No punchline, just poly, why this series lets non-monogamy be the heart, not the joke

Yahoo

10-07-2025

The HBO Max series Six Is Not a Crowd kicks off with a classic rom-com setup: a wedding, a meet-cute, a spark. Dami (Nicolás Furtado), a lifelong monogamist, meets Caro (Delfina Chaves). They go on a date, and when things seem to be heading down the usual boy-meets-girl path, Caro casually introduces her other boyfriend and girlfriend. Cue the dramatic lightning strike. No, really. "We are polyamorous," she says, just as a bolt splits the sky. It's a moment the show's creators call a deliberate nod to the shock factor, but not for shock's sake.
Instead, Six Is Not a Crowd (originally Felices los 6) uses its surprises to spark conversation. Created by Argentine writers Tessie Sills and Javier Rozenwasser, the series leans into familiar rom-com tropes—think Friends or early Apatow—but evolves them into something rarely seen on screen: a romantic comedy where polyamory isn't a punchline, but the emotional center.
I've seen shows toy with non-monogamy before, but usually with a wink and a jab. Take Netflix's The Four Seasons, released last month. In one scene, the married characters of Jack (Will Forte) and Kate (Tina Fey) stroll through their old college town, reminiscing, when Kate asks whether the next generation is "just going to give up on marriage?" Jack's response? "People like to say they're poly or not into labels, but even in a throuple someone's gotta clean the air fryer." In the season finale, Kate turns to Jack and declares, "You're my soulmate"—a tidy return to monogamous tradition. All is right with the world again. It's a common pattern: polyamory is entertained, briefly, before the narrative restores the status quo.
That's why Six Is Not a Crowd is so refreshing. It doesn't just flirt with ethical non-monogamy; it lives there. And for the first time, I saw myself as a bi person in queer relationships reflected on screen with care, complexity, and warmth.
According to the creators, that was intentional. "Unfortunately, we're still at a point where we need idealized versions in order to push back against the decades of stigmatizing portrayals of non-monogamous and queer relationships in mainstream media," Sills explains to me from her home in Buenos Aires.
As a bi, ethically non-monogamous woman herself, Sills co-wrote Six Is Not a Crowd with her then-partner Rozenwasser. "At that time, we were a non-monogamous couple questioning the traditional relationship escalator. We needed a story that reflected a different way to love, and we set out to write it."
Rozenwasser grew up watching romantic comedies. "They filled me with hope about 'finding true love.' But I gradually started to ask myself if the concept of finding 'the one and only' was, in fact, the only way to find love."
That question planted the seed for Six is Not a Crowd. By drawing on research into ethical non-monogamy and bringing Sofía Wilhelmi onto the writing team, the creators built a world where love triangles aren't a source of conflict–they're the destination.
By turning the classic rom-com formula on its head, the series unlocks something honest. At the end of episode 4, Dami finds himself caught between his partner Caro and his monogamous ex Romina, in the exact kind of scene we'd expect in a more traditional love story—except, in this scenario, the tension comes from clashing expectations. Caro drops by while Romina's over. "Are you with someone right now?" Caro asks, then cheerfully adds, "You should've kicked me out."
Caro knows Dami's dating other people. There's no problem there. The issue is Dami—flailing in old patterns—dishonestly introduces Caro to Romina as just "a friend."
"We were raised in Dami's world–as were most of the potential viewers of the series," Rozenwasser points out. "And even if we could say the 'world is changing' and that 'everyone is more open nowadays,' we knew that it isn't completely true and that there would be an interesting and funny story in the clash of those worlds."
This cultural friction is precisely where the show's emotional core lies. The drama hinges on Dami's struggle to communicate across relational paradigms within a society that is still largely structured around heteronormative monogamy. We see this theme play out in other moments. After a threesome with his partner Caro and her girlfriend, a traditional sitcom might cut to Dami bragging in a locker room, surrounded by bro-ish jokes and high-fives. But Six Is Not a Crowd goes in the opposite direction.
On an indoor soccer field, Dami tries to explain to his friends what that night meant to him. He's earnest, even reverent: "There was a lot of foreplay. I was there, but I wasn't there." As the music swells, he recalls with a smile, "I didn't know I had so many sensitive parts of my body."
His monogamous friends, predictably, don't get it. "Did you fuck?" a friend asks. "Technically…no," Dami admits. "But it was better."
The scene mines the tension between emotional vulnerability and performative masculinity for laughs. It's not mocking Dami for feeling something; it's asking why we're still so bad at talking about sex. Yet Six Is Not a Crowd isn't here to teach us how to negotiate triad dynamics or draft a relationship agreement. It's not a polyamory how-to guide. Instead, it offers something far more generous: a space to laugh, cry, and reflect on what we actually want from intimate relationships.
Through a refreshingly diverse cast of poly characters—some queer, some straight—the show widens the lens on how we connect, how we fail, and how we keep showing up for one another anyway. It allows love to multiply, sidestepping the familiar playbook that resolves love into a single tidy equation between two people. As Rozenwasser explains, the show is asking, "What if the love of your life had other loves of their lives?"
As for what comes next? Neither creator would spill details, but hinted that there may be more to explore. "Once you've written characters that defy traditional relationship norms, it's pretty hard to go back to thinking of monogamy-exclusive movies or series," Rozenwasser concedes. In the meantime, their hopes for the series are clear. "I hope people walk away with a little more compassion, curiosity, and willingness to talk," Rozenwasser notes.
"And I hope viewers see that love and commitment don't have to look just one way," Sills adds. "I wish I'd seen more stories where having feelings outside of a relationship didn't mean you were broken, untrustworthy, or destined to silence part of yourself just to fit into society. I wish I'd understood earlier that desire doesn't have to follow just one path. For the future, I'd love to see more joyful, contradictory characters who live outside the box and are still taken seriously."
If Six is Not a Crowd is any indication, that future isn't far off.
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This article originally appeared on Pride: No punchline, just poly, why this series lets non-monogamy be the heart, not the joke