Here he comes again

Twenty years ago, Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Darcy strolled out of the morning mist to a swelling strings-and-piano accompaniment and sent an entire generation into a blissful swoon.

That particular screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice may not be solely responsible for Mr. Darcy’s now-canonical status as heartthrob/ideal man/every woman’s dream, but for anyone too young to imprint on the BBC’s 1995 miniseries, Joe Wright’s 2005 feature film established an enduring romantic standard.

So enduring that a newly hot TikTok meme, it appears, is the line “not Mr. Darcy but. . .” embellishing a video clip of a husband or boyfriend doing something sweetly considerate, to a soundtrack of that same irresistible melody. Never mind that he’s just bringing home takeout or finding Barnes & Noble’s last copy of that book you wanted: He gets the full romantic hero treatment.

According to online examinations of this trend (for example, here, here, and here), the first recorded example of the genre was posted in late June and concerned . . . well, a corgi, actually, but over the ensuing months, other TikTokers applied it to men. (As well as to cats, dogs, and best friends.) And so now it’s officially A Thing.

No doubt this latest iteration of movie-driven Darcymania will land poorly with the small band of dissenters who insist that Darcy, even book Darcy, is bad news: “Such an awful man,” or an unrealistic ideal who ruins women for real life, or Ground Zero for the damaging myth that every emotionally unavailable hottie will transform into a supportive partner once he experiences True Love.

Still, it seems to me that the not-Mr.-Darcy meme is actually a sign of something healthy: the ability to find romance in the everyday kindnesses of men who are not necessarily handsome or dashing. Seeing the drama inherent in ordinary life: What could be more Austenian than that?