Lucky for me, you can't see a blush over the radio.
When I mentioned that Christopher Bolton, creator, writer, executive producer, and star of Showcase's Rent-a-Goalie would be a guest on the TV, eh? Blogtalkradio show, the reaction from women familiar with the series was hilariously universal. So when guest interviewer Denis McGrath and Bolton started discussing how the fart-joke-filled, testosterone-laden show resonated with females, I felt the need to add my voice on behalf of the double X chromosomes. Turns out, though, it's surprisingly awkward to tell someone "they think you're hot." I'm afraid I conveyed it slightly less coherently than that.
That's not the entire reason, of course, and I threw in something about his character's vulnerability and efforts to do right. As McGrath clarified: "Women love the reformed bad boy."
Rent-a-Goalie, which just finished production on a third season set to air in the fall, is an ensemble comedy centred around Cake, a recovered-from-every-imaginable-addiction hockey nut who runs his replacement goalie service out of Cafe Primo in Toronto's Little Italy. Cake lives by The Code, his personal philosophy on life that keeps him out of trouble. Almost.
Speaking of a moment in season one when Francesca, the coffee shop owner's wary daughter, recognizes a sweetness in Cake, Bolton explained how the show is able to slip heartfelt moments into the often crude comedy. "It would be saccharine in any other show, but for some reason in this one because it's surrounded with big beefy guy jokes and poo jokes, we get away with it."
In the early stages of creating the show, he warned the network not to focus too narrowly on the beer-swilling male demographic. "Do not discount the women because I think this is a guy — and a bunch of guys — that even though they're real boys' boys, I think this is a guy women can relate to, or want to relate to," he asserted.
Cake's best friend is a woman, and his will-they-or-won't-they-(again) relationship with Fran is based on and complicated by respect, loyalty to her father, and his ever-present Code. "In a guys' guy show, Cake would be chasing Francesca without consideration of anything, because she's drop dead gorgeous."
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