Cruel Intentions (Apple)-Adapted from the 18th-century novel "Dangerous Liaisons" in which a ladykiller and his ex-lover make a wager over whether he can seduce a recent widower, this was first adapted into the 1988 Oscar Best Picture nominee "Dangerous Liaisons", and then adapated into the 1999 film "Cruel Intentions." The 1999 film was updated to modern times and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe as morally depraved stepsiblings. It came out during a wave of popular teenage films such as "10 Things I Hate About You", "She's All That", and "American Pie" but presented a significantly edgier version of adolescent amorality.
Slight tangent: I'm opposed to the use of the term "incels." Sexual opportunities are distributed unequally, and I've never seen "incels" talked about with any level of empathy. It's as if the discussion around this demographic suggests a causality that losing the sexual lottery in life, also has the added label that you're infected with a particularly brand of misogyny. The reality is likely closer to jerks are jerks in whatever form they take (including those using the "incel" term as a blanket label).
That being said, the Sebastian/Lucien character seems like an incel fantasy: He gets way more sex than he deserves and gets away scot-free with being not just misogynistic but psychopathic during the act.
In one of the opening scenes of the film, Sebastian comes onto his therapist and then serves a delicious bit of revenge for overcharging him by seducing his daughter. I remember watching this as a teen and being turned off enough that I changed the channel (I came around to it later). The guy seemed disgusting and I lost rooting interest in him as well as the story.
In our introduction to Lucien (Zac Burgess) in the show, he's seen having a quickie with a sorority pledge in the bathroom (Brooke Lena Johnson, one of the most interesting parts of the story), and he's being condescending to her during the act. In the fourth episode, he sets his sights on sleeping with a noted sex guru. She's an obvious choice for a sex trophy for any ambitious college age guy, but the question remains as to why the hyperaware sex guru would even entertain the notion of being used by a college kid as a bed post notch. Immediately after the completion of the act, Lucien confesses non-chalantly that he wasn't familiar with her work; he just wanted to bag someone of her pedigree. But she still has his phone. Why not just throw it out the window? Why not just delete their sex tape? How does this guy not get punched in the face? He's leaving an extremely sloppy paper trail of spurned ex-lovers in a small community.
This can wear the viewer out. As I often refer to as my "House of Cards" rule, I can stomach a repulsive character in a film because it's only a couple hours and I can chalk it off as a poetic sense of tragedy if the bad guy wins. Watching a villain (or even an anti-hero) escape the throes of karma week after week can get exhausting.
Whereas Ryan Phillipe's Sebastian emanated a mysterious charm, the charm of his TV counterpart is an informed ability: It doesn't seem like there's anything that Lucien is doing to earn his status as untouchable, but somehow it exists.
Because this show is about privilege and the problematic continued existence of Greek life on college campuses, it does kind of work as a meditation on how those in Greek life can be untouchable (many deadly hazing incidents in the headlines have confirmed this tragic reality). If the series engineered more of a morally equivalent universe for its two key villains, there's a better chance that this shift in focus to those dastardly frats could have been a more poignant use of the source material.
Instead, it's a slightly edgier version of your coming-of-age teen melodrama with a couple more a-holes in the mix. Outside of the two main characters, some of the characters really have potential like the casually sinister money embezzleer Blaise (John Kim...how freaking old is he?), the uptight right hand woman Cece (Sara Silva gives her considerably more agency than Selma Blair did in 1999), and feminist rebel Beatrice (Brooke Lena Johnson) who seems to be refreshingly aware of her twin desires of jealousy and social belonging.
