| Sumario: | The article presents an essay to interrogate some aspects of masculine desire through an investigation of the relationship of male viewers to particular types of television programming. The last decade in television programming for the supposedly "masculine audience" is a good indication of patriarchy's "interest" in going against itself, of insisting that sexual or gender difference is the only difference that makes a difference and that "circumstantial differences" do not matter. It is also a decade that demonstrates the ways in which the social standards of masculinity are not only chosen but "natural." It is a short step from that statement to working out the relationship of masculinity to family within television program Thirtysomething. The author says that what interests him is not just the purchase on the melodramatic in that program, and in Wise Guy, but also the ways in which class and ethnic discourses and differences cross their narratives. Men in both programs function like post-feminist male action heroes.
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