Cary Dubek’s villainous arc onThe Other Twowas a surprising turn for the character, but also a brilliant one. TheHBO Max comedy seriesThe Other Twois a hilarious look behind the scenes of modern celebrity and media life as it focuses on the Dubek twins, Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Heléne Yorke), the two older adult siblings of Chase Dreams (Case Walker), the hottest new pop star on the planet. The series follows their hilarious misadventures as they try to get out from under the shadow of their famous baby brother.
The Other Twoserved as a smart and hysterical satire of show business in the 21st century, skewering everything from industry parties to method actors to procedural shows. However, at the core of the show was the respective journeys of Cary and Brooke as they sought their own fame and recognition. The final season ofThe Other Twofound Cary’s Hollywood dreams coming true, albeit at the cost of his going down a much darker path.
Cary Dubek’s Fame Turned Him Into A Villain
Cary Finds Success But Becomes A Worse Person As A Result
At the beginning ofThe Other Two, Cary is a struggling actor who is embarrassed to see himself being eclipsed by his younger brother who rose to fame seemingly overnight. However, it soon became clear that jealousy and insecurity were the driving power behind Cary’s career ambitions. As the series went on,his motivations changed from the relatable feeling of not wanting to be looked down upon as the unfamous sibling and became the more villainous desire to look down on others.
While there were certainly signs of Cary’s pettiness throughoutthe underrated sitcom, season 3 ofThe Other Twois when the show truly made Cary the villain of his story. Every decision in life became about how he was going to make himself a star and be “better” than everyone around him. In one episode, Cary goes to his high school reunion to laud his fame over his former classmates, literally bursting into a song about how happy it made him feel to be superior to them.
However, his villainy can best be seen in his relationship with his best and only true friend, Curtis (Brandon Scott Jones). Curtis is also an aspiring actor, and though he is not quite at Cary’s level, he starts to gain momentum in his career, including a new television series. As Cary continues to climb the fame ladder, he blows off Curits' attempts to hang out while secretly rooting for his friend to fail so that he can continue to be more successful than him.
Cary’s Villainous Turn Makes Him A More Complex Protagonist
Seeing Cary Spiral Shows The Double-Edged Sword Of Fame
While it is risky for a television show toturn a main character into a villain, it is an arc that serves Cary greatly onThe Other Two.There is an old storytelling belief that the best villains are the ones who don’t know they are the villains. Indeed, the best part of Cary turning into this self-centered and unlikable character is that he does not recognize the path he is going down.Even as he continuously embarrasses himself and finds his perceived happiness fading, he stumbles onto a new career highlight that distracts from how horrible he has become.
After Curtis calls out Cary for how selfish he has been, correctly seeing through his friendly exterior to identify his own self-centered motivations, Cary seems to take it as a personal blow. However, though he just lost his supporting and caring friend, the moment Cary learns that his show is critically acclaimed, he forgets all about that. Likewise, Cary is disheartened to find that his success at his reunion didn’t bring him happiness. Instead of realizing that it is true friends he is missing in life, he decides what he’s missing is an Academy Award.
The oblivious nature of Cary’s villainous spiral makes it possible for him to sink deeper and deeper without the audience losing touch with him. At the beginning of the show, it was easy to feel sorry for him for being ignored while also finding his need for fame entertainingly pathetic. By season 3, the pathetic fun of the character had all but taken over. He was not acting out of maliciousness, but rather he was desperately searching for happiness in all the wrong places. It made for a unique villainous arc that left room for redemption.
What Drew Tarver Has Said About Cary’s Villainous Turn
Tarver Likened Cary’s Arc To Another Television Antihero
Drew Tarver’s performance as Cary Dubek is one of the highlights ofThe Other Two, but he takes the character to a new place in season 3. Tarver is able to make Cary the cringeworthy character he often needs to be to get the biggest laughs, as well as play into the darker comedic moments. However, he is also excellent at playing into the drama in the final season. Tarver himself acknowledged the tough journey season 3 is for Cary, joking that he felt the character just needed to be killed off (viaGQ):
“Chris and Sarah were joking as we were filming this season: ‘Wait, does this man need to die? Does this character need to just drive off of a cliff?”
However, Tarver also spoke about the fun of the most difficult storyline with Cary in season 3 andthe challenge of making sure that the audience is still willing to stick with Cary(viaVariety):
“Going full villain in the third season has been a very fun thing to play, and try to pull it off and be like, Can I bring an audience along with this character, this far into Walter White-esque [territory]?”
Despite the differences in the tones of the show, Tarver isn’t far off in comparing Cary’s arc toWalter White becoming Heisenberg onBreaking Bad. Both were protagonists who started out with relatable and unselfish motivations only to be consumed with the power they got when they finally started to realize their dreams.
Cary’s Villain Arc Allowed For Insightful Commentary On LGBTQ+ Representation
Cary’s Disney Movie Role Highlights The Continued Lack Of LGBTQ+ Roles In Mainstream Movies
There are a lot of shows out there with LGBTQ+ characters, butThe Other Twohas always been very clever about commenting on how the community is represented in show business. From the beginning of the series, Cary struggled with the limitations of “gay roles” in Hollywood while also being boxed in based on his sexuality. However, even Cary’s villainous arc allowed for this commentary to continue with a hilarious storyline about the studios’ empty gestures of representation.
Cary is given another huge boost in his career when he is offered a role in a Disney animated movie in which he would voice the studio’s first openly gay character in a scene that the executives repeatedly refer to as “unapologetically gay.“While Cary goes on a big press tour to highlight this supposedly important moment, leading to support from gay rights groups and criticism from religious activists, the moment proves to be so small and insignificant that no one even recognizes it.
The moment mirrors real instances of Disney publicizing supposedly groundbreaking moments of LGBTQ+ representation in their movies, like thegay kiss inStar Wars: Rise of Skywalkeror thefirst gay character inBeauty and the Beastthat were largely meaningless.The Other Twoeffortlessly acknowledges this problematic trend while also making it part of Cary’s self-centered journey. He gets sucked into the excitement of being the face of this movement while using the LGBTQ+ community as a way to elevate his own profile in the business.
The Other Two Ends With Cary’s Redemption
The Series Finale Has Cary Finding What He Needs
With its surprise cancellation in season 3,The Other Twobecame one of thoseshows that ended too soon. However, where there was more planned for Cary’s arc, the series finale perfectly served Cary as it gave him a touching redemption after a season of villainy. The finale focuses on Cary’s relentless desire to win an Oscar, thinking that it is the thing missing in his life. After gaining momentum on an Oscar-bait movie, Cary spirals out of control when he thinks his agent is ignoring his calls for months.
Cary decides to ambush his agent, Mackenzie (Nadia Dajani), in the Hamptons and demands some answers. However, he comes to realize that it has not been months of her not returning his texts and calls, but only a day, showing Cary’s detachment from reality when he gets in his self-centered way. The moment becomes an eye-opening one as Mackenzie lambasts him for suggesting she does not work hard enough for him when that is all she does. Despite her anger, she invites Cary to stay over where he sees she is spending her off-hours taking care of her dying mother.
In a powerful moment for Cary, he breaks down in Mackenzie’s bathroom, finally confronted with his selfish he has been and how his obsessive focus on work has led to him failing to consider other people. Cary then seeks out Curtis to make amends with him and vows that he is stepping back from work as he sees what it is doing to him as a person. When he gets a call that his dream project is moving forward, Cary decides to simply stay in the Hamptons and reconnect with himself.
The final moment of Cary making new friends reveals that there is hope for him in the future. The more success he achieved, the more he became cut off from the world and the people around him. Being able to find his way back to the real world is a moment of victory for him. As Drew Tarver suggested, it was difficult for audiences to follow Cary through the final season ofThe Other Two, but he proved he was still capable of the self-realization fans wanted for him, which made for a satisfying ending.
The Other Two
Cast
The Other Two is a comedy series that follows two siblings living in the shadow of their 13-year-old brother’s meteoric rise to fame. Cary and Brooke, two siblings who had hoped to make it big in their lives, never quite make it to the top. But when their younger brother becomes famous online, the other two siblings try to make sense of the modern world while finding their place.
