[This story contains spoilers from the season two finale of Minx, “Woman of the Hour.”]
In Minx‘s season two finale, the Bottom Dollar gang reunites to hit back at Constance Papadopoulos’ takeover, which has not only reshaped the magazine (titled “Minx”) but slowly revealed itself as more hostile than (almost) anyone realized.
While much of the group catches on in the finale, Doug (Jake Johnson) was the first to see Constance’s (Elizabeth Perkins) moves for what they were, bringing the evidence to Tina (Idara Victor) in the season’s penultimate episode while she was on a cabin-in-the-woods retreat with Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) finding new women to join the Minx staff.
But the magazine’s international operations — promised to Doug by Joyce — were handed to Tina by Constance. Earlier in the season, Tina also turned down Doug’s marriage proposal after they both attended her family dinner, where Doug discovered she never told her family they were dating. As a result, Doug trying to tip Tina off became a full-blown confrontation that saw Tina reveal she’s never felt like an equal partner.
The moment threatens a partnership that star and EP Johnson describes as Doug’s surest relationship on the show.
“He’s always seen Joyce as ‘other.’ Joyce is the little brainiac that’s got big ideas. Doug likes Richie [Oscar Montoya], but Richie was just one of his workers who he said: Start taking photos. And Bambi [Jessica Lowe] has been like the kid who’s a pain in the ass. You always take care of her. She’s part of our group,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview conducted ahead of the SAG-AFTRA strike. “But Tina was half of Doug in Doug’s eyes.”
That might make Doug’s finale-ending decision to sleep with Constance — revealed at the end of the finale — even more confounding. But the Doug of season one has seen much of his power usurped, and for the first time in a long time, his ideas and decisions have been at the whims of other people.
After his latest idea for a magazine is killed and Joyce turns down his put h for a Chippendale-esque show, the most stable and reliable thing in Doug’s life is seemingly Tina. But through season two, she’s ascended the corporate ladder while he’s remained stagnant. Meanwhile, Tina has had the chance to imagine her life beyond Bottom Dollar — and beyond Doug.
When speaking to THR, Johnson described Doug’s finale decision as one not driven by jealousy, but instead hurt. “He doesn’t want her success,” he said. “I don’t see Doug that way fundamentally at all. He felt like everything was going great. They were winning.”
“When that scene happens in the cabin, when he asks her, and she says no, I felt very sad for them. Because he is happy for her,” he continued. “I think that the mistake Doug made with Tina was that he really believed they were one thing, and that they were always a team and there was never Doug without Tina. They came up selling these magazines out of the trunk of his car.”
And as Minx has found success, Johnson says Doug has envisioned it with Tina — which is why he chooses to propose when he does. “Why now? Is simply because they’ve got some money, they could build something, this dream that Doug thought they had,” he explained. “For Doug, it was always: we. We’re winning. So why are you all of a sudden saying for the first time, no, you’re winning? I think for Doug, that fundamentally bent his brain backwards.”
The move will likely not go over well with fans of the couple, but Johnson says they can’t write to that.
“If the show is real life, and the characters have to play everything honestly and the writers have to write those things, they’re not allowed to just say, ‘Oh well, the audience loved this, let’s go back,” Johnson said. “That scene in the cabin doesn’t just get made when Doug goes with a rose and says, ‘I’m so sorry, I was insensitive,’ and then we move on to another will-they, won’t-they. This is a 20-year relationship and that was a, ‘They fundamentally saw their relationship differently’ moment.”
While some fans may have picked sides in this conflict after multiple episodes of the duo drifting (Johnson notes that Victor has shared that female viewers often tell her: “Love the show. You’re way too good for Doug,” and showrunner Ellen Rapoport is pretty strongly team Tina), he doesn’t see either of them as the “bad guy.”
“This was just a shock to him,” he said. “There was a lot in this season that shocked me. She doesn’t tell her family about Doug. The fact that Doug didn’t even realize her family doesn’t know they’re together. I’m like, ‘Oh, hold on?’ Like, we go to her family, and they don’t even know about him.”
It’s been a touchy string of events for fans of the couple, including Johnson and it’s unclear if there’s a way out.
“The Doug-Tina story matters to me. It was in the pilot when I read the thing. I said to Ellen, ‘I feel like you’re building something here.’ She said, ‘We are,’ and I said, ‘Great, because there could be a nice thing built in there,” Johnson said. “Doug was served a lot of medicine this season, and in the end, he reacted to it.”
All of Minx season two is now streaming on Starz.
Source: Hollywood
