‘The Circle’ Is A Bro Love Story
By: John Devore
Tags: TV Shows, Masculinity, Television, Netflix, Reality TV

‘The Circle’ Is A Bro Love Story

Netflix’s ridiculous social media-inspired reality show was grounded by two nice guys

The breakout stars of the new Netflix reality series The Circle are a pair of bros in love: 26-year-old New York musclehead Joey Sasso and 23-year-old Subham “Shooby” Goel, a nerd from California. Their friendship is earnest and intense and the unlikely product of a social media-inspired competition show that is so silly I almost feel embarrassed admitting I watched the entire season.

And I did watch the entire season, my girlfriend at my side. She loved it too but isn’t afraid to admit it.

I’m not a huge fan of reality television. I know that people who share that opinion can come off as snobs so I just want you to know that I am 100% a snob. Especially when it comes to television, for some reason. The top five TV shows of all time are: The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, The Twilight Zone, The Golden Girls, and Columbo.

I don’t watch reality television and when I do it’s to make fun of reality television. There are exceptions of course: I was unemployed and depressed when the first season of The Real Housewives of New York premiered and I watched all of that. For those months Countess Luann was my spiritual copilot.

Okay, so that’s one reality TV show that I have positive feelings about. One. Wait, I was also a fan of the first three seasons of MTV’s The Real World. And, I suppose, RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality competition with real heart and artistry. Oh, have you seen Below Deck? It’s pretty funny, for a show about sex on a boat.

Anyway, normally, I am turned-off by basic af reality TV. The ocean’s of tea spilled. The pointless backstabbing. I hate over-the-top drama unless we’re talking sword-and-sorcery fantasies or space operas.

And The Circle, which Netflix calls a ‘social media competition,’ looks, at first, like a basic af reality TV series, but with a few novel tweaks. It’s got a cast of young, needy, camera-ready personalities playing-up stereotypes: this one is gay, look, a hot white girl, that a-spicy meatball’s Italian! There’s a snarky host (the always funny Michelle Buteau.) From a distance — if you squint — the whole thing looks just like business-as-usual where narcissistic garbage people tear each other to shreds for money.

The concept of The Circle is simple: a bunch of people are trapped in well-furnished prison cells and forced to interact with each other via a fake social media site called The Circle. The show is mostly just the contestants sitting on couches in front of a giant screen, talking to The Circle, like it’s actual voice recognition software and not some intern stuffed in a closet.

The entire show feels like a cross between ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984’

The contestants send each other messages, both privately and publicly. I never thought I’d be riveted by watching a young person shout ‘winky face emoticon, and send!’ to a television screen. But I accept this, I guess. Some are ‘catfishing’ their opponents: for instance, Seaburn, a 25-year-old man, uses his girlfriend’s photos and poses as a woman.

At the end of each episode, they have to rank each other from most popular to least. When unpopular players are sent home and “blocked,” new players are introduced. There are challenges and sometimes the reward is being released from your small stylish apartment for a little while. The entire show feels like a cross between Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and George Orwell’s 1984.

But I was prepared for tears and betrayals and hot people staring into a camera and announcing “I’m not here to make friends.” What I got, instead, was a cast of genuinely likable randos. There were a few creeps (hi, Adam) but for the most part, these weren’t the Richard III’s I was expecting. They were having fun playing a game with rules that seemed made up on the spot by the producers.

The cash prize is $100,000, which isn’t an insignificant amount of moolah. But sometimes the show felt more like a lottery than a game of skill or strategy. Maybe that lowered the stakes?

But then there’s Joey And Subham, besties from the very beginning. First off, both transcended their stereotypes pretty quickly. Joey starts out as a fist-pumping, weight-lifting jock but then reveals himself to be a dude who loves his mom and is open to talking about his feelings. Subham is a nerd — he’s a virtual reality designer — who hates social media and once ran for Governor of California (no, really.)

The stereotypes of the tough-talking Italian-American and the cerebral, overachieving Indian-American are quickly abandoned, especially once these two start to bond over the course of the show.

The Circle would probably have been a fun, if shallow, reality show without Joey and Subham, and their sincere friendship. But because of it, The Circle turned out to be a show about how connections formed over group chats and private messages between profile pics can become real relationships. It’s an interesting commentary. I think it is accepted that social media is a hellscape of trolls and harassment and deceit. But The Circle, at least this season, suggests a counterintuitive truth: social media is a place where humans show their true selves to one another.

Social media is Janus-faced. It unites and breaks, at the same time. Social media tells us what we want to hear and what we don’t want to hear. It alienates friends from one another and brings strangers together.

The authentic affection between Joey and Subham is unexpected and charming and more men should tell their best friends “bro you’re my best friend” more. After watching The Circle, I texted a friend and told him I had a great time at Korean BBQ the week prior. I wanted him to know he was my bro. If we were in a reality competition I’d want him to know I had his back.

Joey and Shooby’s love isn’t romantic or sexual. If it was, I’d love The Circle for completely different reasons. No, their friendship is the true definition of the word platonic: an intimate, caring, close relationship with another human. I know some would call it a ‘bromance,’ but I hate that term because it mocks male friendships — it’s used by both men and women to diminish, and discourage, emotional connections between dudes.

The only other reality competition show with as much heart as The Circle that I know of is RuPaul’s Drag Race, but the tone of that show is set by Ru, who is a singular talent, a cosmic force of good in the universe. Again, while there were other very nice contestants on The Circle, I don’t think this season would have been as warm and tender if Joey and Subham hadn’t been on it.

Here’s a brief exchange between the two near the end of the season over private message. Before, Joey had been talking out loud about how he had ‘blocked’ one player over another who Subham had feelings for. Was this loyalty? Political calculation? Joey doesn’t seem to know. They’re not just transactional allies.

Then Subham messages him:

“You are my best friend and you always made me feel like the luckiest person in the world.”

Joey reads those words and says, again to himself:

“This freaking kid knows just how to cut right through me. I can’t not look at it and feel things. My God.”

These dudes love each other. It’s okay to love other dudes, dudes.