Stream it or skip it: ‘Alpha Males’ on Netflix, where four men do battle with the strong women in their lives

It’s always fun to show men they’re sexist pigs, isn’t it? However, many shows get the dirty guy idea wrong, showing boyish kids who won’t lift a finger in the house or true chauvinists whose opinions about women are stuck in the 1950s. A New Spanish Comedy attempts to show four men who aren’t complete hogs but certainly struggle to keep up with the women in their lives.

ALPHA MALES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening shot: Four men speak at a seminar that at first appears to be from a 12-step program, and they all say « I’m sexist. » Well, two of them do. One of them says: “Apparently I am sexist”. The fourth leaves.

The essential: The four friends – Luis (Fele Martínez), Raúl (Raúl Tejón), Santi (Gorka Otxoa) and Pedro (Fernando Gil) – are at a seminar on « deconstructing sexist pigs », and they are all there reluctantly.

Six months earlier, Pedro started his job as head of programming for a cable network when his boss told him he was being replaced. the new programmer is a woman, in the CEO’s hope that the network will appeal to a younger, less male demographic. He tells his girlfriend Daniella (María Hervás) that he quit. In order to help pay for their huge new home, Daniella decides to become a social media influencer.

Santi enters his apartment to find that his teenage daughter Álex (Paula Gallego) has decided to move in with him, leaving his ex Bianca (Cayetana Cabezas) furious. She then proceeds to set up her single dad on Tinder.

Raúl breaks up with his married sex girlfriend Carmen (María Castro) in order to ask his girlfriend Luz (Kira Miró) to marry him; he is about to surprise her with the ring in a fondant, when she proposes that they have an open relationship. On the other end of the spectrum, Luis’ wife, Esther (Raquel Guerrero), is completely unhappy with his lack of libido and when Luis tries to bring toys into the bedroom, things don’t go well.

All of the men’s issues with the women in their lives come to a head during dinner at Pedro’s house, which is also where Álex told Santi’s Tinder to meet him. Let’s just say she was greeted with a lot of shouting and a man not ready to go out on a date.

What shows will this remind you of? Alpha Males (Original title: Alfa machos) gives off a vibe similar to older menalthough the middle-aged men in this series are a bit more piggy.

Our opinion : When we say the men of Alpha Males are dirty, we do so with the caveat that their dirtyness is more a function of being left behind by changing gender dynamics and not because they are jerks. That’s what series creators Alberto Caballero and Laura Caballero are trying to communicate here. The four friends have their degree of male blind spots and struggle to accept that the women in their lives are the strong, assertive people they are.

None of the four male characters are inherently funny, so the situations the Caballeros put them in must be both absurd and true, like when their son’s teacher shows them the vibrator he found and brought. in class. . Instead of Esther being upset, she basically blames the teacher for being young and single and not middle-aged, excited and desperate to have sparks with her husband. This kind of nonsense works because we’ve already established how frustrated Esther is and how bewildered Luis is.

What we also appreciate is that these friends – with the exception of Santi, who is probably the most beta of the title’s supposed alpha males – get something resembling reward. We saw what happened with Luis. Pedro thinks he may be lying to Daniella about his job, but when she finds out the truth, she digs deeper into her plans to become a high-paying influencer. And the open relationship bomb that Luz drops on Raúl is one of the best examples of how these guys have to adapt to what they see as something new.

The crux of the series will be whether this is really going to be something new, or if it’s just life going at a steady pace, with the four men struggling to adjust. That’s why we’ve made a small exception to how the show’s press notes refer to female characters as « empowered »; from what we can see, they’ve had the upper hand in their relationships the entire time, and now is the time for the men on the show to come to terms with it and act on it. If that’s the case here, that should make for a more interesting series.

Sex and skin: Carmen is naked after having sex with Raúl, but it’s subtle.

Farewell shot: After the dinner disaster, the four men sit by Pedro’s pool. Luis jumps off with his clothes on, thinking the other three will follow. Not only does he realize that the pool isn’t heated, but he’s also annoyed when his friends shake their heads and walk inside.

Sleeping Star: Raquel Guerrero has a bit of fun physical comedy as Esther, when she has to put her kids back to bed with the vibrator still inserted into her rear end.

The most pilot line: When Pedro tells Daniela that he quit his job and how creative it will make him, she says, « I became a football player’s wife! » Perhaps it refers to the ups and downs of income or the fact that some players hope to stay in a team for a long time before finally retiring. Not sure.

Our call: SPREAD IT. Alpha Males is just funny enough to keep us watching, especially as the male cast find themselves increasingly powerless over how the women in their lives are asserting themselves.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but he’s not fooling himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.