YMMV / Two By Two

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Vivian really an Alpha Bitch and Russell a Nice Guy? To look at the story from Vivian's perspective, she is a self-made woman and had a highly promising career ahead of her when she met and married Russell. Russell appeared to have an equally promising future. She has a daughter with Russell and gives up her job in order to become a full-time parent because she believes that having two working parents is not a good way to bring up a child. Russell, however, turns out not capable of living up to his promise as far as his career is concerned. Vivian is initially resigned to leading a less high-profile life than she thought and devotes herself to being a good mother. She tries to subtly help Russell's career along by flirting with his bosses (within boundaries) but that comes to a stop because of Russell's insecurity. It's only when Russell makes a unilateral decision to leave his job and jeopardise their sole income that Vivian has really had enough. She decides she has to start working again and does so with great success. She falls in love with her boss - who is able to provide her with the lifestyle she had always wanted to have - and ends her marriage with Russell, but continues to be a caring mother. Is it that bad?
  • Vivian could have easily been made much more sympathetic. Had her Alpha Bitch characteristics been limited to the fact that she's a) good at her work and b) contemptuous of Russell for screwing up his own, she would have ended up much less of a Hate Sink. The book might have been an honest and fairly balanced exploration of what happens when economic power shifts from one spouse to another. Yet she is also a selfish, vain, adulterous, wealth-obsessed Manipulative Bitch who treats her husband like dirt at all times, just so the reader is sure of how to feel about her. And as a cherry on the sundae, Russell is so much of a Nice Guy that he can barely bring himself to get angry at her, which helps the reader feel sorry for him. The fact that the entire story is told from Russell's first-person POV doesn't help much.
• Cliché Storm: Almost the entire cast of Two by Two is this: the nice guy (Russell), The Cutie (London), the Alpha Bitch (Vivian), the Cool Big Sis (Marge), the Bourgeois Bohemian (Emily), the Granny Classic (Mrs. Green), the Working-Class Hero (Mr. Green), the Rambunctious Italian (Joey "The Bulldog" Taglieri), and two corrupt corporate executives (Walter Spannerman and Jesse Peters).

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