[Editor’s note: Spoilers ahead for “A Good Person.”]

When Zach Braff’s “Garden State” debuted in 2004, it did two things almost instantly: It established the first-time filmmaker (then best known to most audiences as the star of the sitcom “Scrubs”) as an indie creator to watch; and, to even greater effect, kickstarted a debate about the kinds of female characters who populate such stories. They’re cute! They’re quirky! They exist almost entirely to help a man work through his problems! It’s the manic pixie dream girl!

Film critic and then-A.V. Club staffer Nathan Rabin gave that trope its name a year after the release of “Garden State” with the release of another film, Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown.” But as Rabin noted in his essay, Braff’s “Garden State” beat Crowe to the punch in creating a character who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to...