The Ethics of Hitch: A Morally Murky Date Doctor?

How does Will Smith’s courting consultant hold up ethically in the era of the manosphere?

“Basic principles: no woman wakes up saying, ‘God, I hope I don’t get swept off my feet today!’”

In a previous piece, I briefly talked about how the advent of the online manosphere (definition here) had made me contemplate my relationship with masculinity and what it means to truly be a good man in a patriarchal capitalist society.

And then I spent the next 4,500 words talking about the bear-eared man from my favourite manga.

It was very on-brand for me and I think it might be one of my favourites out of everything I’ve written so far, mainly because using the (peak) fiction that I enjoy to analyze how I viewed masculinity was fun and kinda cathartic in a lot of ways. That being said, I also never really wanted to do it again. Just wasn’t an exercise I was particularly interested in repeating with One Piece or other projects I enjoy, purely because I didn’t think I’d have much new stuff to say.

And then I re-watched Will Smith’s classic 2005 romantic comedy, Hitch.

Let me tell you, that sh*t was fascinating to re-watch now. Really sparked some thoughts, got the brain flowing.

Quick rundown: Hitch follows Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, a “date doctor” who struggles to find love for himself despite being full of tips, tricks, and perceived nuggets of wisdom for picking up women. But what does it mean to have a PhD in L-O-V-E? (Was I considering putting an OPP joke here? Well… you know me.) Hitch’s job is essentially to help the men of New York light the spark that will help them land the women of their dreams. An average Joe would dial Hitch’s number, tell him about the woman they’re in love with, and his role would then be to help them navigate that specific courtship through a mixture of research, advice, and manufactured scenarios, right up until their first kiss where he would then consider his work done. Or as the man himself puts it:

“…the fact is that just like the rest of us, even a beautiful woman doesn’t know what she wants until she sees it, and that’s where I come in. My job is to open her eyes. Basic principles: no matter what, no matter when, no matter who… any man has a chance to sweep any woman off her feet. He just needs the right broom.”

I should’ve known to be honest, Hitch has always been a movie that sparks a lot of thought and internal discussion with me, not necessarily because of how masculinity is portrayed in it, but because of how it pertains to dating and the ways in which men seek love and/or sex. Part of its appeal to me was that I always found it fun to compare and contrast it with how I speak to women even though up to this point in my life, I haven’t dated around or courted much.

This, however, was the first time I’d re-watched Hitch as an adult who is aware of the online manosphere and how discourse around dating has highlighted some particularly toxic methods for interacting with women. Because of this, it was also the first time I reeeeally thought about the character, his career of choice, his behaviour, and the practices that he encourages in other men from an ethical standpoint as opposed to just enjoying the rom-com ride and considering the effectiveness of his game.

So, let’s get into it. Just how ethical do I personally find the romantic practices preached by our favourite date doctor? Is it even possible to be an ethical date doctor? Especially now?

The Problem with Pickup Artists

If you’re like me and you want to contemplate the ethics of this particular fictional character (how does it feel to be the coolest person in the room?), it helps to know what a pickup artist or PUA is, and to acknowledge that… yeah… Hitch is pretty much that.

For those of you who don’t know, pickup artists are (usually) men who have dedicated themselves to learning the secret arts of seduction and claim to be experts at attracting women, usually with the goal of sex for either themselves or those that they “coach” through techniques such as negging, peacocking, and isolation.

If you want to see a brief history of the practice you can check out Sirin Kale’s very uncomfortable piece where she shadows PUAs and their clients, or check out the Wikipedia page on the subject. The practice, which dates back to the late 60s, has kind of mixed with the growing incel community to aid in fuelling the self-help-to-misogynist-cultist pipeline that gave rise to figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.

I’ll get into my own personal issues with listening to PUAs later in the piece, but for me, it basically comes down to the danger of relying on a singular person to guide how you interact with the man or woman you want to court and looking to someone else as the authority on something as delicate, fluid, and sometimes chaotic as love and sex. Just seems like a “no one man should have all that power” kinda situation, you know? Feels like a very easy way to take advantage of lonely, vulnerable people who are desperate for affection, have too much money, and have run out of ways to passive-aggressively diss their exes on a track (not talking about anyone in particular here, just FYI). Many modern PUAs like Hitch are not trained, qualified, or regulated in the issue of love and dating specifically, they can’t be held accountable for giving toxic advice or exploiting their clients and that’s a huge red flag.

So how does this pertain to Hitch? Could it be that our hero is just another toxic PUA?

Weeeeeell… it’s complicated…

Love, Not Sex

The main way that I would say the movie tries to differentiate Hitch from your standard modern PUA is that, while a lot of PUAs seem to focus on streamlining the path between getting a woman to notice you and having sex with them, Hitch is very explicit that he deals in true love, not sex.

Hitch as a character juxtaposes his clients by bringing a calm, cool, and methodical approach to dating as they stumble around, blindly following his every word. His usual MO is to ascertain whether or not the man he chooses to help is after *love* love, and he tends to decline the provision of his services if he feels that his potential client is either after sex or doesn’t like or respect the woman they’re after.

We see this most plainly in the scene where Hitch’s services are sought out by Vance, a man who meets a woman (who happens to be the best friend of Hitch’s love interest, gossip columnist Sara Melas) while shopping for lingerie for another woman (he also tricks her into believing the crotchless panties are just pajamas for his mother??? I don’t believe in victim blaming but ma’am…) and becomes obsessed with having a one-night stand with her. Hitch is absolutely disgusted by Vance, later labeling him a pig, refusing to help him, and even getting a lil violent when Vance touches him.

But of course Hitch refuses to help him! Our hero is a *love* doctor, as he proudly proclaims, he deals in love not icky gross sexual sexy sex.

And to this assertion, I have to say…

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh…

The Opening Doesn’t Help

It’s all about that first kiss. That’s Hitch’s jurisdiction. The date doctor will help you to navigate the first three dates, and if you follow his advice, you’ll be able to make any woman in the world fall in love with you, leading up to that all-important first kiss. After that, as he says, you’re on your own.

Now, while this sounds like perfectly innocent, wholesome, even hooksian love. I would be remiss not to put a simple question to Mr Hitchens.

What exactly does he think is fairly likely to happen after that first kiss?

A central piece of what is supposed to make Hitch one of the “good guys” is that he claims to focus on love, not sex, but in the first 3 minutes of the film, we see him help a man at an art gallery date with a woman, the nerd nails the first kiss, and then, thanks to Hitch’s help, the movie cuts to the man in bed with the woman, all loved up and c****d out.

What makes this even worse is that Hitch helps the man make first contact with this woman by manipulating a situation in an unambiguously dishonest way.

In the very opening scene, Hitch takes a dog out of his bag, uses it to lure a woman’s dog away from her, takes her dog, and then gives it to this nerd who then lies in front of a stationary cab, tricking the woman into believing that he risked his life to save his dog. Now, it’s important to understand that Hitch is a comedy, this is a visual gag designed to be over-the-top and funny (like, what happens to the dog in the bag??), but if we are looking at this ethically, if we are trying to differentiate Hitch from the PUAs we know today, and if the key thing that makes him better than other PUAs is his focus on love and honesty, then this is not a great start for him.

Hitch later justifies his slightly murkier methods by claiming that he’s simply helping women get out of their own way, that, if not for his services, the beautiful women of the world wouldn’t even notice nice, plain guys. And… that doesn’t sound great, does it?

It’s tricky, how you might feel about Hitch encouraging men to embellish themselves (as he tells a client “‘You’ is a very fluid concept right now”) will depend on how you feel about the white lies people tend to tell to impress others on a first date. There is a slight contradiction in the date doctor encouraging men to be honest and be themselves, but also forcing them to wear shoes they hate or dance to Usher like an uncle at the back of a uni rave, but this is definitely intentional within the narrative.

However, the idea of manufacturing entirely false situations because women just can’t get out of their own way could be viewed as patronizing, manipulative, and downright icky. The men that Hitch is seen helping interact with their chosen love interests often daily, so it’s not like there’s zero chance of their paths crossing; rather than allowing them to meet and connect naturally and help from there, Hitch loads the dice somewhat and it could be argued that this creates an imbalance of knowledge and power in the dynamic right from the off.

The Date Doctor’s Prescriptions

Now it’s important to caveat all of this by saying that the vast majority of advice that Hitch gives to other men is actually pretty healthy. Here are some of his gems:

“You cannot use what you don’t have. So if you’re shy, be shy, if you’re outgoing, be outgoing.”

“When you’re wondering what to say or how you look, just remember, she’s already out with you. That means she said yes when she could have said no. That means she made a plan when she could have just blown you off. So that means it’s no longer your job to make her like you. It’s your job not to mess it up.”

“Don’t be wondering what she looks like naked. Listen to what she is saying and respond.”

“Lean in, place your hand on the small of her back, say it in her ear like a secret. But watch your hand placement, too high says, ‘I just wanna be friends,’ too low says, ‘I just wanna grab some ass.’”

Unlike many PUAs and manosphere c*nts, Hitch’s advice goes beyond the generic self-help diatribe that many of them start with and actually delivers carefully thought-out, consistent, and healthy advice with a clear ethos of treating women with respect. He encourages men to actively listen to women, to be respectful, to treat them as people rather than sexual objects, to be attentive to their needs and interests, and to focus on building lasting loving connections rather than prioritizing the pursuit of short-term sexual gratification. Despite some evidence to the contrary, Hitch truly seems to value love, honesty, and respect above all.

While you could argue that researching the hobbies and interests of unsuspecting women and then relaying it back to men who will pretend to share those interests is certainly icky, there is something to be said for the way that Hitch encourages these men to meet women where they’re at, to genuinely engage with their wants, needs, and interests, and to try to understand what makes them tick better.

Compared to the misogynists like Kevin Samuels (rest in piss) who embolden men to pick up women through insults, subjugation, and presuming them to be golddiggers, Hitch’s emphasis on genuine, wholesome, healthy, hooksian love makes our date doctor seem like a regular Lemar Obika (yes the one from Fame Academy, no it’s not a dated reference shut up).

That is until you get to Hitch himself.

Physician, Heal Thyself: The Love Doctor Who Can’t Find Love

Alex Hitchens is an interesting character on many fronts. While he wholeheartedly believes in love, we learn that he’s largely given up on finding it for himself. Why? Well, it just so happens that a young Alex’s college girlfriend cheated on him because he came on… a lil… just a lil too strong…

Is this a backstory that we see used by many an incel and misogynist? Sure. But in this case, despite the alarm bells this raises, one has to acknowledge that yes, Hitch was put off of love by one bad experience with a woman, however, he does acknowledge that he was the problem here and it inspires him to encourage other men to listen to women and pursue them in much healthier ways, which is better. The usual response of misogynists and manosphere types is to use the one perceived slight against them committed by a woman as fuel to feed their crusade against all women who don’t worship them (or sometimes they just aim aggressive shots at the woman, even long after they’ve stopped dating and she’s settled down with A$AP Rocky) so it’s not negligible that Hitch tries to use his own bad experience to help men and women achieve the happiness he feels he can’t have.

With all that being said, however, a few problems arise when you look at how Hitch behaves in his own romantic life.

The first time we see Hitch pick up a woman for himself, he sees her surrounded by men and lures her away from them by being casually misogynistic, treating her like a waitress, and when she leaves the group to correct him, he immediately drops the facade and discloses that his misogyny was a ploy to isolate her, a revelation that seems to please her (because this is fiction and he looks like Will Smith).

His interactions with Sara, the woman he falls in love with kinda vary. He starts fairly well with a very witty and healthy initial meeting topped off by him refusing to overstay his welcome and allowing her to go back to her business. But then he follows this up by researching her workplace and sending her a walkie-talkie so he can ask her out in front of her colleagues (again rom-com gold but not quite respecting boundaries). On their first date (complete with an iconic John Legend needle-drop), we learn that Hitch has researched Sara’s ancestry and he shows her the signature of her relative who turns out to be a serial killer and a source of trauma for Sara — the kinda thing you’d know if you asked a woman about these things instead of researching her.

Hitch’s relationship with Sara isn’t technically built on the foundation of secrets and lies, but he also isn’t very honest with her about what he does either. Although he tells her that he’s a “consultant” — which is true — he’s still not honest with her about what he actually does and actively lies to her about details like how he knows Albert.

As a viewer, it’s actually very endearing to see Hitch who is very suave and clinical about other people’s relationships be so clumsy and unsure in his own, that’s where a lot of the rom-comedy comes from. We see that, contrary to Hitch’s belief in methodical plotting, the moments that make Sara fall for him are the moments he doesn’t plan, when he messes up or accidentally Leaf Hurricanes her, or when he gets drunk on lean. However, if I’m watching this as a man who is very aware of how men are often encouraged to lie and exploit the perceived naivety of womankind, it’s not great.

The ultimate conflict between Hitch and Sara at the end of the film comes when she libels him in her gossip based on a falsehood, betrays his trust, and deeply hurts him, but while the film has Sara apologize to him, she ultimately has every right to be angry that he has repeatedly lied to her and kept secrets from her. While the details that she’s angry about are false, there are still underlying wrongs that he has done to her, so it feels a bit weird that when the tables turn and it’s now Hitch who has to fight to get Sara back (jumping on the hood of a woman’s car to stop her from leaving is also a no, my brothers), she’s more mad at him for rejecting her attempts at reconciliation rather than all the lying and secrets.

But, despite all this, there is a saving grace for our date doctor…

Albert Brenneman: The Date Doctor’s Medicine

If I had to pinpoint the narrative role of Kevin James’ bumbling everyman Albert Brennaman, I’d describe him mainly as Hitch’s foil. Albert is a maths nerd (accountant) who hires Hitch to help him catch the eye of Allegra Cole, an extremely wealthy and successful heiress who is the object of every man’s desire. Hitch initially believes that Albert is out of his mind for actively trying to court someone so far out of his league, but is persuaded to help him after seeing that Albert truly, deeply cares for and loves Allegra.

The reason I say that Albert is Hitch’s foil is that, although Albert dutifully listens to and tries to follow the date doctor’s advice, Albert is pathologically unable to stop himself from either ignoring or screwing up the plays that Hitch sets up for him, but this is directly why he gets the girl. Hitch’s first piece of advice to Albert is to do something bold, to “shock and awe” Allegra, and we see Albert take this advice to the extreme by being brutally honest to Allegra about making her own decisions with her money and loudly quitting his job in front of her (does he ever get his job back or does it become a sugar mama deal?). This isn’t at all what Hitch had in mind, but it works because Albert’s attempt to shock and awe Allegra manifests itself as an earnest expression of how much he cares about her and how he prioritizes her happiness over his own corporate interests.

This is essentially what defines the relationship between Albert and Hitch. While Hitch sets up a series of plays and tips for Albert to follow like any other client, Albert puts his own earnest and goofy spin on them, showing Hitch that he might not know everything there is to know about love. Albert’s goofiness is paralleled with Hitch’s own clumsiness in his own love life, but whereas Hitch sees romantic imperfection as a chip in his armor that must be eliminated and planned to death, Albert represents the main flaw in Hitch’s entire ideology. Hitch might think he understands love, but he definitely does not understand romance. This difference between Albert and Hitch is brought to the forefront through this exchange:

Hitch: Love is my life.
Albert: No, love is your job!

Albert’s role in the narrative isn’t necessarily to show us that Hitch’s practices are unethical, they’re to show us that the mere concept of a date doctor or a PUA is inherently flawed, because no one has love down to an exact science and it’s kinda narcissistic to think that you do. In order for Hitch to be the date doctor that he was before learning his lesson, there was an element of ignorance he had to have about the agency and real desires of women.

Despite her being the object of his client’s affection, Hitch only has a real, open conversation with Allegra about her feelings for Albert at the very end of the film. Here he finally listens to this woman instead of assuming that he knows what she truly wants, and she shatters his perceptions of love, showing him that while she might not have known exactly what she wanted, he certainly didn’t either, and was wrong to assume he did. There are hints of this sentiment throughout the movie and it’s even stated to Hitch when he confronts Sara at a speed-dating event:

Hitch: Does it ever occur to women that maybe a guy might like to have a plan, you know, because he’s nervous? He’s not sure that he could just walk up to you and you’d respond if he said “I like you.” “I like you.” “I like you!”

Sara’s Friend: Oh no, that sounds good to me.

Both the audience and Hitch are directly told by both Sara and her friend that the earnestness that Albert embodies is something that they quite like, but he does not listen to them, still assuming that he knows better and can speak for them.

While you can’t argue that pieces of advice such as paying attention to her friends and standing out provided good foundations for Albert to grab Allegra’s interests, Hitch was wrong to treat love with such rigidity. It was through watching Allegra fall for Albert and finally listening to women that he was able to open himself up to loving Sara even though he had no game plan for her and was afraid. Albert and Hitch help each other, but — crucially — it’s only by taking his own advice and actively listening to Allegra rather than manipulating her and plotting around her, that Hitch finally understands what he’s been doing wrong.

Is Hitch Ethical?

So the ultimate question to be answered is not only “Is Hitch an ethical date doctor?” but also “Is it even possible for an ethical date doctor to exist?” To which my answer to both is “Yes and no.”

In the era of Andrew Tates, Jordan Petersons, and Kevin Samuels’ (oh wait, scratch that last one), I don’t think it’d ever be possible for me to see a pick-up artist as anything but a misogynistic scam waiting to happen.

Part of the key to the success of these men is that they coat their toxic ideals with generic advice like “Stand up straight” and “Dress to impress” because their entire personas thrive on casuals looking at their bullsh*t and going “Well they do make some good points, humans do breathe air.” The self-help-to-manosphere pipeline is just too strong for me to believe that even the most hooksian date doctor could ever remain legit, regardless of the race or gender of this person. In a capitalist patriarchal world where misogyny is such a lucrative commodity and insecurity often overrides the voice in your head that tells you to just leave Serena Williams and her ivory tech boo out of your f*ckin rhymes Aubrey, it’s hard to imagine a world where even the most well-intentioned date doctor wouldn’t eventually become a profit-hungry false guru preaching manipulation, misogyny, and toxicity.

Perhaps then, the answer to this conundrum is the same answer that our slap-happy date doctor eventually arrives at. Rather than treating love as a job or science that must be exactly calculated and therefore removing any space for humanity, honesty, agency, and the idea that you might be wrong, maybe it’s best to treat love as an open, collaborative process. If a man hires you to get the girl, maybe just teach him the basics (because one thing Hitch does very well is teach men basic rules for how to at least be respectful and polite, rules that the manosphere dudes wouldn’t touch), leave it up to him, and if she’s willing, figure out a way to help them communicate their wants and needs to each other.

Am I describing a relationship therapist? I think I’m describing a relationship therapist. But like… maybe don’t charge for it if you don’t have extensive training? That might not be super ethical either.

I don’t know, perhaps the answer to all this can be found in the words that Alex Hitchens leaves us with:

”Basic principles… there are none.”