Our Lord and Savior, Aubrey Plaza
Post-'Happiest Season' discourse, we're talking about 'The To Do List' and why she should break the fourth wall in a rom-com.
This week, we’re covering all things Aubrey Plaza. It was bound to happen, pre-Happiest Season discourse and pre-Black Bear, because she stars in the fantastic The To Do List. Her effortless wit and catalog of rom-com characters have charmed us, to say the least.
With a new rom-com (Hope, on Netflix) on the way and thousands of Twitter-heads behind her, we decided to tackle all things Aubrey Plaza — specifically The To Do List though, because it’s just so good.
Aubrey Plaza, Sex Goddess
By Annabelle
Ever since my tween years I have been a huge fan of Aubrey Plaza. I loved and related to her angsty teen character in Parks and Recreation, and even got a serotonin release from her small role in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (which, by the way, is also a rom-com, but let’s save that for another time). Finally, she’s experiencing her long-overdue renaissance, with Happiest Season and Black Bear, which we love. But her finest work to date is none of the above. Plaza’s happiest and finest hour comes with the 2013 seminal classic, The To Do List.
When Fletcher told me to watch The To Do List as very important rom-com homework, I was excited of course, but I was in no way prepared for what I was about to embark on. Not only does the film include a multitude of star-studded side characters (Donald Glover, Bill Hader, Alia Shawkat, to name a few), but is one of the funniest films I have seen in a long time. Emphasis on the “com” here, The To Do List is a revolutionary film not because of it’s specifically original story, which centers around Plaza’s character, Brandy, attempting to check off every sexual encounter possible before she embarks off to college, but because for once, ownership of the sexual narrative is given to women.
Written and directed by Maggie Carey, Brandy’s feminine ownership of her sexual prowess and freedom, a plotline which is usually given to bildungsroman teenage boys, skyrockets it to the top of my rom-com recommendation list. As the film progresses, we see Brandy’s character grow and develop not just as she checks of her list, but as she learns what is truly important to her, and the double standards that exist around sex for men and women.
Set in the early 90s, the film opens with Brandy Klark and the rest of her teenage friends graduating from high school. From the first few stills, we learn of Brandy’s past, and her relationship with her family. Valedictorian of her high school class, she has always been a “goody-two shoes,” and always erred on the side of puritanism under the influence of her conservative father, who happens to be a court judge (a running gag in the film). Brandy tells her parents everything, though possesses a turbulent relationship with her older sister Amber, who is much more sexually promiscuous than Brandy herself.
After their graduation, Brandy’s friends convince her to come with them to her first (and what she assumes will be her last) high school party. There, everything changes when she experiences her first attraction of lust to a college boy, Rusty Waters, and makes out with him by accident when he thinks she is another girl. After that night, Brandy is unable to stop thinking about Rusty, and becomes, well, extremely horny. She is convinced that she is destined to lose her virginity to Rusty, but worries that she will seem too prudish and inexperienced to him. Her solution? Create a list, a to-do list, that is, of every base, hook up, and sexual scenario she deems necessary to round out her sexual history. It’s honestly quite beautiful, too.
The movie progresses, and Brandy, ever-horny and even more driven to accomplish this than anything else in her academic career, begins to use men as “practice” leading up to the big one: losing her virginity to Rusty. Obviously, she runs into some bumps in the road, sabotaging her friendship with her best guy friend Cameron, who has been puppy in love with her for the entirety of high school. After inviting him over to blow him in her room one night, he finds her to-do list, and storms off, angry about being used as just another pawn in her game. However, this doesn’t end up not working out in her favor, because word gets around, and she eventually is able to complete her to-do list. Losing a few friends along the way, but Brandy knows what it is she truly wants. Eventually, she is able to make up with her friends in the end, and after an all-too-short sexual rendezvous with Rusty (and her parents), the movie ends with her and Cameron in the same dorm in college, realizing that sex is, well, just sex.
When I watched this movie for the first time, I couldn’t help but compare it to another raunchy teen comedy I had seen just months before, Sex Drive. This film centers around a very similar premise, a high school senior attempting to lose their virginity before college, though the protagonist is a teenage boy. In Sex Drive, the main character Ian (played by Josh Zuckerman) embarks upon a cross-country road trip to go have sex with a woman he met in an online chatroom. However, there is no conflict for him surrounding his reputation. The most conflict he comes into is from his best friend Felicia, and her feelings towards this road trip are more out of jealousy than out of the societal expectations set around virginity. Brandy, on the other hand, has to deal with being called a hoe, a whore, basically every name in the book, is accused of breaking the girl code, is seen as “easy,” “slutty,” and in some cases, even “asking for it.” Though everything works out for her in the end, The To Do List shows just how much of a battle being sexually active is for teenage girls vs. teenage boys.
That being said, however, the ending to this movie is what makes it truly progressive, and why I recommend it so highly. I wish I had watched this when I was a teenager, because especially much more so for young girls, sex, and losing your virginity is viewed as a life-changing event. There is so much propaganda out there that paints sex as a sacred act, and if you want it to be, that’s fine! Some people want to save their flower for someone special, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There is also nothing wrong with women enjoying sex for pleasure, or wanting to have sex just as much as men do. Virginity is a construct, and will only change your life as much as you want it to. For once though, it is nice to not see a woman condemned for taking pleasure in sex. Hopefully, this is something that we can continue to see in teenage rom-coms for years to come.
Let Aubrey Plaza Break the Fourth Wall!
by Fletcher
The Aubrey Plaza renaissance began with the arrival of Happiest Season, which lured hordes of viewers into the actress’s cynical charm. Fine. Happiest Season was a fine rom-com, laden with lovely jests and witty banter galore. And fantastic representation, might I add! (Yes, Abby maybe could’ve ended up with Riley; no, Harper is not a toxic girlfriend. That’s all I have to say.)
But — and not to sound like your asshole friend who says, “I told you so!” but also, to sound like your asshole friend who says, “I told you so!” — I have predicted the Plaza rom-com renaissance since her days in The To Do List. There are a multitude of reasons: her surprisingly endearing cynicism, her wit, her no-bullshit attitude. Anyone who can pretend to be in love with Crisp Rat? That’s acting.
So, we know the Plaza rom-com renaissance has begun. My pitch is simple: cast Aubrey Plaza in a rom-com where she breaks the fourth wall. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off style. Fleabag style. Etcetera.
I got the idea a bit ago while uttering the Ferris Bueller quote in my head —“Aubrey Plaza, you’re my hero.” — as Annabelle and I contemplated an Aubrey Plaza issue of this newsletter. Then I got to thinking: I wanted Aubrey Plaza to play Ferris Bueller in a remake of the original John Hughes movie. I came to my senses, realized Plaza’s in her mid-30s and Ferris is in high school, and also that I hate most remakes. Still, the lingering thought of Plaza playing a Ferris-esque role sat with me like some sort of epiphany.
So: the “Aubrey Plaza Breaks the Fourth Wall” passion rom-com idea was conceived, and I’m determined to prove why this would work. She kills in every other rom-com — from The To Do List to Safety Not Guaranteed. I just want a rom-com like one of these, indie and grunge-y and fun, where we get gutted by her glare into our eyes as she experiences the farcical heartbreak of the rom-com realm.
She’s already played a fourth-wall-breaking character before, but as a voice actress in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever (RIP Grumpy Cat). Plaza has hosted awards shows — she knows how to look into the eyes of an audience and make them laugh. Along with that, her rom-com experience leads me to believe she’ll be able to handle the role with grace. It’s not easy, but as Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Zoë Kravitz have shown us, the result is profoundly rewarding.
No, this is nothing super new, and no, the final product doesn’t need to be as polished as Fleabag, High Fidelity, or Ferris. Perhaps my “Aubrey Plaza Breaks the Fourth Wall” rom-com could be a B movie. Perhaps it could be directed by Ryan Murphy, as I have pitched before — actually, scratch that, in light of The Prom. I don’t have a plot. But I hope it’s weird, and certainly heart-breaking.
Aubrey Plaza is the protagonist. It’s time she nabs one of those absurd, fourth-wall-breaking, life-changing protagonist roles.