Series / Man Seeking Woman

Love Is Strange.

Man Seeking Woman is an FXX comedy shown since 2015. The show is based on the book "Last Girlfriend on Earth" by Simon Rich, who also created and ran this show. The show stars follows the dating life of 20-something Josh Greenberg (Jay Baruchel), focusing on his dates, flings, and girlfriends. His best friend (Eric André) encourages him to pursue sex as opposed to serious relationships, while his older sister (Britt Lower) pushes Josh towards relationships.

Despite a seemingly mundane premise, the presentation goes deep into surrealism. Historical, religious and mythical figures appear as themselves, the characters end up doing battle against otherworldly enemies and often operates on Looney Tunes physics, and no one ever acknowledges these things as being unusual or out-of-place. This is never fully explained either an actual function of their world or an Imagine Spot with the dial racked to the extreme, but it serves as a reflection of the absurdity of modern life. Police negotiators are called in when Josh is thinking of drunk texting a girl he likes.

Following the end of its third season, the show was not renewed by FXX.

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Provides examples of:

• Allegedly Dateless: Josh regularly bemoans his inability to find anyone, but has a Girl of the Week almost every episode, with some like "Dram", "Sizzurp", "Gavel" and "Branzino" show him and the new girl as being quite serious. In turn that means he has a long list of dates and ex-girlfriends over a short period of time. Admittedly, he's very insecure about his relationships and has trouble maintaining them, while his friends, family and even Cupid consider him to be a big loser in the romance department.
• All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: More like all tentacled penis monsters come from Japan (in this case, Whitney's friend Tanaka) but the underlying principle is the same.
• Alone Among the Couples: Josh quite often. Though once done on purpose to introduce him to Maude.
• Always Someone Better: Graham, Maggie's boyfriend in Stain is this to Josh.
  Mike: Oh, Graham, that guy's great.
  Josh: What?
  Mike: Yeah, he's way better than you. [laughs].
  Josh: What the- Jesus, man!
• Bad Date: Most of Josh's so far.
• Beard of Sorrow: Josh grows one in the months following his breakup with Maggie.
• Blind Date:
  • Between Josh and Gorbachaka, a literal troll.
  • It's also revealed this is how Josh's mother and stepfather met. ^note They were there to meet other people and left together.
• Black Comedy
• Book Ends: The show had an interesting habit of doing this with each season.
  • The first scene of the first episode ends with Josh walking alone on a sidewalk, depressed after his break up with Maggie. The final scene of the Season 1 finale "Scepter" ends with Josh, Liz, and Mike all walking together happily in the streets after Josh has made peace with the end of his relationship with Maggie, as well as joy from killing an evil alien dictator.
  • Both the premier and finale of the second season, "Wings" and "Balloon", deal with Josh and Mike potentially losing their friendship over each other's romantic relationships, with the finale having Josh be honest with Mike about his insecurities towards him and his better dating history.
  • And going back to the first episode, the first scene of the show has Josh walking away from Maggie with his stuff and a Personal Raincloud forms over his head, with pigeons hitting him. The final scene has the newly married Josh and Lucy go for a walk together and kiss, which produces a ray of sunshine parting the clouds above them as the rest of the world is rained on and struck by pigeons.
• Bromantic Foil: Mike pushes this role into parody territory, with his cliched role of the sex-crazed best friend frequently getting mocked. Apparently this universe is infested with "bros" who latch onto meek guys to become their buddies, so much so that facilities exist entirely to exterminate large groups of them to keep their numbers manageable.
• Brutal Honesty: The majority of Josh's friends and family are incredibly blunt about Josh's romantic chances and how much of a wreck his whole personal and professional life are, but Liz is often the biggest offender. Crowning examples of this are her unintentional "The Reason You Suck" Speech when he sets Josh up on a blind date with a troll, her TV ad pleading women to date her brother and her extremely bleak (and hilarious) eulogy at Josh's fake funeral.
• Call-Back: In the Season 1 episode, "Teacup", Liz splits up with her boyfriend Leo. The scene ends with her getting her own Personal Raincloud, and getting hit by pigeons, despite it being a sunny day for everyone else. This scene is a Call-Back to the first scene in the Pilot, where Josh is being drenched by his Personal Raincloud shortly after Maggie breaks up with him. The Season 3 premiere had a similar moment where Lucy wakes up only to see it raining angrily and a pigeon hits her window.
  • The Season 3 premiere episode, "Futon", would have a similar Cold Open to the Season 2 episode, "Honey". In "Honey" Josh has a day that is filled with good luck moments, such as him making a basketball shot from a large distance and winning $1,000 for being the 10,000th person to use the office elevator, but when he invited Rosa to hang out he learns she has a boyfriend and so the entire day sucked. In "Futon" Lucy has an awful day, with moments such as her sweater catching on fire, slipping on a skateboard, spilling coffee on her laptop, and nearly getting mauled by a Puma, but had a great first date with Josh and so the day was pretty good.
  • The Season 3 episode, "Shrimp", features a brief reference to the Dragon Blade game from the Season 2 episode, "Card", this makes even more sense considering both episodes revolved around Josh feeling like a failure in his professional life.
• The Cameo: Loads, including Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, Bill Hader, Vanessa Bayer, Cecily Strong, Jorma Taccone, Sarah Silverman, and Tim Heidecker, among others.
• Cannot Talk to Women: Josh can't talk to people, period, but especially has trouble with talking to women.
• Cargo Ship: A non-fandom example, as Josh settles for dating a reliable (if old) car, at one point.
• Character Development:
  • It's subtle but over the first two seasons Josh learns to be more patient when it comes to his relationships, deal with his insecurities and not get in his own way.
  • Liz realizes she can be overly judgmental of her family for being less cultured and perceiving them as ignoring her accomplishments, which only fostered more resentment towards them and makes her come across as elitist. Once she learns to be more accepting of her family she finds they were more supportive than she realized.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: As Josh learns.
• Cosmic Plaything: Josh. The guy cannot catch a break. Even when he gets in trouble for his own actions, the fact he was put into such uncomfortable situations are amazingly unfortunate (Maggie showing up on his doorstep immediately after he gets serious with Kayla, for example).
• Cringe Comedy: The main character often faces awkward situations.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Josh's sister Liz would be the subject of an episode each season, "Teacup", "Tinsel", and "Dolphin" - with the first two episodes featuring an appropriate differences in the title sequence, including reversing the order of words in the title. Here Josh is in fact Demoted to Extra, with only a small impact on the stories.
  • Season 2 character, Rosa would also receive her own episode dedicated to her with "Eel". This episode also featured the same difference in title sequence and reversing of the order of words in the title. Relatedly, Mike featured more prominently because he was dating Rosa, while Josh is relegated to a short cameo.
  • And in Season 3, Lucy, Josh's girlfriend and eventual wife, would get her share of episodes primarily focusing on her.
• A Degree in Useless: Josh is a college graduate but, at least in one timeline, his degree was in Philosophy, which was less than useful in getting a job.
• Disappeared Dad: Josh and Liz's Mom remarried to a guy named Tom, but it wasn't really said what happened to their father. It wasn't until the third season that Liz goes to see their father Joel, who was also a lawyer. Not a lot of information was really given, but it's heavily implied he looks down on the rest of the family for not being as cultured as he is. Liz takes after him in some respects, but also had to remember he can be very flakey with his own kids too.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: All of the outlandish and fantastical elements are done for the purpose of representing more common, mundane events, but played up for comedy and to make a point.
• Dogged Nice Guy: With a Girl of the Week format Josh doesn't get to do this often because the girl just shows up and he either has one date to make things work or they are already together and something happens to break them up. But in the second half of season two he meets Rosa and manages to compress all Dogged Nice Guy elements into five episodes:
  • After being rejected after an ill-timed attempted kiss, Josh convinces the courts to enact a "kindness law" that meant if a guy is nice to a girl she is legally obliged to date them. After acquiring a homeless guy for a boyfriend Josh quickly sees the problem and gets the law repealed.
  • Rosa ends up liking Mike and Josh claims to be cool with it, including dancers for a musical number, but he can't help but resent the situation. Rosa quickly learns that Mike is flaky and unreliable, and after they break up she gets lonely and seems to turn to Josh to hang out.
  • It seemed that Josh may have had a slim chance with Rosa, as dictated by a Conspiracy Theorist tracking down small behavioral patterns in their interactions, but Mike showing back up destroyed what little they had going on. Her last scene has her confessing she wanted to be attracted to Josh but just wasn't, and they she was pissed off at him and Mike fighting over her.
• Drunken Montage: Josh and his bar hookup get increasingly wasted as they sloppily make out and travel to a handful of different venues, including a rave where they both snort something.
• Electric Torture: Josh's mom hooks electrified clamps to his nipples and crotch in order to press him for more information about he and Maude's relationship. He eventually escapes by throwing his sister Liz under the bus (by revealing her apparently recent secret engagement) to divert his mother's attention.
• Faking the Dead: Josh fakes dead in order to break it off with Maude (it's used as a metaphor for not responding to texts).
• Fan Disservice: After telling Mike and Liz how he gets intimate with the 1998 Saturn he's dating, we see Josh and the car in a bedroom preparing for sex. Thankfully, the camera pans away from the bed... only to settle on the mirror, where we get a full view of Josh's butt as he penetrates the gas tank.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Josh and Mike take a trip down into the nine circles for a friend's destination wedding in Stain.
• First Love: Maggie was this for Josh.
• For Want Of A Nail: The first season finale Josh starts using Time Travel pills to change aspects of his life to his benefit, specifically to prevent the fight that made him and Maggie break up. It works, but he starts using it for less pressing needs and finds that he and Maggie are just not right for each other even though they were happy enough to get married (oh, and the world was enslaved by an alien warlord). This leads him to get a divorce so he could set her up with her pre-time travel fiancé, as she was simply happier with him than with Josh.
• Fratbro: Mike is the non-college-and-still-this-despite-being-in-his-late-20s type of party guy.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Josh has his own rather spacious downtown apartment despite only having a low-wage temp job. It is said to be fairly trashy and is at ground level, and a little more plausible than Mike, who doesn't appear to work at all and has his own place.
• Friend Versus Lover: The primary theme "Wings." Mike feels like he's not getting enough of Josh's time because he's with his new hot girlfriend.
• Funny Background Event: During Liz’s PSA about dating Josh, he can be seen drinking straight from the tap of a sink piled with dishes like an animal.
• Girl of the Week: Josh and Maggie break up in the first episode and she returns in multiple episodes to make Josh uncomfortable, but otherwise he has a new potential love interest in near every episode of the first season. The second season continues this pattern until Rosa is introduced partway through, which forms a more long term story arc about Josh as a Dogged Nice Guy towards her. This changes in season 3, when Josh starts dating and eventual marry Lucy, who stays with him for the rest of the series.
• Good Stepmother: Stepfather in this case, both Liz and Josh appear tolerant of their stepdad Tom, but he proves to be a decent guy even if a little dorky and weird (even by the standards of the show). Their actual father Joel is still around and Liz visits him in the third season, only to be reminded that he is very elitist and non-committed to his kids. Over time both Liz and Josh come to have more respect for Tom, as he adores their mother and genuinely wants what is best for his stepkids.
• Grand Finale: Josh and his season 3 girlfriend, Lucy, finally get married and from the looks of things, are very excited for what their future has to offer.
• The Grim Reaper: In "Scythe", Josh has a brush with Death's Personification in a bar restroom. Turns out it's only there for his hair, as he's starting to go bald.
• Halfway Plot Switch: Many episodes consist of multiple unrelated (or tangentially related) stories.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Josh was perennially just a temp office worker until being offered a promotion to office manager. His mom is upset, thinking he is throwing away his dreams in art or video game development, and so Josh tries to make that dream work. He quickly learns there is Always Someone Better and the expectations his mom had for him was making him more miserable than his low wage job ever did. In the end he took the office manager position even if it wasn't his childhood dream, only to find the pay increase doing much more for his confidence and self-esteem.
• A Hell of a Time: The destination wedding in Stain is this for Josh in a literal and figurative sense - for one, it's got murderous demons attacking the guests every 5 minutes and the brimstone environment, but also his ex Maggie was invited to the wedding and Josh spends the entire event moping and pining over her.
• Hidden Depths: Despite his shallow, frat bro personality Mike was able to translate the exorcist's Italian and spoke whatever language N'Kluktu was speaking. And while he's an avowed single ladies man, he can be surprisingly gooey at weddings.
• Hollywood Exorcism: In Traib, Josh and Mike hire an exorcist to expel the demons possessing Maggie's old stuff. Includes everything from holy water, floating objects and a plush heart trying to eat Josh's face.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode is just one word, typically an object, animal or food that appears in the story. This often makes it a little difficult to remember what the episode was about since it is often a throwaway moment.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Though he has realized that he finally has moved on and he and Maggie aren't right for each other, Josh still sets her up with an Alternate Universe version of Graham (the man whom she was engaged to in the original timeline).
• Imagine Spot: The surreal aspect of the show makes it difficult to tell if the insanity going on is a simple overactive imagination or a practical part of the setting. The complexity of these moments imply the latter, with fully fleshed out personalities of side characters. In one episode, a group of military officials advise Josh on what to say when he texts a girl to ask for a date.
• Informed Attractiveness: Whitney. While the actress is clearly very attractive, it's dialogue that makes it clear that she's a world-class beauty.
• It's All About Me: Josh has this tendency. He's confronted with it in "Stained," when he leaves the wedding, feeling like he's completely ruined it for everyone. To his surprise, by the time he comes back, everyone's forgotten his transgressions and just carried on with the party.
• Jewish Mother: Josh’s mom. She frequently pokes into Josh's love life and attempts to set him up with women, whether he wants it or not.
• Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone: Liz and her friends do this to Josh and Maude at the dinner party. Though calling them "lovebirds" at that point is overstating things.
• Lighter and Softer: The 3rd, and final, season was significantly more optimistic and upbeat. While it was not quite a Sadist Show it was sometimes quite mean to its characters, which is downplayed here.
  • Josh got into a long-term relationship with Lucy that lasts the entire season. They have their occasional flare-ups but nothing that comes close to a break-up.
  • Josh works more to get over his insecurities that got him into trouble in previous seasons. The absurdist humor is still prevalent but often downplayed in favor of more sentimental moments.
  • On an aesthetic level the show also became lighter, through its cinematography emphasizing more sunlight and brighter lighting in episodes, and deemphasizing the shadowy dimmer lighting often seen in previous seasons. Josh's apartment in particular is cleaned up when Lucy moves in, going from really grimy and run down to having walls painted cream colored and newer furniture.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Josh went to a bar with Mike to pick up girls, but was not doing well with anyone until a random girl pushes him to drink heavily and implies using some other drugs. When they get back to his place and start disrobing Josh finds he isn't ready to perform, being THIS SHOW his penis literally fell off his body at the bar. He has to go back to the bar in the morning... and so did Mike.
• Love God: Cupid makes an appearance in Sizzurp, played by Jorma Taccone.
• Love Hurts: Oh, yes. One Cold Open in particular shows Josh having a wonderful day: the sun is shining, his breakfast is unusually perfect, he impresses some kids with a half court basketball shot and randomly wins $1,000 for riding the company elevator. He then asks Rosa if she wanted to get lunch that day, and she responds that she was having lunch with her boyfriend. At home Mike asks him how his day went and Josh, holding all the free prizes he won that day, miserably says it sucked.
• Loser Protagonist: Josh is the definition of this trope. He works an unsatisfying temp job, is left rejected and heartbroken on multiple occasions and his family and friends regard him, his professional and personal life as a complete mess.
• Lower-Deck Episode: "Teacup" stars Josh's sister Liz, with Josh taking on Liz's role as a supporting character for the sibling.
• Magic Realism: Stuff like trolls, devils, and a 126 year-old Hitler appear and nobody bats an eye.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear if the scenarios we witness are filtered through Josh's overactive imagination or actually happening and the series is set in an insane fantasy world. While most viewers are quick to assume it's the former, the fact that every character in the series interacts with the fantastical and absurd parts of the universe makes the latter seem more likely.
• May–December Romance: Maggie and the 126 year-old Hitler.
• Mind-Control Eyes: Evidently the real key to picking up women; an ability bestowed by a magical wizard upon every male the day he hits puberty. Except Josh.
• Mind Screw: Every episode runs on this.
• Mistaken for Gay: All of Josh's cringe-worthy fumbling during his date with Laura finally prompts her to straight up ask him if he's gay.
• Moment Killer: Usually Mike. He's so self-centered about his time with Josh he does not care about ruining Josh's odd with a lady.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The show typically uses supernatural events or absurdly presented activities that are actually rather normal, even boring.
  • Josh worries over the exact phrasing to use when asking out a girl he met on a train, after bringing in Liz they end up gathering a group of military commanders in a War Room to debate every syllable and punctuation mark.
  • When Mike is trying to get Josh out to a bar they have a music video-esque montage of drinking before they head out. Josh has second thoughts and suggests they make Mexican food, which results in a similar montage. Then purely stalling for time Josh says they need to complete a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, done in an epic montage.
  • Josh is overwhelmed by walking up to women and try talking to them at a bar. When he asks Mike how he does it, he matter-of-factly says he just talks to them, does "swirl eyes" and everything is good. He learned it from a wizard when he hit puberty, so Josh is out of luck.
• Mr. Imagination: Josh. Probably. Maybe.
• My Beloved Smother: Josh’s mom.
• Negative Continuity: Any given episode will introduce radical weirdness to their world, but beyond broad character relationships are ignored going forward.
• Once a Season: Liz gets her own focus episode each season with Josh barely featuring in the story. In the second and third seasons Josh's love interest for the season, Rosa and later Lucy, have their own spotlight episode where he is a more minor character.
• The One That Got Away: Josh is hung-up on Maggie after breaking up with her in the first episode. They cross paths several times in the first season until the finale, where using Time Travel Josh comes to understand they just weren't right for each other and after setting the timeline back on track, says he feels like he can move on from her.
• Personal Raincloud: Follows Josh home after his breakup with Maggie. Also happens to Liz when she and Leo break up.
• Pokémon Speak: Tanaka only says his name. Whitney can understand him, though, and Josh later catches on.
• Prematurely Bald: Josh views himself this way, after finding out he'll be totally bald within three years. He doesn't think this will be enough time to find the girl of his dreams.
• A Rare Sentence: Josh has to track down his missing penis and called the bars he visited that night. Over the phone the bartender found his penis in the bathroom and had his own misadventure trying to recover it. When Josh complains about how his life has been recently, the bartender empathetically says "I know how you feel. I just had to fight a pitbull for a shit-covered dick."
• Romantic False Lead: Parodied with a number of love interests blocking Josh from a girl he likes. One of them was an elderly Adolf Hitler dating his ex Maggie, and when he says he's "Better than Hitler" it draws gasps from the party. Another included none other than Jesus Christ dating Rosa.
• Running Gag:
  • Josh being charged an outlandish cost for some small object or service, then begrudgingly digging out his wallet with a sigh.
  • They've managed to work Infinite Jest into a number of episodes.
  • The girls Josh dates all tend to leave almond milk at his house.
  • Small moments like asking out a girl are treated as big news and (typically) Josh is accosted by reporters trying to get all the information on how he pulled it off.
• Separate Scene Storytelling: 90% of the show.
• Sex with the Ex: The theme of the second half of "Gavel." Josh is insisting to the courtroom (AKA his conscience) that nothing is going to happen when Maggie shows up on his doorstep. Then they wind up having sex. She regrets it the next morning, he only regrets that he broke up with his girlfriend after it happened.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Josh, regarding Maude.
• Shout-Out: The show was never shy from making pop culture references and adding them to the surreal Mind Screw of the show. Certain examples include The Sixth Sense, Batman1989, The Shawshank Redemption, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Where the Wild Things Are and even Indiana Jones
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Liz and her boyfriend, and all of their couple-friends.
• Slipping a Mickey: Josh's mom absolutely insists he try her iced tea (it’s got mint in it)!
• Sorkin Relationship Moment: Josh has one of these regarding Maggie and her new boyfriend, Adolph Hitler.
• Sherlock Scan: Parodied as Lucy dresses up as Sherlock with her own Watson as she explains her girlfriend instincts that Josh is about to propose. It's starts logical with a bag from a jewelry store, but gradually becomes so obvious it's barely a deduction (finding him practicing the proposal stance, actually see him hide the ring in the sock drawer).
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Lucy pretty well dominates the last season despite being a newly introduced cast member, the season even opens on how her day was going before her blind date with Josh. It is justified in order to prevent her from becoming a Satellite Love Interest in that limited time, while conversely both Liz and Mike are more Recurring Characters by this point.
• Staging an Intervention: The entire Olympian pantheon stages one for Cupid to confront him about his substance abuse problems and inability to do his job properly.
• Surreal Humor: Sometimes the show is pretty straightforward with Seinfeldian Conversations about everyday life, then suddenly the characters have to do battle with aliens, demons and interdimensional monsters.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In "Tinsel" Liz denies that she's having an affair with Santa Claus, at least until she accepts it.
• The Stoner: Josh and Mike appear to like weed a lot, Liz says that Josh's diet as a newly-single man consists solely of ramen noodles, weed, and frozen chimichangas. Sometimes Mike is shown to have gotten high offscreen or at least suggesting to Josh that they get high and go do or see something, usually animal-related. In "Scepter", Josh travels back in time to college and interrupts himself smoking with Mike to tell himself to study Economics rather than Philosophy.
• Time Travel Episode: Scepter. Josh travels back in time to fix his relationship with Maggie. Unsurprisingly, he turns the Earth into an apocalyptic nightmare conquered by an alien tyrant who rules it with a totalitarian iron fist and forces Mike to be its "official slut".
• Torture Cellar: Josh's childhood bedroom has been converted into one.
• The Unfavorite: Liz falls into this at times as despite being far more successful and accomplished than Josh their mother still sees him as the golden child. The third season episode "Dolphin" goes into more detail as she visits her and Josh's father Joel, who is an Upper-Class Twit that looks down on the rest of the family for their more blue collar ways. She realizes she has some similar traits and when she stops judging her family she recognizes they are more attentive towards her than she realizes.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: While most of the girls Josh dates are maybe a bit more attractive than him, this is a core premise behind Josh and Whitney. Whitney is a step up from most of Josh's girlfriends, and he proudly shows her off to any and all rivals. It turns out Josh gets uncomfortable that she is friends with Tanaka, a Japanese tentacled penis monster. Liz also implies he is not that into Whitney as a person, only desperate to keep her because he's concerned he won't find anyone nearly as pretty as her.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Josh has a massive crush on Rosa for a few episodes but after an ill-timed attempt to kiss her she rejects him. She and Mike turn out to like each other and start dating, and Josh moves on. After she and Mike break up, she is lonely and decides to reach out to Josh, who is still in the mode of assuming she isn't interested in him. This all turns out to be subverted, as she confesses she wanted to like Josh but just wasn't attracted to him.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Characters almost never react to the surreal parts of a story with a realistic response, in one scene Josh's heart literally explodes when learning that Maggie is engaged and while he is dying and still trying to give his food order to the waiter she is patiently nodding along with blood on her face.
• Wedding Episode: "Stained" is a wedding episode... set in hell. It's a send-up of having to go to a friend's destination wedding.
• Wedding Finale: Series finale episode "Blood" had Josh and his season three girlfriend, Lucy, get married and face off against a monster named Grangdor.
• Yandere: Maude appears to be this, but really isn't. Josh assumes she's psycho and possessive but his attempt to Faking the Dead makes him look sketchy.