Connie practicing ethical non-monogamy is a fun change for the new series as it not only opens up King of the Hill to explore a new kind of change in culture since the original series, but also could influence how she relates to Bobby in the new episodes. It’s currently unclear as to whether or not Bobby has ever gotten back together with Connie following the end of their relationship in the classic series, but with the two of them still hanging out it’s likely that Connie is open to the idea.
Oh. What I meant is when ENM shows up in media, it usually feels like it was written by people who don’t know it very well. Like when hacking shows up in in movies. If you don’t know anything about computers, it probably looks plausible. But if you do, you’re probably going to be sitting there like “that’s not how that works” or whatever.
Like, throuples are really rare in my experience. Two couples dating each other is also really rare. But they show up in media. The more common configuration of “A is dating B and C. B is also dating D. They’re all friendly, and everyone takes their relationships seriously, but don’t hang out much all together” doesn’t show up often.
“Casual hook up with no strings” is one way to do ENM. it’s valid if all parties buy in. But it’s not the only way to do it. Many people have multiple relationships that run in parallel, but aren’t casual. Or “kitchen table” poly where everyone knows everyone, but only to the degree that you know your friends’ good friends. There’s hierarchical and not. There’s other options.
I can only think of a handful of media that had polyamory. Only one that did an interesting, believable, take on metamor relationships.
Writing this on my phone so it’s a little disorganized, but hopefully made sense.
So less about accurate, positive light and more about an expanded view of what it means in general. Of course, in an accurate positive light, but that wasn’t the argument you were trying to make.