Summer 1998: Cameron Diaz, four years removed from her busty debut in The Mask and one from nearly beating the crap out of two-faced, big-haired food critic Julia Roberts in a baseball park bathroom, starred in one of the biggest comedies of the ‘90s: There’s Something About Mary.

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That “something” was actually a million different things. Mary was a bombshell with a stable career and an easygoing, unaffected disposition. She liked sports and hot dogs, and her initial reaction to seeing the guy who incited her mentally challenged brother’s wrath and got his genitals caught in his zipper, ruining her senior prom, was joy.

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She was the male ideal: Beauty. Brains. Baseball.

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But no matter how wonderful a woman is, there are lines men mustn’t cross to pursue her.

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Oh, how I violate thee, let me count the ways:

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1. Stalking

2. Wire-tapping

3. False identities

4. Thievery

5. Infidelity

6. Animal abuse

7. Seminal hair gel

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Such were the ways of the many men vying for Mary’s heart, ranging from a prom date asking "What if?" to a pizza boy masquerading as a disabled British architect. In between were a private investigator, a college fling with a shoe fetish, an old guy with a gun, and Brett Fav…re.

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The goal is not to condemn the movie through a #MeToo lens but to evaluate the men critically. Who was the creepiest? Who was the most responsible for Mary’s suffering?

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Then, after all the analysis, the most important question of all: who should Mary have wound up with?

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Considering nearly all of them committed felonies as they battled for Mary, who just has something about her, I'll gauge their depravity with what punishment they'd receive if this were an episode of Law and Order: SVU, which, if written slightly differently, this movie would be.

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Bachelor Number 1: Ted Stroehmann, "The Providence Prowler"

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Ted’s pathology is intricate and complex, a highly nuanced structure of interconnecting neuroses.

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For he is sad... and weird... and annoying.

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We all had that crush in high school. Mine was on a cute runner with piercing blues and a heart of gold, and this is probably the first I’ve thought of him in 11 years because I am not obsessed with someone I had little to no relationship with nearly half my lifetime ago.

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Of course, that’s not totally fair. Ted talked to Mary once about football, which he knew nothing about. Deluding himself into believing they had a connection by pretending to share her interests is next-level nonsense. When he shows up with a mouth full of metal and unconditioned hair to escort Mary to the prom, we see him no differently than any other teenager simping for a pretty girl.

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Then, he gets his chin warmers caught in his zipper, and it’s all downhill. That seems obvious, but Ted manages to have it go worse than humanly conceivable (this would be a marvelous time to note that if you ever find your date’s mom hosing down your testicles with Bactine, leave and take the L… and the Bactine).

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Thirteen years later, Ted has a thousand-yard flashback on the highway and becomes so obsessed with Mary that he claims his life would never have been good again without her, which seems... excessive.

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In fairness, Ted doesn't initially seek out private eye Pat Healy to track Mary down, only doing so at best bud Dom's urging, but once he employs him, things go haywire. He refuses to admit to his stalking even though he travels down the East Coast to stage a run-in outside her office building and speaks about their hypothetical family like it’s a prophecy etched in stone.

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Ted gets brownie points for eventually realizing the distinction between infatuation and love, but he cries after reuniting Mary with the wronged Brett Favre as though he did love her, which he didn’t.

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Also, he can get off to women in lingerie ads like a horny teenager. The dude's in his 30s.

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Overall, he’s a self-righteous, indignant creep, but he’s certainly not the worst of the bunch, and he’s absolutely not the ultimate villain in this twisted tale of obsession.

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Punishment: Grilled for hours after getting denied a lawyer, then released while everyone glares at him like he poisoned the Flavor-Aid at Jonestown.

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Result: SVU thinks he's a creep despite his general innocence (they're right)

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Bachelor Number 2: Tucker/Norm Phipps, "The Crippled Creeper"

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Not to victim-blame, but we must acknowledge that Tucker only cut his hair and shaved his Gandalf beard. How did Mary not recognize him? What is this, Superman? Although, Tucker commits to his disabled British architect persona, putting on a faultless English accent (Lee Pace is British, but still) and donning a pair of metal wrist crutches. Maybe we can give Mary a pass.

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Frankly, the implications far outweigh the realities. Yes, Tucker faked Healy's criminal record (although he didn’t go for the jugular, only leaving him as a suspect in additional murders after his initial adolescent slaying) and drugged a tiny dog with speed, but reading between the lines paints a far more terrifying portrait.

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Technically, he doesn't expressly state that he got his friend to hit him with a baseball bat to break his back. While we can certainly imagine a “friend” of Tucker's wanting to Barry Bonds him into oblivion, it’s clear that he incited his friend to cause a grave spinal injury to legitimize his ruse, manipulating Mary’s sympathies.

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Worst of all, Tucker commits arguably the worst act: poisoning Mary against Brett by playing on her love for Warren, falsely claiming that Brett said he couldn't commit with Warren in the picture. Unless you’re Titanic or a yoga master doing the limbo, you can't sink lower.

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The worst part is that we can’t ascertain precisely why he wants Mary. Ted is a deeply troubled, emotionally stunted romantic; Healy is your garden-variety wackjob who couldn’t get laid on the Vegas Strip; Dom clearly needs to be locked away in a mental institution. But Tucker? Who really knows what’s swirling around inside that disturbed brain of his?

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Punishment: Getting cut loose halfway through the episode only to have been the killer all along and getting chased down, tackled, beaten to a pulp by Stabler, and arrested as the screen fades to black.

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Result: A rug-swept case for police brutality and 20 years in prison.

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Bachelor Number 3: Brett Favre, "The Persecuted Packer"

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Hindsight is 20/20, so we can’t consider Favre’s alleged proclivity for sending grainy dick pics to unsuspecting women. We can only go off the movie, and Brett is the goodest good guy to ever good guy; not only was he a Super Bowl champion, 3x league MVP, and 5x Pro Bowler, but he was tall and rich.

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Besides, he never said those bad things about Warren: he loves Warren, and how easy is it to find a superstar athlete who isn’t an insensitive, narcissistic jackass?

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Unfortunately, we must knock Brett for the clothes. Sure, Tucker and Healy drugged Puffy the dog, the former lied about the latter being a raving, murderous lunatic, and Ted stalked her to Miami, but Brett shows up in an ill-fitting, dark green polo tucked into light blue jeans.

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This wasn’t bumfuck Idaho, where people get away with that sort of thing; this was Miami, and Favre should’ve spent his millions on a decent wardrobe. How is Mary supposed to take him seriously looking like that?

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Still, at least he’s not a stalker, a fake cripple, or a psychotic shoe fetishist.

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Punishment: Having his civil liberties violated on the word of an unreliable witness, then exonerated after having his reputation destroyed.

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Result: Freedom and a complete dismissal of how SVU ruined his life.

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P.S. If you’re going to snap your trouser snake, try to emulate world-renowned photographer, Gilles Bensimon.

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Bachelor Number 4: Old Gun Guy, "The Senior Shooter"

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Old gun guy has one moment in the sun, when he misfires in attempting to murder Ted and instead ices one of the singing narrators.

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We must weigh that attempted murder against the many criminal offenses committed by the other men trying to win Mary. Murder is icky, but to make him comparable to Healy, Tucker, Woogie, or even Ted, we’d have to decide the unknowable.

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Did he buy the gun specifically to murder potential suitors if they got too close? Did he take Magda from behind so he could imagine Mary during their intense boning sessions? Did he ever ask Mary, a doctor, to apply old people ointment to his nethers?

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We just can’t know, so we take him at face value: a gunslinging attempted murderer chasing a woman half his age. Florida is a shitshow, but come on, this isn’t Texas.

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Punishment: Having Barry Bostwick mount a Swiss cheese insanity defense, only to get trounced by the ADA after Benson bullies Magda into testifying against him.

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Result: 20 years, after a plea that the DA agrees to begrudgingly.

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Bachelor Number 5: Patrick Healy, "The Immoral Investigator"

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Okay, first thing’s first: the mustache, which would make him the prime suspect in any crime ever committed.

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Now, let's analyze the situation objectively. First, the calendars of half-naked women in his office which creepily indicate the type of individual he follows. Second, he's unbuckled before Ted enters his office, which creepily indicates what he spends his time doing with those calendars.

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But it’s his varied thinking that sets Healy apart. He doesn't funnel his ambition into a singular approach; there truly is no angle he can’t consider, no strategy he won’t employ. He bugs Mary’s apartment to collect intel he uses to craft a false persona, that of a philanthropist architect with a Nepalese condo and a penchant for helping the mentally challenged, whom he affectionately calls “retards.”

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He nearly kills Puffy when he attempts to soothe the pooch’s fiery temper with sedatives before (accidentally) burning him, then refuses to learn from that lesson and again drugs him with Tucker.

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Healy is the most dangerous type of predator: versatile, cunning, and armed with a massive set of chompers.

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Punishment: Eaten by Gots Money’s tiger.

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Result: Death

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Bachelor Number 6: Dom “Woogie” Woganowski, "The Frenzied Fetishist"

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On the surface, Woogie isn’t the most offensive because his treachery gets revealed at the end.

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But this decision reveals a maniac that’s more duplicitous than overtly psychotic, manipulating his "friend" Ted into unknowingly allowing him to violate Mary's restraining order.

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In retrospect, we see his deviancy as acts of a desperate man, like calling out Mary’s name when Ted cowers in the face of finally reuniting with her. It was such a blatant risk, almost certain to expose him, but he was too obsessed to let this long-awaited moment slip through his fingers.

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Then, since no friendship matters more than love (of women’s shoes), he rats Ted out at the moment of his amigo’s greatest joy, torpedoing his romance with Mary so he can slither in, hive-faced and fidgety, to claim her for himself.

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The extent to which his face breaks out in “love blisters” speaks to the intensity of this bizarre obsession; the revelation that after nine years of “intensive psychotherapy,” he still “loves” Mary is disturbing.

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When he finally reunites with her, he corners her in her bedroom before trying to make off with her shoes. We'll leave what he intended to do with them to the imagination (note: this blog does not condone kink-shaming).

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Considering he has a family he sacrifices to harass a woman he terrorized into changing her name and moving 1,500 miles away after tricking his friend into doing the stalking for him, Woogie is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.

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Punishment: Helping the detectives with the investigation throughout the episode only to get exposed at the last minute, then confessing in a rageful, misogynistic diatribe.

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Result: An off-screen slam dunk trial where he attacks a testifying Mary before getting sentenced to life in prison.

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So, who is the worst of the worst, the crème de la crap, the ultimate turd in the punchbowl of Mary’s life?

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Yes, Healy getting devoured by a domesticated tiger is the worst punishment, but it was befitting his status as the most consistent animal abuser. Make no mistake; the competition was stiff, and one could argue for any of these men being the worst except Brett.  Alas, there's an "excuse," whether rooted in comedy or regard for mental health, for every man but Tucker, who is simply a psychopath.

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Brett was the man for Mary. Unfortunately, they would’ve collapsed under those alleged snapshots of his one-eyed… well, “monster” would be pushing it.

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Mary should’ve ended up with nobody and one day married a fellow surgeon, another baseball fan (who despises analytics). They would’ve debated the proper condiment for hot dogs (the objectively correct answer being half ketchup, half mustard). They would’ve had three kids and two labradors and lived happily ever after…

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until Woogie tracked them down and murdered them with Mary’s shoes.