The show pitched the next big true-crime hit: what happens when men are left to fend for themselves.<\/b>
\nVia a series of \u201cnever-before-seen interviews\u201d with the men\u2019s partners\u2014played by Veronika Slowikowska, Ashley Padilla, and Sarah Sherman\u2014we soon learned that these spouses hadn\u2019t been abducted at all. Instead, two of the women were traveling. (\u201cI had told Doug about it maybe 45 times,\u201d Slowikowska\u2019s exasperated character said.) Sherman\u2019s character had the most absurd story of the bunch: She happened to just be in the bathroom for a while. With their wives away for a spell, the husbands swiftly unraveled at home. \u201cWhoever took her left a bunch of cryptic notes,\u201d a stupefied Doug said. The sketch then cut to an indoor security-cam shot of him reading Post-its stuck to the fridge. They instructed him how to heat up food and finish the laundry, prompting him to cry out to the presumed kidnapper putting him to work, \u201cIs this a game to you?\u201d
The men\u2019s utter dopiness was played for laughs, yet the true-crime framework shrewdly animated a deeper discussion about what\u2019s become known as the \u201cmental load\u201d: the unspoken work that women in heterosexual partnerships too often take on for their household. Studies conducted in recent years have shown that women in heterosexual couples predominantly take on the brunt of domestic tasks\u2014managing the family\u2019s calendar, unloading the dishwasher, feeding pets. This is not to say that men don\u2019t contribute to the household at all; rather, research suggests that some men aren\u2019t cognizant of their partners\u2019 frustration, as the women silently project-manage their home lives. Sometimes, as the sketch underscored, the men won\u2019t realize it until they are left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n