They Sure Love Taking Subtle Jabs at Each Other

There were quite a few gems that came out of Jennifer Garner's interview on Ellen today, but there was one big stand out for me. It wasn't the delightfully honest way Garner discussed how she'll always have a "baby bump" now because that's just how her body looks after having three kids. It was a wonderful way to respond to the tabloids always assuming someone is pregnant after seeing them on the street after they've had a large lunch. But no, what I want to talk about is the way Jennifer Garner took credit for Ben Affleck's full-frontal nude scene in Gone Girl and how she smiled while she basically insulted him on national television.

Before this, I had no idea I was supposed to be looking out for Ben Affleck's little Affleck when I went to see Gone Girl and according to Garner, we've all got her to thank for this brief blessing of penis in our lives. She told DeGeneres, "What I have to say is you’re welcome. And you know, I try to consider myself a charitable person, and I wanted to give back. You give me so much, I wanted to give something back to all of you." And the audience went wild, as audiences do.

Um, thank you? I wasn't 100 percent sold on the idea that I had previously desired to see Ben Affleck's private parts on a movie screen, but since Garner said that we are all welcome, I guess we should have something to be thankful for.

What stood out for me in this interview was Garner's little zing directed toward her husband at the end of the clip. Sure, it's sort of cutesy that she said she hoped director David Fincher used a wide lens when he filmed Affleck getting out of the shower, but to me it just felt like another shot at her husband in a line of insults-through-smiles that seem to work their way into Garner's interviews. A few months ago, the actress casually mentioned on The Tonight Show that she does all the hard work around the house while Affleck is only around for the fun. I'm obviously not the premiere relationship expert on the planet, but Garner doesn't sound so thrilled about how the roles are split.

We get a lot of the same oddly off-putting comments from Affleck too. During his Argo Oscar acceptance speech last year he called their marriage "hard work" though he wouldn't want to work with anyone else, which is both endearing and also slightly inappropriate for the Oscar stage. Also in an article in Playboy that came out earlier this year, Affleck casually adds on to his sentence about falling in love with Garner on Dare Devil:

By the way, she won most of the fights in the movie, which was a pretty good predictor of what would happen down the road — my wife, holding swords and beating the living shit out of me.

While I do halfway applaud them for seeming to have a pretty real life marriage and admitting that they're being "mindful" about their relationship, my ears perk up when I hear them basically being jerks to each other. It's one thing to be working on the relationship and another thing to make it seem like they are both making due by taking out their passive aggression during interviews. Hopefully that's not the case, but if it is, making public comments might not be the healthiest choice.

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