How To Make Me A Hate A Character in 13 Minutes Or Less

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a pretty chill guy. I try to see the good in everything and I don’t really hate that many things, but every now and then I come across something that REALLY grinds me gears. This is one of those times.

So on Valentine’s Day, my sister put on a Netflix movie called “Kinda Pregnant” most likely for background noise as we were both doing our own things, and I didn’t really think anything about it at first, but then I happened to catch a glimpse of two scenes that really struck a nerve with me.

But before I go into why, I should summarize the plot so you know what’s going on. (I WOULD give out a spoiler warning, but you’re really not missing much with this one, so why bother?) Kinda Pregnant is about a Middle School Teacher named Lainy played by Amy Schumer, whose main goal in life is to become a mom, and believe it or not, she actually starts out decent in the first few minutes. She’s a bit over-the-top sure, but she’s nice to her kids, doesn’t talk down to them, gives them a really sweet pearl of wisdom, and she even listens to a boy when he says he’s uncomfortable. All good stuff, but it all goes downhill when we get to… the dinner scene.

So Lainy and her boyfriend are on this date and she thinks he’s gonna pop the question, but in actuality, he wanted to propose the idea of a threesome. He even had another partner in mind. Now did he do a good job of communicating this? Probably not. Are threesomes really hard to make work? From what I’ve seen, yes. And could they have talked about this in a more private location and not in the middle of a packed eatery? Absolutely. But I don’t think this dude had any ill intentions. I mean, he outright says that he thinks their relationship is strong and that they should open it up, which again, is a tricky situation to navigate, I’m aware, but this guy clearly still likes Lainy and wants to be with her. He even said it didn’t have to happen with the partner he picked meaning Lainy clearly is his main priority, so I can’t say he’s that much of a jerk here.

But do you wanna guess how Lainy takes this new idea? She flips out. Not only does she flip out, she spouts gibberish, covers her face in cake, tears off her clothes, and takes the food off of some other person’s plate. When I saw this, I thought she had a huge overreaction… And I still do. I’m pretty sure the crew wanted this scene to be like when Warner breaks up with Elle in Legally Blonde, but it is so not like that scene.

For one thing, like I just said, Warner broke up with Elle in LB just because he was worried about what his family would think. Lainy’s boyfriend just wanted to add another partner in the mix, because he felt comfortable with where they were at and wanted to open up to something new. Secondly, while Elle also cried rather loudly, she didn’t do half of the stuff Lainy did. Most notably, she kept all of her clothes on.

So yeah, this scene didn’t really endear me to the main character whatsoever, as she threw a tantrum because her boyfriend (Who was being way chiller about this whole situation than he could have been) wanted something different than what she wanted. But that wasn’t the scene that bugged me. No no no no, that was just a setup for one of the worst movie scenes I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s right up there with Gloria’s monologue in Barbie 2023, Woody leaving his family in Toy Story 4, and SpongeBob sniffing poop in the Sandy Cheeks Movie.

Okay, so we find out the next day that Lainy isn’t at her teacher’s desk, she’s sitting in one of the student desks, and when one of her students asks if they should hand out the quizzes… (sighs) The things I’m about to list off are some of the worst things you could do as a teacher, and trust me, I know what good teachers are like:

Anyway, Lainy tells her students that she assumes they’re familiar with "oral", and calls them little perverts,

• Actively tells them to boo one of the kids for telling her what he got from Romeo and Juliet,
• Yells at them and dumps all of her personal business and emotional baggage in front of them, (To the point where one of them says they’re scared.)
• Openly talks about a threesome in front of children,
• Tells them love is a lie,
• And then she has them give her all of the school-owned R&J books, puts them in the trash can, and BURNS them, causing an evacuation.

Now look, I get we all have off days. It’s a part of life. BUT, that is never an excuse to take out all of your frustration on innocent civilians who didn’t even do anything to you. ESPECIALLY children. If this was really affecting her so much, they should have just brought in a substitute! And it really sucks, because Lainy presented herself to be a competent teacher at the start, but now, because of one bad experience she’s willing to demean, yell at and traumatize kids, destroy school property, and disrupt the whole building with an unprecedented fire.

And remember how I said Lainy’s blow-up at her boyfriend isn’t the same as Elle getting dumped by Warner? This scene just proves that tenfold. Because I know that if Elle Woods was a teacher, she would never be anywhere near as reckless with kids as Lainy is in this scene, not even if she had just ended her relationship.

But believe it or not, I would’ve actually been okay with all of this. Seriously, I may not have liked it, but I would be OKAY with it, IF (Emphasis on the “if.”) Lainy suffered ANY consequences for her extremely reckless and abhorrent actions, but guess what? …She doesn’t. After she causes the fire and the students evacuate, she slips out, scampers away from the building, and it’s never mentioned again. No one calls her out for endangering kids, no one finds out she was the one who caused the fire, and she still gets to keep her job!!

And keep in mind, Lainy is the protagonist of this movie, this is a character that we are supposed to root for and support, but after watching that scene unfold, I could not bring myself to do that. I refuse to support or root for someone who puts their unhappiness above the well-being of innocent children.

Now some of you might be thinking, “But what about Mr. Garrison from South Park? Or the entire school faculty of Jerome Horwitz Elementary from Captain Underpants? They’re terrible teachers. They’re mean to and endanger kids pretty frequently. Why are you okay with them and not Lainy?” Oh, I’ll tell you why. It’s because they’re not the good guys, and the show and books (respectively) acknowledge that. We’re not supposed to support Mr. Krupp and all of the teachers of George and Harold’s school constantly bullying and torturing their students. We’re not supposed to root for Mr. Garrison when he’s taking his dating frustrations out on the kids and being so mean and unfair to them. These guys are supposed to be the villains of their stories, people who abuse their positions of power to control people of a lower status than them. Not to mention, they’re usually either called out for their despicable behavior or receive karmic retribution for their awful misdeeds.

But going back to this movie, Lainy is such a bad employee that she makes Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show look like the best employees on the planet. And that’s not a dig at M&R, because I think they’re greater than most people give them credit for, sure they do slack off a lot, and sure they always find some way to cause a supernatural disaster, but not only are they better with kids than Lainy is, they have the ability to do something that Lainy never did: Make up for their mistakes. When Mordecai and Rigby cause a problem they will do whatever it takes to make things right. It makes sense that Benson rarely actually fires them at any point, despite constantly threatening to, because they’ve proven time and time again that they’re masters at fixing their mistakes.

Lainy, on the other hand, didn’t make a mistake, she made a stupid, reckless, inconsiderate choice to be the worst teacher ever and one of the worst movie protagonists ever, and just when her movie was 13 minutes in. After watching that scene, I could no longer watch the rest of that movie, and you know what? You shouldn’t either. This movie really isn’t that great and the main character is horrible. Not worth your time in the slightest.

So yeah, sorry if I came off as a bit aggressive here, but this movie just really got under my skin and I had to get it off my chest. But if you enjoyed my little mini-rant, please feel free to let me know. And don’t worry, reviews on more positive content should be coming very soon.