Let Me Tell You Something About Jon Bernthal on 'His & Hers'
He's a Dad Show icon who isn't actually in a lot of Dad Shows
It’s rare, but on occasion my Instagram algorithm serves me shortform videos that I actually enjoy. A recent one was a sketch from the comedy troupe (I guess you can call them that?) 400 Beers. The clip consists of three guys standing on a street corner in Bushwick doing impressions of Jon Bernthal, the bull terrier-faced actor from The Walking Dead, The Punisher, The Bear, and my personal favorite, We Own This City.1 He is renowned for playing blue-collar tough guys with a sensitive streak.
There’s something Bernthal characters always do, and the 400 Beers boys picked up on it: he always says a variation of “Let me ask you something/Let me tell you something,” followed by some kind of blustery, macho pronouncement. The sketch takes this tendency to absurd places — “I got hit by a fire truck on my way here” — with varying degrees of accuracy to what Bernthal actually sounds like and says. As a Bernthal fan, I found it delightful. A highly specific, tongue-in-cheek tribute to a beloved but not super-famous actor? That’s Dad Shows. The 400 Beers guys are my kind of guys.
Obviously, Jon Bernthal is a future first-ballot Dad Shows Hall of Famer, a feat he has managed to achieve despite not appearing in many true Dad Shows or Movies (he has been in three Taylor Sheridan movies, though; if Sheridan wrote a show for him, it would automatically become my favorite Sheridanverse show). This is because his on-and-offscreen persona is so Dad Shows-coded. I’ve never watched/listened to his podcast, but as I understand it, he interviews tough guys like Navy SEALs and reformed outlaw bikers and also his actor friends like Shia LaBeouf about their feelings. I also know that he went to the same D.C. private school as the Obama daughters (not at the same time), so the blue-collar tough guy persona is just that — a persona. Which is fine. It’s a good persona. Everybody loves a very masculine man who’s in touch with his sensitive side.
His & Hers, the murder mystery limited series now on Netflix, is prime Bernthal. He plays Jack Harper, a detective who recently returned to his small North Georgia hometown after losing his job with Atlanta PD. He’s running a murder investigation where he knows the victims, because they’re his estranged wife Anna’s friends from growing up (Anna is played by Tessa Thompson, who I feel like is trying very hard to not overact in everything she’s in). Anna is a TV news reporter who Irish-exited her life for a year after her and Jack’s baby died. As the series starts, she returns to her job like nothing happened and goes up to the town, Dahlonega — where her mother still lives — to report on the case, which puts her in professional and personal conflict with Jack. There’s a lot of suspense between them. Did one of them commit the murders? Why did Anna leave, really? Will they work out their issues and get back together? Will Bernthal say “Can I ask you a question?” in his first scene? It’s not a spoiler to confirm the latter.
Everything about Jack — his profession, his location, his accent, his attitude — will put Walking Dead fans in mind of Shane Walsh. Bernthal’s breakout performance was playing a charismatic, morally ambiguous guy who slid back and forth on the hero-villain spectrum. He’s doing it again here, as a family man who uses the power of his sheriff’s department badge to try to cover up his personal connection to the case. His & Hers has no heroes and no likeable characters. If you need someone to root for, His & Hers is not the show for you.
His & Hers is more of a Mom Show than a Dad Show — it’s based on a novel that apparently was a BookTok favorite. As the show twists toward its shocking conclusion, the reason why it’s a Mom Show becomes very clear. It’s a pulpy, trashy story glossed up with confident direction from developer William Oldroyd and Anja Marquardt. The finale is written by Ozark creator Bill Dubuque, which makes sense. Like Ozark, His & Hers has the aesthetics of a prestige show but the soul of the kind of paperback that if you peeked over your mom’s shoulder while she was reading it you’d go “Jesus Christ, what is this?” It’s not good, but it’s not boring. Netflix has a ton of thriller miniseries like this, from Harlan Coben adaptations to Behind Her Eyes, and this one is pretty middle of the pack. If it had a less charismatic male lead than Bernthal, it wouldn’t work at all. He loves gettin’ bit by dogs, man.
He should have won an Emmy for his explosive performance as corrupt Baltimore cop Wayne Jenkins in that underseen HBO limited series, but he wasn’t even nominated. The Emmys’ decades-long disregard for David Simon is a bizarre travesty.
I find him so attractive. Love him as Mikey in The Bear.
He is not who I envisioned in this role (probably due to the fact that the main characters are British in the book), but I’m loving him in it. And he was fantastic in We Own This City.