Maligning Manic Pixie Dream Girls during refractory phase of excitement cycle: Ms. Grundy from Riverdale

Earlier posts have looked at the role that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl plays during two of the three phases of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle.

The type first appears during the restless warm-up phase in order to coax wary men out of their shells, nursing them back to social-emotional health after everyone had been isolating themselves during a refractory state in the vulnerable phase. When they were hyper-sensitive to stimuli, they cocooned. Now that it's time to come out, some need some coaxing. Enter the MPDG for a certain type of guy (sad sack, unlucky in love, and so on).

After that role is done, by the time the manic phase begins everyone is already out of their shells. So now, having nursed others to health, the former MPDG goes on a search for her own fulfillment. It's crucially not an endless self-absorbed journey -- it's a well earned vacation after having given so much of themselves over to others during the previous warm-up phase.

Other examples I missed in that post are Julia Roberts' characters in Runaway Bride (1999) and Eat Pray Love (2010). She had previously played a major MPDG role during a warm-up phase (Pretty Woman from 1990). But in the manic phases of the late '90s and early 2010s, her roles were more about finding love and fulfillment for herself.

At any rate, what happens to the type when the manic phase is over, and energy levels crash into a refractory state during the vulnerable phase? The last thing guys in that phase would want is a chipper extravert trying to coax them out of their shells. Their hyper-sensitive state leads them to push the type away, and even malign or demonize them, just to make sure she doesn't get close.

In the comments to the second post, I mentioned the example of Lost in Translation from the vulnerable phase of the early 2000s. There's a character who would've been a straightforward MPDG in the early '90s (she seems to be patterned on SanDeE* from L.A. Story, with the talk about cleansing the toxins out of your body). Only in the vulnerable phase, she's portrayed as an intrusive, talky, annoying airhead, who ScarJo's character tries to shut up with a curt "No" when asked a question by her.

Still, as memorable as that character was, her screen time was brief. I've always been on the lookout for MPDG types in vulnerable-phase culture, but generally they're just not included at all. No need to think about them -- just imagining their interactions with you could painfully overload your senses during a refractory state.

However, while watching Riverdale season 1 (2017), I found the perfect example of how the type is treated during a vulnerable phase -- Ms. Grundy. At first she seems to check all the familiar boxes of the MPDG: cute, charmingly quirky appearance (glasses, hair in a bun, and an oversized blouse or cardigan), free-spirited, extraverted enough to make the first move, motivating her love interest to do the best he can in his ambitions, and reassuring a down-on-his-luck guy that he's love-worthy.

But there's a twist -- she's the high school music teacher, and her male love interest is one of her students, Archie, the protagonist of the series. He's currently playing football, but wants to pursue songwriting instead, and she coaches him musically and encourages him emotionally, so that he can eventually become the greatest musician he can be. And he'd been unlucky in love before because he was just a plain-looking freshman. She begins an affair with him during the summer before sophomore year, when he's growing into a random hot guy.

So the usual nurturing role that the MPDG plays is maligned by treating it as a predatory role. She's not an earthly guardian angel -- she's a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. The two of them were at the location of the disappearance of another high school boy, which is the central mystery of the season. Ms. Grundy leans on Archie not to bring any information of his whereabouts that day to the sheriff, parents, or other adults, for fear that her affair will be discovered and cost her her job. So the type is shown as manipulative on top of predatory.

Even worse, it turns out that she's assumed a false identity and won't discuss her previous personal or work life. Deceitful as well!

The writers do give her a break on her way out: she only changed her name while fleeing an abusive husband, and she's allowed to leave town without being targeted by law enforcement as long as she doesn't come back. I'm not going to watch season 2, which the fans themselves say is much worse than season 1, but there she's murdered outright by the criminal threat that pervades the second season.

All in all, very negative treatment of the type. Not only should you not accept her interactions, you will be harmed and done-in by her supposedly good motives, so keep her out of the picture altogether.

In fact, the writers were destroying not one but three tropes of the free-wheeling late 2000s warm-up phase -- the MPDG, the hot woman high school teacher sleeping with a male student, and the cougar (this is distinct from the teacher role, since the teacher could be young, like 25, whereas Ms. Grundy is in her 30s).

As she's leaving the town, she's channeling two iconic characters from separate warm-up phases in the past, both on the theme of inappropriate age gaps -- the early '60s Kubrick version of Lolita (wearing red heart sunglasses), and perhaps without intending it, The Crush from the early '90s (the shallow focus, portrait lens, Pacific Northwest setting outdoors in daylight with a tree-lined quaint neighborhood in the background -- and a vintage car for good measure).

The only warm-up phase they did not malign was the late '70s -- maybe she could have watched Manhattan at the drive-in with Archie, and then when his dad or his friends are watching TV later on, that movie comes on and leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Or maybe the soundtrack could have ironically played "Hot Child in the City" while she was loading her final things and driving off.

And in the interest of profiling the actresses who play MPDG roles -- either a proper role during the warm-up phase, or their successor roles in the other two phases -- Sarah Habel, who plays Ms. Grundy, fits the mold perfectly. Most importantly, she was born during a manic phase, indeed the same one as the other actresses who were proper MPDGs during the late 2000s heyday of the role -- born in the early '80s. Like the others, she imprinted on a zeitgeist of invincibility, risk-taking, and carefree resilience (and re-imprinted on such a zeitgeist during her second birth of adolescence at age 15, that time in the late '90s manic phase). That disposition is necessary for someone whose role is to coax others out of their shell and encourage them to pursue their ambitions without being paralyzed by the risks involved.

Physically, she has an hourglass waist-to-hip ratio, signaling the feminine nature required for a nursing role. Not that height is a good predictor of the role, but she happens to be a literal pixie at 5'2. I can't tell if she's a butt woman rather than a boob woman, like the norm for the type, but she is portrayed as a corporeal rather than cerebral person in the TV show -- she's not primarily a songwriter or composer, but a performer who has honed a kinesthetic craft (she's a Juilliard-trained cellist).

As of last year the vulnerable phase has been over, so we should see some proper MPDG roles coming soon. Sarah Habel has already proven she can play the part -- only this time, her acting would serve a sincere purpose in the TV show or movie, rather than to malign the character type.