One key component of a romantic comedy that I’ve seen recognized but seldom analyzed until this week’s reading is the initial meeting between romantic interests; the meet cute.
In the Tomar Jeffers McDonald reading, McDonald described romantic comedies as “a film which has as its central narrative motor a quest for love, which portrays this quest in a light-hearted way and almost always to a successful conclusion” (Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre, McDonald, 9). In order to kick-start this “quest for love” the love interests need to meet and, more often then not, romantic comedies introduce these characters through a happenstance inciting incident. These act is usually comedic because of the embarrassment that one character – or both – experiences (e.g. running into someone and spilling coffee on them or dropping the important papers they were carrying).
One thing that McDonald doesn’t cover in their writing is that the meet cute and how it plays out will determine the subcategory of tropes to come in the film. If the love interests run into each other and it results in a butting of heads, then the romantic comedy will all under the category of enemies to lovers (expect them o be trapped in a motel and there’s only one bed, or for them to be trapped without cell service and they find common ground with their insecurities). However, if they meet and are bashful, then the narrative will probably include future tropes such as the first date (which is rudely interrupted) or attending a wedding and realizing how they really feel about one another. The meet cute can be used to predict the rest of a film’s narrative structure.
