This fall, broadcast television will turn its attention to the battle of the straight white man to assert his masculinity in an increasingly alien world. And you won’t need to wait until the first presidential debate to see it.
The male protagonists of several new sitcoms are not as belligerent as the male protagonist of the election. (A possible exception: the one who wields a broadsword.) But they are besieged. At home and in the office, they find themselves struggling to prove that they matter in a world they no longer exclusively run.
For a while now, the energy in cable and streaming-TV comedy has been about diversity, inclusion and change: the female president of “Veep,” the transgender matriarch in “Transparent,” the melting pot of “Master of None.” Comedy built around women has been especially vibrant, including “Broad City,” “Lady Dynamite” and HBO’s coming “Insecure,” from Issa Rae of the “Awkward Black Girl” online series.
But on new fall sitcoms like CBS’s “Man With a Plan,” “The Great Indoors” and “Kevin Can Wait,” the male leads are adjusting to new roles or reduced circumstances. Fox’s “Son of Zorn” renders the idea of the throwback man as an actual cartoon.
“Man With a Plan” has the most overt gender-role focus: Matt LeBlanc plays Adam, a contractor who agrees to become primary caregiver to the children when his wife goes back to work. He quickly regrets it. He’s stressed and out of his depth. At his daughter’s school drop-off, he’s the only father — except for one stay-at-home dad, a nerdy, neutered cautionary tale who seems to have left his Y chromosome in the minivan. “It’s so great to connect on a masculine level again,” he says, pitiably, when Adam offhandedly mentions beer. (All these details, at least, are in the original version of the pilot, which is being reshot before air, with the same premise.)
Sitcoms, of course, have been exploring men’s social roles as long as they’ve had roles for men. A few seasons ago, a spate of network sitcoms were premised on what I then called “manxiety” — the idea that men were losing their place in a de-masculinized world. In the most drastic example, ABC’s “Work It,” two unemployed friends dressed up in drag after finding no one willing to hire men.
This season’s shows often focus not so much on the gender gap as on the yawning chasm between the protagonists’ sense of self-worth and a new reality.
In “The Great Indoors,” that conflict is a battle of generations. Jack (Joel McHale), a legendary outdoors journalist, is recalled to his magazine’s headquarters when it kills its print edition and goes digital.
Jack is used to finding stories in the wild. His millennial co-workers — he calls them “the digital day care division” — would rather stay inside and write listicles. He used to track bears; they bring emotional support animals to work. In case the pandering these-coddled-kids-today point isn’t clear enough, one of his officemates proudly displays a soccer participation trophy.
“Son of Zorn” takes that kind of contrast — the primal manly man in a world of digital abstractions and safe spaces — and turns it into an absurdist cartoon. Or half of one: Jason Sudeikis voices the animated character Zorn, a He-Man-esque warrior who shows up in live-action Orange County, Calif., to reconnect with his ex-wife and teenage son.
Zorn discovers to his horror that his “little bone crusher” son is now a mild-mannered vegetarian who enjoys kale juice. (“You know what I drink?” Zorn tells him. “The blood of my fallen enemies from the skulls of their children!”) To become a father to him, Zorn must learn to live in a world where you can’t solve your problems by chopping them in half. It’s a wild premise, but at heart, it, too, is about the troubles of a unreconstructed man in an overcivilized time.
On “Kevin Can Wait,” the title character (Kevin James) has a more familiar challenge of adjustment: He’s a newly retired cop. But his dreams of idle fun are upset when he learns that his daughter is planning to drop out of college to support her fiancé, an effete app designer who carries himself like a Belle and Sebastian song come to life.
Once again, the conflict is Man vs. Nerd, analog vs. digital. But as irritated as Kevin acts, the decision he reaches — to find another job so his daughter can afford to stay in school — revives a part of him that was already wilting in retirement. He’s a provider once more.
“Kevin Can Wait” and the other sitcoms are resolutely apolitical. But they have come along just as the campaign is stirring up operatic male angst over being left behind by history, as captured by the viral roadside sign that warned of Hillary Clinton’s “vagenda of manocide.”
At least, these sitcoms suggest a more upbeat response to this type of anxiety: a reassurance that these characters, and their equivalents in the audience, still have a place in the world.
This comes through loud and clear at the end of the “Kevin Can Wait” pilot, in which Kevin gets to enjoy one of the treats he was looking forward to in retirement: a zany combined paintball war and go-kart fight with his old work buddies. He rolls across the finish line, paint-spattered but in the lead, a big kid and a new man.
He may be navigating a perplexing, comical course, but in the end, the show says, he’s still No. 1. “Yeah, baby!” he roars. “I win!”
That clickbait headline is such a cyse.
Music labels 95% White owned!!! WHAT fukkING DIVERSITY THEY TALKING ABOUT??? 
