo.

Seeing how season 3 was released several weeks ago, fans have had enough time to savour it. Unfortunately, some male characters' level of creepiness and unpleasantness is so off the chart that fans find it hard to enjoy the show. Take Kyle, for example. He's going through puberty and high school and comes across as socially inept. Drowning in emotions, he finds it hard to control his feelings and seems to exist in a perpetual cycle of emotional outbursts. He's highly unstable and is easily thrown off balance: just think about the car scene.

And yet, Kyle's not even the most disturbing male character on the show. The third season of Sweet Magnolias puts Isaac front and centre, whose portrayal is anything but flattering. After learning he's Peggy and Bill's biological son, the young man lashes out at the latter, blaming him for all the world's evil. Furthermore, Isaac is weirdly obsessed with Noreen and her and Bill's daughter. He's overprotective of them in a rather counterproductive way.

Essentially, these two characters represent rather over-the-top caricatures that are so cringe that scenes with them are next to impossible to watch. They don't act like real people, which contrasts sharply with Sweet Magnolias' other more realistic characters. That's probably the reason behind so many fans' visceral negative reactions to Kyle and Isaac.

We can only hope the writers improve these two characters in the 4th season, should it ever come out.