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So I've been thinking about Mykel from Big Bear ๐งธโฐ๏ธ
MAJOR BIG BEAR SPOLIER BELOW - If you haven't seen it, it's a wonderfully contemporary play by Patrick McDonald completely free on YouTube. Go watch it: https://youtu.be/p1fibTeJwQQ?si=nchThTol6gUwoZ9J !!
This started with me and a couple lines said around the middle of the play:
And a couple minutes later,
Allie: Okay, who pulled out all these games and didn't put them away?
Lou: Mykel... That man cannot finish a thing he starts. The games, the cans, everything.
Stu: I can work on these games pieces. These were all my games.
So obviously there's something up with that. I don't think Stu is the type to lie, he comes clean about everything by the end of the play and he has no reason to lie about this mess. So why is it that Lou jumps to blaming Mykel? I think it has something to do with their relationship and the state it's in during the show.
Lou is unsatisfied with his relationship with Mykel, hence why he cheats with Annabelle. Annabelle provides him with someone to 'help' in a sense because of her insecurity and neediness, and the fact she's freshly vulnerable coming from a long-term relationship with Gareth. He does feel guilty about this, as we see through the 'good person' talk, but not enough to bring it up with Mykel or leave him. This is probably because, as he states to Deena, he feels like leaving Mykel would mean leaving his friend group.
But what does this mean for Mykel as a character? His insecurity fuels most of the behavior people hate him from throughout the show. Making fun of Annabelle, selfishly refusing to clean and being ungrateful to Allie or probably the main gripes people have with him. while it is worth mentioning others character do all of these things and are simply quieter about it:
Everyone is in the Annabelle group chat, Allie and Greg make fun of her at the start, Michaela thinks Mykel's video is funny.
Annabelle doesn't help with the patio clean up, Greg and Deena avoid clean up at multiple points.
Everyone is callous to Allie, everyone has the group chats, everyone seems to gossip here.
It is worth noting that these are significant flaws, and it makes sense why people dislike his character. I'm simply interested in where they come from.
Regina George Gay ๐๐
The Regina George Gay is a type of gay man who takes on a cruel and usually quiet abusive personality to try and shield himself for homophobia. It's quite common in the kind of flamboyant queer men, as Mykel presents as. There's multiple hints throughout the show that Mykel takes on this persona to specifically shield himself from jabs at his femininity:
He gets personally offended when Lou calls him an 'ice queen', pointing out only the 'queen' part. Though the term queen has largely been reclaimed by the queer community, it had historically been used as an insult for feminine queer men, and there are people who are still affected by it.
He's excluded from the boyfriends chat with Dan, Lou and Greg. Greg calls this an 'old' boyfriends chat, and considering Dan was here for longer than Lou has been, this suggest the chat has been around for as long as Mykel has been in the group. Yet he's not in it. This could be because Dan/Greg didn't view him as masculine enough to include, which would certainly fuel his insecurity.*
He seems at least tangentially aware that Lou is cheating/has cheated on him with Annabelle. Though it's said through a lens of biphobia, he expresses that he doesn't feel like he can fully satisfy Lou, and when considering the fact that Lou has cheated on him with a rather confidently feminine woman, that could make him feel like his masculinity is not what his boyfriend enjoys and he should be more feminine to be loved.
*It's also worth noting he doesn't seems to have been in the 'Beenie Babes'/girls group chat either, isolating him from even the femininity people expect of him and leaving him alone in the group from a gendered perspective.
All of this does provide a lot of context for his insecurity. if he has taken on this mean girl persona to try and deflect from the insecurity he feels as a gay man through his femininity, especially in a group that doesn't respect his feelings on the manner, it could explain why he's so argumentative and cruel, almost to a heighted degree, throughout the play. Extra extra if you think that he knows about Lou/Annabelle.
Rocky Relationship ๐๐
It's obvious that both Lou and Mykel are not satisfied with their current relationship, but it's both for different reasons and exactly the same reason. At it's core, they're both unhappy because of Lou's moral absolutism and people pleasing nature, but it effects them both in different ways.
For Lou, it manifests in him not being happy with Mykel as a person and the way he acts. Even though Mykel is in therapy, he doesn't seem to be getting better in terms of how he treats the people around him, and for a rigidly moral person like Lou seems to be, this is hard to handle. This is why he turns to Annabelle, a much softer and mor vulnerable person who is more willing to yield to his ideology, even if it directly goes against the say morals he holds close.
For Mykel, it is in part because he feels pressured and pushed away by Lou's morals, feeling like he could never be enough for him because he could never live up to the prefect standards Lou sets. But it's also because he views Lou as weaker, socially and personally, unable to form an opinion and willing to go against his own morals to keep everyone happy (see: him creating the very group chat shitting on his boyfriend). Say what you will about Mykel's moral code, but whatever it is, he certainly sticks to it.
This is shown in many ways throughout the show, but whereas Lou has someone to talk this through with and stand by him (Annabelle), Mykel doesn't have anyone. Even his own best friend, Allie, doesn't seem to stand by him when the going gets shit. In fact, at this point with Lou and Annabelle, if he and Mykel split he would more likely stay in the friend group seeing as most people in the group prefer him over Mykel (Hell, Greg even includes him in the boyfriends chat despite him being in the group for half the time Mykel has).
Relationships and Communication ๐ฌ๐ฅ
We know because of Lou's little speech in his weird green jumper during the five thousand arguments that this friend group means a lot to Mykel:
Lou: You care about these people so much! You talk to me about them all the time!
It also makes it a little more tragic when we see how he sort of gets the Stu-treatment from everyone. They laugh behind his back when he says things wrong (Michigan star/Michelin star, accommodation-able/accomodating, etc.). They treat him like they do everyone in the group, complain about him behind his back and get upset when he doesn't change, but for him it seems to be amplified. He seems to be some kind of punching bag for the group, followed maybe the Helene, where they can pile all their problems onto him. The games, the plate that Greg brings out but then thy blame on Mykel for getting dirty, the cans despite the mess being made by everyone, etc.
Mykel gives a lot of weight to these relationships, and it's sort of implied that a part from Lou, they're his main friends. He's an influencer, meaning he won't meet many long-term friends from work, and we never hear him talk about anyone else in his life. He's the only man apart from Allie to say the trip was the only thing he wanted to do this weekend. Even though he has a fucked up way of showing it, he does care deeply for this group.
Side note: It seems even the awards spawned from a desire to life up his friends in one way or another. Allie says they came from hi saying 'God forbid we want to award ourselves', meaning he likely wanted to lift up the group when they were depressed 20-year-olds, because he cared for them.
He is also the only character who starts to change throughout the play, albeit not a lot and he cuts it short by the end. He begins to show signs of listening to his friends even though he's overwhelmed, and even when their asks start getting vaguely power trip-y, because it's been established he cares about them. It's only when the possibility to go back to how they were before does he give up on trying to change; I'm going to bet with a good group influence and consistent pressure (and maybe a new therapist) he could definitely improve as a person.
This is just my ramblings about who I think is the most interesting character in the show. i might add to this or do it with the other characters though because make so mistake I do love them all so much, almost as much as I hate them.
This is also by no means saying you must love and understand Mykel, that guy fucking sucks and I totally get why someone would despise him. I just love my evil gay son I'm sorry. Finally if you like Big Bear please talk to me about Big Bear. I love this show. Please guys.
