Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Rich Sommer is adorable. He’s affable. He’s charming. He radiates nice guy energy–and I mean he seems like a legit nice guy, not a slimy Nice Guy™. When Rich Sommer appears in a TV show, always sporting an “aw shucks” grin, he looks exactly like your best friend from high school that’s still got your back or the cousin that you pray will be at any family function to save you from awkward conversations. And then, invariably, Rich Sommer’s character reveals himself to be, well, an asshole. Mad Men, Love, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, and now GLOW–Rich has become the go-to guy for shows looking for a guy to hate.
I have a skewed perspective on Sommer’s career, though, because I immediately found him to be adorable/affable/charming/nice when he first popped up in the 2008 Office episode “Weight Loss.” Sommer played Alex, one of Pam’s classmates at art school. Alex made the mistake of getting in-between Pam and Jim, an unforgivable offense in the eyes of many TV viewers. While Alex wasn’t as deplorable as Rich’s other characters (his worst offense was telling Pam to leave Scranton and pursue an art career), he was still an iceberg that the Pam/Jim ship had to clear. I, of course, kinda took Alex’s side–again, because Rich is adorable, affable, charming, etc.
Okay so, full disclozh as if it’s not obvious by now: my immediate crush on Sommer, formed almost a decade ago, has blinded me to a lot of his characters’ less-than-great attributes. I’ve always been able to see the guy-next-door good in Sommer’s characters, and it’s taken me a lot longer to admit their faults. This was hella apparent with Rich Sommer’s Mad Men character Harry Crane, a bow-tied, nerdy TV ad man that evolved into a neckerchief-wearing, morally bankrupt misogynist over the course of seven seasons. I maintained that Harry Crane was a decent dude in conversations with my friends until at least halfway through Mad Men’s run. I even played Harry Crane in a Mad Men improv show! Rich Sommer is so likable! How could Harry Crane not be likable?!
Harry Crane was not likable. Harry Crane was a character despised by his peers for being reprehensible in a show full of morally reprehensible borderline sociopaths. He didn’t start out that way, though; when Harry cheated on his wife in Season One, he was overcome with self-loathing, remorse, and guilt. He was characterized as being different from Don Draper and Pete Campbell, more moral. I saw him as a sweet, dim-witted ’60s man, buying into all the harmful machismo without a second thought even though it was at odds with his conscience. And then Harry made a play to establish the TV department at Sterling Cooper, and then to be the head of that TV department. Dumb ol’ Crane was a surprise visionary; while everyone else at Sterling Cooper dismissed TV as a fad not worth their time, Harry jumped in and built the department that, a few seasons later, would keep the agency afloat. That’s why Harry stuck around through all the permutations of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce etc. Now in a position of power, Harry was corrupted. Or maybe he was never a good guy; maybe all those tears he shed over the Wheel were for show. While Mad Men focused on the rise of Peggy Olson and the fall of Don Draper, Harry Crane went through his own prestige drama-style character arc in scenes scattered throughout seven seasons. But ultimately, Harry Crane was a jerk.
Possibly because of Mad Men’s popularity, Sommer’s now TV’s–specifically Netflix’s, for some reason–resident douchebag. He was cast as one of Josh Charles’ snooty underlings at Camp Tigerclaw in Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer. He played another romance roadblock in Netflix’s Love, where he played Mickey’s ex Dustin; while Alex didn’t explicitly get in-between Jim and Pam on The Office, Dustin went after Mickey hard.
And then there’s Netflix’s GLOW, the latest in Sommer’s string of bad-dudes-with-good-smiles characters. Sommer plays Debbie’s (Betty Gilpin) husband Mark, a guy we first meet as he’s crawling through Debbie’s best friend’s (Alison Brie) window in pursuit of some hot extramarital action. On the Alex to Harry morality scale, Mark is closer to a Dustin. Mark actually goes to therapy and tries to be a better husband, but he’s also super dismissive of Debbie’s new wrestling career. So, eh, he’s not great.
It makes sense that Sommer keeps getting cast in these roles. All the attributes that make Sommer seem like a down-to-Earth dude are what also make him the ideal guy to play a skeezy business man, a jerky ex-boyfriend, a preppy crony, or an inattentive husband. IRL villains don’t always look like Alexander Skarsgård, all chiseled features and intense stares. IRL villains can look like your best friend from high school that’s now super into racist Facebook memes and the cousin that you pray won’t be at a family function because he always makes a pass at your wife. But I think it’s time TV viewers (and I guess specifically Netflix subscribers) saw Sommer in a different light–you know, light not cast from a hotel lamp during an illicit hookup.
Sommer’s definitely playing interesting characters, ones that are probably more fun to disappear into than nice guy leads. Alex, Harry, Dustin, and Mark are all rich roles with a bit of nuance, to be sure, but they’re all still adversaries for the show’s leads. I want to see a show use Sommer in a new way. He can play the funny best friend. He can play the sarcastic co-worker. He could play the romantic lead! I appreciate the way casting him as slimeballs defies the notion that cute and adorable guys can’t also be dangerous, but there’s gotta be a TV role for Rich that–for a change–gives him a character that aligns with his affable, charming, and legit nice guy status. He’s proven he can make audiences love to hate him (and that definitely takes a certain skill set). Now it’s time for a role that will make audiences love to love him.
