Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Netflix
If three seasons of Neftlix’s semi-autobiographical teen comedy Never Have I Ever have taught us anything, it’s that we are firmly in the era of post-ironic Crocs and, more pertinently, the hot jock renaissance.
For as long as the genre has existed, the hot jock archetype has been a staple in entertainment for and about young people, providing viewers a reliable supply of eye candy. He’s—it’s almost always a “he”—generally overlooked as a character that fans will root for and is never the protagonist’s best-choice, endgame love interest; that’s a spot typically reserved for the idiosyncratic, brooding types. (You know the ones.) The hot jock has no academic standing or working knowledge of pop culture, and he might turn out to be offensively boring or even villainous, once you get past the strong jawline and fantastic hair.
However, back in April 2020, our first nascent month into the pandemic, Netflix gifted us with Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet): beaded-bracelet fan, star swimmer, and owner of a lipstick-red Jeep. By the end of the pilot, he not only cemented himself as one-third of Never Have I Ever’s series-defining love triangle, but also as our surprising new fave.