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alt title(s): The Baxter The guy who fails to get the girl. Specifically, the nice guy who the girl dated before she found Mr. Right.
You know, there isn't really anything wrong with this guy. He's just mostly a little too dull. Somebody else can make the jokes he tells a little funnier. He could use a little help in the wardrobe department. He loses a lot of women to the taller, more handsome, more suave guys (and/or the bad-boy types).
The reason this character shows up so often in stories is likely to make a statement about the mysterious ways of love and about how the chemistry between two people is something that cannot be predicted. This message is a little undercut by the fact that certain people seem to be exactly the type to be cast as second-runner in a romance. Perhaps the chemistry is not so mysterious, after all.
Sometimes called "The Baxter" (but not Ted Baxter), from the Michael Showalter movie The Baxter which was about one of these guys and deconstructed the concept. Compare Hopeless Suitor and The Paolo. Contrast with Loser Guy, who never gets to date the girl in the first place.
Examples:
Anime
- Kentarou Nara from the anime/manga School Rumble. Oddly enough, he was originally going to be the main character of the show, but was nonetheless relegated as a side character with little screen time or role in the story.
- Canada from Axis Powers Hetalia. He's easily one of the nicest and most normal countries in the entire cast but is so absolutely overshadowed by his flashier older brother America that most people forget he even exists. YMMV whether or not this is also Truth In Television.
- Hojo, in Inu Yasha, is unbelievably and relentlessly nice to Kagome, but his name isn't in the title, so of course he's doomed to providing lots of unnecessary medicine while she runs off to save the world with Inuyasha. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to mind much. Although he never actually dated her and she wasn't ever actually interested in him, though her classmates did try and nudge her in his direction before she met Inu Yasha.
- Yuuno Scrya from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Nice guy, helpful, supportive; he was the one who gave Nanoha her calling but relationship-wise it just didn't go anywhere.
- An odd example is Kyougo Monou from X 1999. He did get to marry the girl he loved, Saya, and even had two children with her (Fuma and Kotori)... but he remained as the Romantic Runner Up and Unlucky Childhood Friend since he knew Saya loved him but not that way, as she was in love with her best friend Tohru and married Kyougo mostly to fulfill her destiny.
Film
- Ralph Bellamy in just about any movie where he's not playing Franklin D Roosevelt.
- Actor James Marsden has quite the Baxter career going, playing blandly nice guys who fail to get the girl one way or another in Superman Returns, X-Men, Enchanted, The Notebook...
- He does get the girl in Superman Returns. Strangely enough, that film casts Superman as the Baxter.
- ''Objection!'' He still loses, Lois pretty much states that they're done as a couple and she's going to pine for Superman, because she really loves him and he is the father to her son.
- And he gets a girl in Enchanted too... just not the one he was originally looking for...
- And in 27 Dresses, but he's more of a Deadpan Snarker there.
- And in X-Men, where Jean even marries him. Suck on that, Wolverine!
- Sam in Crossing Delancey is one of these, but ends up winning the girl anyway.
- This page describes Pirates Of The Caribbean James Norrington's entire existence - even though he is played by Jack Davenport, he cannot compete with Will or Jack. Even in Dead Man's Chest, when he was dirty, drunk, and hot as hell. Poor fellow.
- Walter in Sleepless In Seattle. This is a guy who was about to get married, and basically gets dumped for some guy who lives on the other side of the country and who his fiance has never even met.
- Dan from Over Her Dead Body.
- Every role Michael Cera has ever had.
- ... He gets the girl in Juno. It just looks like he won't.
- I think you just mean Super Bad. And even then, you could argue he got the girl. Or that he got the boy. Or that he got the boy and the girl. That movie is weird.
Literature
- Richard Mayhew, the Everyman in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere who refused The Call
- Sam from Charlaine Harris's The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries books. Sookie keeps him in the "Friend Zone" for reasons of dubious validity.
- This is part of Demandred's backstory in The Wheel Of Time, and is apparently why he ended up as a mass-murdering evil general.
- In particular, it's massive RPT MASSIVE resentment of his status as second fiddle to the Dragon. Almost as smart, powerful, handsome, etc, etc. IIRC, he wound up playing for the side of evil so he could finally be superior.
- Every human male in Meyer's Twilight. Unless you're a hot vampire or werewolf, Bella will file you as one of her "unwelcome fans" if you dare be nice to her in any way at all.
- Frank in the Outlander series has the unfortunate distinction of first losing his wife in a magic rock, and then, just as he's getting over her, geting her back only to find that she's still in love with the guy she married in the 18th century.
Live Action TV
- Zack Allan in Babylon Five
- Billy Keikeya on Battlestar Galactica.
- For that matter, Apollo as well. Sure, he steals Dualla from Billy but then it turns out he really wanted to be with Starbuck, who instead goes for handsome, kind-hearted jock Anders. He eventually tries to get over her but it doesn't work and he gets divorced. But Starbuck's dead by that point, or at least appears to be. And then, Dualla shoots herself. To top it all off, when Anders dies, Starbuck, who's Not Quite Dead, disappears again. Sucks to be Apollo.
- Galen "Chief" Tyrol also sort of counts. First, his girlfriend, who he's not supposed to be seeing anyway, turns out to be a cylon. Then, though she resists her programming at first, she ends up shooting Commander Adama, revealing her identity. Galen is suspected of being a cylon and badly treated as a result and because of this he forsakes Boomer and tells her he wants nothing to do with her - until she gets shot, at which point it's clear that They Really Do Love Eachother. He's hung up on her for a year afterwards, made all the worst when her Good Duplicate shows up and is pregnant with The Fettered's kid. He then, subsequently, gets married to The Scrappy, which ends badly when she finds out he actually is a cylon (which he himself didn't known) and gets shoved out an airlock by the girlfriend Tyrol doesn't remember he had. Then, he finds out their kid isn't his kid. Last, but far from least, Tyrol eventually sorta-kinda-maybe gets back together with Boomer when she's taken prisoner, only for it to turn out she's a double agent, who's going out with the show's Big Bad. Damn.
- Sam from True Blood (adapted from The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries books, which see). Dumped on for being "the nice guy" in the TV adaptation. Sookie keeps him in the "Friend Zone" for reasons of dubious validity, in the books.
- Dean Forester from Gilmore Girls
- Harvey Kinkle in the later seasons of Sabrina The Teenage Witch. After he himself dumped Sabrina after finding out she is a witch at the beginning of season 5, he kept returning to appear in the show throughout seasons 5 to 7 and kept dropping hints that he still was in love with Sabrina. But only in the very end he gets the girl back.
- Stuart Mc Rae was a very good version of this in Road To Avonlea. It made perfect sense for Felicity to want to marry him - and for her to dump him after it turned out that Gus was still alive.
- David, Phoebe's on-and-off boyfriend on Friends, showed up once again in Season 9 and proposed. Phoebe promptly rejected him for Mike Hannigan, whom she ultimately married. To add insult to injury, the writers went out of their way to point out that the inoffensive David was a penniless failure by this point.
- Xander Harris from 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' qualifies for this trope on multiple occasions. Although he is generally presented as a 'nice guy', virtually every woman he loves either rejects him outright or leaves him, generally for a supernatural being. Buffy rejects him for the more romantic Angel. Cordelia ultimately also winds up with Angel after breaking up with him. Willow, after pining after him for the first two seasons, ultimately chooses Oz over him. (This is a situation similar to David's, above, as the entire purpose of Xander and Willow's brief affair was to demonstrate that Willow was over him.) Even Anya sleeps with Spike after breaking up with Xander.
Theater
Web Comic
- In Punch An Pie, Heather's mother describes Heather's ex-boyfriend as squarely fitting into this trope (he hasn't been seen, though). Angela's ex-boyfriend from the prequel had a lot of these traits but doesn't quite fit the trope.
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