Single All the Way

I specifically waited until December to watch this. It’s been on my Watch list forever, and I figured I’d watch it to get in the Christmas spirit.

I’ll preface by saying I LOVE Michael Urie and completely understand that will make me biased with my thoughts about this movie (especially considering my thoughts about the movie I watched immediately after.)

Let’s start with a brief synopsis, shall we? (This means I will be discussing what happens in the movie, so if you haven’t watched, now would be a good time to click away…)

We have Peter, played by Michael Urie, who has lots of trouble with love. Can’t keep a man very long, and though he seems to be doing well as a photographer, his true passion is plants. Plants aren’t really my thing, so I didn’t get it, but whatever. Peter lives with his best friend Nick, played by Philemon Chambers. (Michael and Philemon are so adorably cute, and that’s the reason I watched this movie.) He works for TaskRabbit and is also apparently a really great writer who is afraid to write a sequel to his best-selling children’s book… That felt odd to me, and I’m not sure how to put into words why…

I understand the fears that come with writing, so I can only imagine them being worse once you’ve created something successful… It was more the TaskRabbit thing… How much money did he make from that book because he seems to have an infinite amount of money… and if so, why is he working at all? I suppose at some point he says he likes helping people. I don’t know, it just seemed like an odd combination of occupations/skills, but nothing to ruin the movie.

Peter starts the film with a boyfriend. They’ve been dating for a few months, and since the boyfriend is a doctor, he gets called away to the hospital a lot. Peter decides to invite him home for Christmas, after agreeing, and even though the boyfriend just got there, he is called away to the hospital again.

It just so happens that Nick gets a Taskrabbit job to put up Christmas lights. He’s on the roof and the woman is telling him how she normally uses someone else, but he fell and died while putting up someone else’s lights (it was so odd how caviler she was telling this story… shouldn’t this be a jolly movie?!?) Anywho, her husband drives up, and guess who it is?!? Peter’s boyfriend. Nick tells Peter. Peter breaks up with the boyfriend. Now he is sad, because he is the only single one of his siblings, and he was excited about introducing the boyfriend to the family…

He then comes up with an idea to have Nick come home with him and pretend to be his boyfriend. His family already knows Nick, and they’ve been best friends for nine years. His plan is to tell them they just fell in love, which is kinda what his family had wanted to happen. With very little persuasion (and having to buy his own plane ticket for the next day, I might add… if you’re roping me into a sham relationship, you can at least buy my plane ticket…) Nick accompanies Peter to his family’s house for Christmas.

Kathy Najimy plays Peter’s mom (I’m a HUGE King of the Hill and Sister Act fan, so was happy to see her.) and Barry Bostwick plays Peter’s dad. He looks familiar to me, but I don’t know what I know him from and I’m not going to IMDB him (I know he’s in Rocky Horror Picture, but I haven’t watched that.) Before he even gets to tell his family that he and Nick are now boyfriends, his mom tells him she has a blind date set up for him the next day, and Nick tells him he should go. (We’ll circle back to my thoughts on this later.)

Long story less long, he goes on some dates with this guy James, played by Luke Macfarlane, while leaving Nick with his family (… a choice.), all the while his nieces are scheming to get Uncle Peter together with Nick. They eventually turn the whole family to their side, aside from Peter’s dad, who was with them from the beginning. It’s a cheesy movie, but I expect Christmas movies to be cheesy, and I expect romcoms to be cheesy, so it’s par the course.

Oh, how could I forget, Jennifer Coolidge is in this too, she plays Peter’s Aunt Sally. She is hilarious and ridiculous and is putting on a play. He has a bunch of other family members, two (or maybe three) sisters, their husbands, and their kids. I’m not going through all of those people, sorry to those actors (I did think you were all wonderful. His sister w/ the daughters, I think her name was Lisa, she had such witty lines. I liked her character.)

The nieces finally get Nick to admit to them (and himself) that he has feelings for Peter, and that’s probably why he came on the trip. He goes to the play, and Peter invites James to the play as well. In a ploy to get Nick and Peter together, they help Aunt Sally with said play, so they are off to the side watching it, and have their arms around each other… very couple-like behavior… and James notices this from the audience.

After the play Nick tells Peter how he feels, and Peter feels the same way but is afraid to mess up their friendship. Before they can discuss it further, James interrupts. For some reason, Peter thought it would be a good idea for the three of them to get a drink. Nick says he’ll meet them there (the town only has one bar), but he goes home, packs his stuff, and is on his way out when he gets a Taskrabbit job.

Peter and James are at the bar, which is owned by Peter’s sister, and James makes Peter admit they aren’t compatible. James tells him he saw the way he interacts with Nick and lights up when talking about Nick just like he lights up when talking about plants. So now Peter rushes home, but Nick is gone, so he’s heading to the airport.

I guess this town only has one street (to go with its one bar), so on the drive, he notices their rental car parked. He stops, gets out, and he and Nick reunite and confess their love. Nick is there painting this building and has used his saved up money to pay for like six months of rent for Peter (oh yeah, Peter wants to move back to New Hampshire). They kiss. It’s magical.

We fast forward to Christmas day. Nick wrote a sequel to his book and gives it to Peter’s nephews (who are big fans of the book), and at the end, it says Nick and Peter are moving together to New Hampshire.

Now, my thoughts…

I could have done without the love triangle. I’m not well versed in romcoms, so I assume they tend to be a major component… but I consider Coyote Ugly to be a romcom (and one of my all-time favorite films), and it doesn’t have a love triangle… unless you count the bar, and I don’t. It would have been more interesting to me to see Nick and Peter spending time together throughout the film and learning their love for each other is more than platonic. Again, doesn’t ruin the film for me, but James just felt kinda unless.

Maybe it was because I was rooting for Nick and Peter from the beginning, but I didn’t see Nick and James being compatible… not to mention living on opposite sides of the country. Even from the very beginning, Nick and Peter interact like a couple and they know each other so well. The only thing James has going for him (as far as a relationship with Peter) is he is extremely good-looking… but so is Nick.

What really prompted me to write this is a post I saw about this film. Not so much the post itself, but the comments people left. People were saying Peter was insane to pick Nick over James. Now, I’m well aware that are is subjective… HOWEVER, this film isn’t very subtle, you’re supposed to root for Nick and Peter… So people saying they don’t have chemistry (I thought they did), and they would never pick Nick over James… is interesting, to say the least.

It seems some people are equating two different things. Just because one isn’t personally attracted to Nick (and if you aren’t… interesting), doesn’t mean the movie doesn’t make sense because Peter chose Nick over James. The way the story is told, there isn’t a way that Nick and Peter don’t end up together.

I hate to be that person… but Philemon Chambers (Nick) is black and Luke Macfarlane (James) is white, and I can’t help but wonder if that comes into play at all when SOME people say it doesn’t make sense to them why Peter ended up with Nick instead of Luke…

Surprisingly, unless I missed something, race doesn’t come up at all in this film. Not that it needed to, but Nick is the only black person I remember seeing in this town. It is quickly established that he’s met all these people before, but I’d still be uncomfortable, personally, hanging out with ANYONE’S family on my own while they are out dating.

All in all, it was a very cute movie… and I may sound like a hypocrite with my next post (or if you read this before the other one, you may think, I’m glad he called out his contradictions.)

Insidious 1 & 2

I’m going to start this by saying I’m a HUGE fan of the Saw franchise, even beyond the first three films. James Wan and Leigh Whannell are inspirations to me as an aspiring horror creator… That being said, other than The Conjuring, I haven’t gotten into the other work I’ve seen of theirs. After watching The Conjuring films, I decided to start Annabelle, and I wasn’t able to get through the whole thing.

So far, I’ve watched the first three Insidious films, and read the scripts for the first two. I don’t have much to say about the third one, so we’ll just discuss the first two. First, I love that these scripts I found aren’t final drafts. So many parts vary from the final product, and that’s nice to see.

Like with Annabelle, the Insidious films have a slow burn. Things got interesting for me about halfway through the film. In the first one, I really liked that Josh had passed his astral projection powers to his son, but had repressed his memories of the ability. I also liked being able to see ghosts through photos, which is why Josh doesn’t take them. It is subtly hinted at in the film, which was great (the script had a screen that felt more heavy-handed about him not wanting to take photos, via a school picture day.) There was a lot of dialogue that was edited down or cut altogether. Some of it seemed on the nose. The most interesting thing about this script compared to the film was Elise didn’t die at the end. I was excited to read the second one to see if it followed the plot of this draft, but it follows the movie and starts with Elise dead.

Something that bothered me SO much about Chapter 2, and I hope it bothered any of you who watched it, is it acts like the ending of the first movie didn’t happen, despite replaying the last few moments of the first film. Renai KNOWS that possessed Josh killed Elise, but for some reason, she goes through the movie as if she doesn’t know her husband is possessed. I didn’t understand that, and I was hoping the script would make sense of that, but it didn’t. The second half of the film is when things got interesting. I LOVED the call back to events in the first film, where you learn some of the scary stuff happening was caused by astral projection Josh. In the script, it is Renai who gets to The Further via Dalton. I liked it better with Josh doing it since he already has the ability to go into The Further.

Though I liked the film better than the script, I liked the ending in the script more than the one in the film. In the film, it is Specs and Tucker going to help some new family. Wasn’t interested. In the script, Renai comes into Dalton’s room and sees him painting his face with red crayon, a la the red-faced demon from the first film. Though, I can see why they may not have wanted to go in that direction, as this film was about Josh being possessed. Dalton being possessed could have been a little too much, been there, done that.

It’s also interesting how compared to Saw, where pretty much everyone dies, these films have a very low body count. But, that’s my thoughts on the films. I didn’t love them, but I didn’t hate them either and I think I’ll continue with the series. Hell, I may even go back and finish Annabelle.

Step Sisters

I watched Step Sisters on Netflix last night on a whim. Netflix recommended it to me when it released, and my only reason for watching was Megalyn Echikunwoke. I’m such a fan of hers. I can’t explain the how or why, as I haven’t watched a lot of things she’s been in nor have I actively sought them out, but I’m always happy when I run into something she is in.

The first thing I remember seeing her in was a little MTV soap opera called Spyder Games. I can’t really recall the other actors from the show, but I always remember her and her character, Charity. Charity the police chief’s (maybe chief, he was a policeman though) daughter and was in love with this guy named Sascha. This show was on around 2001. The next thing I remember seeing her in was an episode of The Game and I instantly recognized her. The next thing was Injustice 2 where she is the voice of Vixen, and apparently, she is the voice actress for the animated show and there was an episode of Arrow (maybe, or one of the other CW DC shows) where she plays the live action version of Vixen.

It’s weird, I feel I don’t have the dedication to call myself a fan, per se, and it isn’t like I know her or anything, I just am really happy when I see actors from shows I watched as a teen who are still in the industry and doing well. I’m also that person who is really happy when I see co-stars of shows/movies are friends in real life. I can’t explain it.

Anyway, to the film itself. It got a lot of low scores, and I thought they were unfair. It wasn’t the greatest film I’ve ever watched, but it was nowhere near the worst. I appreciated it for what it was. For me, it felt like a Bring It On in a Dear White People universe, if that makes any sense (and it should, as it shares producers with Dear White People.)

I felt at times it was a bit too silly for what it was trying to say and there seemed to be times when emotions suddenly skyrocketed from 0 to 100 or vice versa ( and sometimes from 0 to 100 to 0) which felt a little jarring, but overall I was entertained. The premise of the film is Jamilah, Megalyn’s character, needs a recommendation letter to get into Harvard. Her parents, though Harvard graduates, will not write a letter for her, due to her not achieving a 4.0. She works for the dean, in some capacity I don’t think was really explained, and after a scandal with a sorority, he offers to provide her the recommendation letter if she teaches the sorority to step. I should mention, Jamilah is part of a black sorority, the Thetas, and the other sorority, SBB, is white (with the exception of one black member.)

I can’t really put my finger on it, but this felt like a Bring It On lite, like I imagine the sequels to Bring It On are. Again, I really enjoyed it, and it added its own flavor to make it unique, but if it weren’t for Megalyn, I would have just watched Bring It On. It felt like there wasn’t a lot of time spent with all the characters. In the end, when they have their step competition, I could point out maybe three of them that I knew for sure, the others, I couldn’t tell if they were just dance extras or if they’d been there the entire time.

It also did the thing in Bring It On where the main character has a boyfriend and he seems great, but then turns out not to be, so she ends up dating a guy she meets on her new journey, and I just noticed this part too, he is the brother of her new friend. Hmm. I had more of an issue with this in Step Sisters than I did in Bring It On. Again, I felt it was because I didn’t get to spend a lot of time getting to know a lot of the supporting cast. So, Jamilah’s boyfriend is white, played by the very sexy and very woke Matt McGorry. From my understanding of their relationship, they seemed very happy. All of a sudden, she meets this new guy, who is black, yet the brother of the white president of SBB, Danielle (we’ll get to her in a moment.) and she ends up dumping her boyfriend for him. The new relationship is very cute, but it felt like they made Matt’s character a villain all of a sudden, literally in one scene her criticizes her for teaching the SBBs step, to justify her dumping him for Danielle’s brother. It felt forced, in my opinion.

There were times when it felt like, ok, this is where we need to hit an emotional moment, and one would come out of nowhere, and it felt odd. And when things blow up in Jamilah’s face, the person who does it didn’t make sense to me, even though she explains why, and I felt Jamilah was a little quick to forgive, despite not having a reason to do so.

My favorite two characters in this film were Jamilah and Danielle, and I feel it is likely because of the actresses. So I already expressed my feelings about Megalyn, but the actress who played Danielle, Lyndon Smith, I need to discuss. I’ve never seen her before, but I loved her immediately. She reminds me of a Demi Moore: The Next Generation. She is the bitchy president of the SBB, and she has this way of talking that makes her seem like she has seen it all, heard it all, and is so exhausted by the conversation that she can barely speak. I don’t know if that is how she always speaks, but I loved it. Her character also reminded me a lot of myself. She is cold and distant, but underneath it all, she does care for her sorority sisters, in her own way.

Overall, it was a cute movie. I went into it with no expectations and ended entertained.

Queer as Folk: Season Five

I just finished S5 Ep10, which is the bomb episode, for those who don’t remember. I figured I’d take a moment to stop and reflect as it’s an intense episode, and I remember, more or less, what happens in the last three episodes.

It is fascinating to watch this show now that I am the age the characters were at the start of the show. When I first watched the show, I was 18, which was almost 12 years ago, and the show ended a year before that. I’ve done some living and learned about the world since then.

The bomb episode is bittersweet. Though the show dabbles with death before this episode, this was the first time you see something of that scale. Long story short, there is a benefit to raise money to stop Proposition 14, which will ban same-sex marriage, and said benefit takes place at Babylon. While Cyndi Lauper is performing (I just learned the song has a Babylon Remix which was used for the show) a bomb goes off. The first time I watched it (and even in re-watches before this) things like Pulse hadn’t happened yet, so I had a different perspective this time.

The sweet comes with Justin and Brian. I think I may have to retract my statement that I hate Justin the most. In season five, he was easily my favorite character, as he had such maturity. Anyway, I still remember the first time I watched the scene where Brian finally tells Justin he loves him. I still get emotional when I watch it because it meant so much to me to see.

Brian is supposed to be leaving for Australia, but he learns of the bombing (of his club) on his way to the airport and turns back around. He is so afraid that something has happened to Justin. He’s always loved Justin and cared for him, in his own way, without expressing it using those words. He finds Justin and they embrace, all covered in smoke, and he finally says “I love you,” and the look on Justin’s face. He grabs onto Brian as if he can’t believe it is real.

I first saw the scene shortly after being introduced to the show by my roommate at the time. I was watching clips of the show on Youtube (as one would do when one couldn’t afford the boxsets and streaming services weren’t a big thing in 2006) and stumbled across one with a title along the lines of “Brian finally says ‘I love you’ to Justin.” I don’t think I knew the context of how it came about, as I’d only watched clips here and there. I don’t think it was until 19 or 20 that I watched the show in order.

It was such a great feeling, even know, for Justin to hear those words he had been waiting so long to hear. Even though I tend to enjoy bitter ends when it comes to gay media, I really cared for their relationship and wanted the best for them (despite thinking Ethan and Justin seemed more suited for each other.)

I may or may not write one final post about the overall season (which will discuss how I hated Hunter this season. He was the Dawn of the show,) or maybe I’ll just start writing when I move on to a new show. I have kinda enjoyed these “reviews” if you will. Perhaps next will be Buffy.

Queer As Folk Season 4

This may be part one, as I’m only halfway through season 4, so I’ll try to make this short and sweet. I have to eat my words in regards to Justin, I completely forgot that I quite enjoyed him this season. Though Justin bothered me a lot as a character in the first half of the series, and even though I felt Ethan and Justin were more compatible, I really enjoy Brian and Justin together.

Despite Brian being over ten years Justin’s senior, Justin is clearly the more mature one, especially when it comes to expressing emotions. Once upon a time, I had a friend who told me I was like Brian. We definitely share methods of communication and emotional expression, which is quite little. Though I relate to the way he interacts with people, I was never a big fan of his until the final two seasons. I loved when he went through cancer because he had a vulnerability we hadn’t really seen before.

There are two scenes that really hit me in regards to this two. The first is when Justin doesn’t know about Brian’s cancer. In typical Brian fashion, he pretends he is going on an impulse vacation. When Justin confronts him about not being invited, Brian yells at him, and walks away, partly in pain from being sick, but also because he is hurting Justin in hopes of driving him away. He walks back and Justin tells him if he did or said something to upset him, he didn’t mean to (as Brian has been pushing him away for at least a few days at this point.) It was really touching.

The other is after Brian kicks Justin out (upon discovering Justin knows of his cancer.) Justin comes back to fight for his relationship. This time he yells at Brian, telling him he has been a piece of shit for not telling him and for thinking he would leave. I found that touching too.

I think it was this season when I really started to relate to Brian. I have a tendency to push people away too. The closer someone tries to get, the harder I push. Also, like Brian, I have my idea of what it means to be perfect, and I don’t like to stray from it.

Also, I want to touch on the death of Uncle Vic. It is interesting to watch something years later and have it affect you differently. I watched the episode where Uncle Vic dies on Tuesday, the day after the second anniversary of my mother’s death, and it hit me harder than expected. I related so much to Debbie, as she had concerns of how her brother felt about her, as he died after a fight. My mother and I didn’t have a fight before she passed away, but I also thought later in life we would reconnect and life didn’t work that way for me. Sometimes it makes me sad if I think about that too much.

Nothing else really stood out to me so far, other than I hated that Michael told Brian he and Justin knew about the cancer, despite him telling Justin they couldn’t say anything. Though he said it was an accident, I feel he purposefully did it so Justin couldn’t say something first.

Queer As Folk Season 3

I finished Season 3 without even realizing it. I think my post about Ethan and Justin said a majority of my thoughts on Season 3, so this should be short and sweet. Though I like Brian and Justin together, I still think Ethan was better with Justin, but that had to do something to get them to break up so it could be Brian and Justin again.

I forgot about Hunter coming into the picture (and I believe it is Season 4 when he just pops up with all new teeth and it isn’t commented on.) At first, I hated Hunter, though not as much as Justin. I hated how he treated Ben and Michael, despite the fact that they were trying desperately to help him. Also, something that comes up in season 4, but Hunter is apparently straight, which doesn’t make sense, as he actively pursued Brian in Season 3, even offering to pay Brian to sleep with him rather than having Brian pay like a typical client, so it seemed weird to make him straight, maybe bi.

The main thing I hadn’t talked about was Emmett and Ted. I really enjoyed their relationship, and though I really enjoyed the Blake and Ted story about addiction and crystal use, the Emmett and Ted story was more fleshed out. Of all the things that happen to the characters that felt out of, well, character, for the characters, Ted becoming a crystal queen made sense.

When he had an argument with Emmett about how he uses crystal because he doesn’t want to be himself anymore, it reminded me of Willow’s talk with Buffy when she indulges in the dark magicks. In both cases, they were the reliable, meek characters, and their addiction is fueled, subconsciously, by self-loathing. It’s beautiful and tragic and relatable.

I have a few top favorite moments in QAF, and one of them happens in Season 3. Ted finally hits rock bottom, which is being awake for days and discovering he got gangbanged while watching video of it. He goes to rehab and there he sees Blake. I loved this because the last time you saw Blake was Season 1, and he just disappeared, presumably dead. Naturally, Ted assumes he is a patient in rehab, but it turns out he is a counselor. I love that moment when Ted realizes that. That’s the thing I love about tv shows, characters have so much room to grow. In the two years they haven’t seen each other, their places in life completely switched. We don’t know what Blake has been through since we last saw him, but we know he was able to kick his addiction and is now helping others to do the same.

I also liked how despite being so against Ted helping Blake, when it was Emmett’s turn, he behaved much like Ted, if not more so, in trying to defend and deflect Ted’s destructive behavior.

Another favorite moment is when Michael confronts Ben about his steroid use. At one point, Ben, in his roid rage, says maybe he should be with someone who is also positive. Michael finds a needle Ben uses for steroids and threats to prick himself with it, thus exposing himself to HIV as well. Ben gets scared and demands Michael doesn’t do it and Michael tells him to stop using the steroids and to stop hurting himself and their relationship. The dialogue and the tension of that scene were perfect.

Now I’m on to season 4 and after that, the fifth and final season.

Queer As Folk: Justin & Ethan

So, this is going to go against my previous two posts where I said I hate Justin. It still stands true, but I really liked his relationship with Ethan. Towards the end of season 2, Justin meets Ethan, a young violinist, and there is instant chemistry between the two. I think it has a lot to do with the two of them being artists. I can’t say this for a fact, but I believe those with artistic souls are more passionate about things than others. In this case, Ethan’s passion and romantic ways draw Justin to him.

Ethan provides Justin what he desperately wants from Brian; romance and attention. Brian shows Justin in his own little ways that he cares but he refuses to make grand romantic gestures. So, Justin plays with fire by continuing to flirt with Ethan. One particular instance, which is probably my favorite, is when Justin and Ethan have this romantic lunch picnic on Ethan’s living room. Justin craves that kinda thing and Ethan slowly but surely seduces him by feeding that craving. The next scene is Justin recreating a picnic dinner on the floor at Brian’s. Brian comes home and instantly isn’t into it, which begs the question is Justin into Ethan or is he into the idea that Ethan represents, which is romance; the one thing lacking (for Justin) in his relationship with Brian.

Eventually, Justin leaves Brian for Ethan (I haven’t gotten to the episode yet, so I can’t remember exactly why.) but their love is short lived. Again, I believe it is an issue of the writers using the characters as plot devices more than anything, but who knows. Ethan ends up cheating on Justin and he goes back to Brian. I have the same issue with Ethan cheating as I have with Kevin suggesting an open relationship in Looking. In my mind, at least the way I thought I knew the character, it would seem highly unlikely for Ethan to cheat on Justin after spending so much time to win him. In Looking, Kevin finally wins Patrick back, only to suggest an open relationship. To me, these did not seem like moves these characters would make. However, would Queer as Folk really continue if Brian and Justin’s relationship didn’t? It was the whole premise of the show.

Though I dislike Justin, I thought he’d found his soulmate in Ethan. I remember thinking I was going to meet a musician in college and we’d fall madly in love. It didn’t happen. Though I am an artist at heart, I care myself more like a Brian. I keep people at a safe distance and I don’t like when people try to get close. The closer someone tries to get, the harder I push them away. But underneath it all, I relate to what Justin wanted. The passion, the romance, the attention. And I think when you are both artists you can relate on a different level.

I also liked that Ethan was more age appropriate. Ethan was a struggling artist, which I also found attractive about him. When I see myself falling in love, I see the guy being equal to me and we help the other build his career and success. I saw that and I wanted that for the two of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Justin and Brian are cute together, I just thought Justin and Ethan were better. What makes me like Justin and Brian are the moments when Brian lets down his guard and lets Justin in. Ethan was like that all the time, sentimental, romantic and sweet. But the show must go on.

Queer As Folk Season 1

Queer as Folk was my introduction to gay TV at the tender age of 18 and it shaped how I thought the “gay world” would be, which never really came to pass, at least not for me. Season 1 is an introduction to the characters, and I really enjoyed them all… except Justin. Though at that time, he should have been the one I related to the most, at least age-wise, Michael was the one I identified with and I had such a crush on Hal Sparks because of Michael. Michael’s relationships have always been my goals. I think I also identified with Brian, though only on an emotional level. He showed people he cared in his own ways but was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve.

It’s funny, this time around, I find myself a lot more attracted to Ted than I think I’ve ever been. Even for the “ugly” older friend, he is pretty fit and I could see myself with a Ted these days, though Michael would still be #1.

At 18, I’d never been to a club, I’d barely touched alcohol, and I was 100% a virgin, so it was interesting to see a show that included so much partying and sex. I liked the idea of a core group of friends that did everything together. I thought once I finally entered the “gay” world I’d find that group.

Something that really bothered me about season 1 is something that would bother me again later down the road. Buffy is my favorite show, and I never felt the characters did anything out of character for the sake of the story and I believe that is why I judge other shows so harshly. My biggest issue with season 1 is Emmett making a promise to God to never sleep with another man if he is negative after a HIV scare. I understand why they wanted to tell this story, but it felt like a story that should have been told through someone else.

Emmett is the “queeniest” of the group. He has always been the way he was. He doesn’t appear to be religious, I don’t recall him bringing up religion and/or God often, if ever again. Also, his promise was never to sleep with another man again, but that somehow converts to him trying to be straight. It just didn’t make any sense to me, other than the writers wanting to tell the story of conversion groups. Don’t get me wrong, it is important to discuss, but I needed more to make me believe the one of the group who seems most proud to be gay would try to become straight. Other than that (and a lack of diversity), I really love this first season and the show in general.

I remember expecting to see clubs and bars like Babylon when I came out and only finding BS West. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun at BS West, but it was no Babylon. It wasn’t until my first time in San Diego, for San Diego Pride, that I discovered Rich’s, which is still Babylon to me.

It’s also strange to watch a show that had 20+ episodes per season, as I’m so used to shows having around 13.

Finally, the season finale. It was brutal on my emotions. I think seeing Justin get hit affected me more now as an adult, as seeing things like Pulse and real bashing in the news, than it did the first time. When I was 18, I didn’t know anything about gay bashings. It was also one of the first moments when Brian breaks his guard and shows he truly cares for Justin.

Now I’m midway through Season 2 and still loving it (I can’t decide who I am more like, Ben or Michael, but theirs is my favorite relationship of the series.)

Queer As Folk S2: Ep. 8

So, I’ve been rewatching the series and will likely write a review of sorts of each season, but I wanted to focus this piece on this particular episode, and a particular moment in this episode which explains why I hate Justin.

From the beginning, Justin was my least favorite character. I found him immature, naive and quite the stalker, he was like the Dawn (from Buffy) of this series, I personally couldn’t find any redeeming qualities. To his credit, I did like that he was like an encyclopedia, which allowed the writers to add pertinent information, like statistics to support the argument of another character, through him, though there was never much discussion, if any, as to how he learned or retained all this information. That aspect of him reminds me of someone I know. He can tell you about just about anything and I enjoy listening to him tell me these random facts he just retains.

In this episode, Justin is convinced he needs to meet people his own age, so he goes to this party and ends up sleeping with this guy who is a virgin. Justin and Brian have rules for their relationship, one of which being that they can not kiss people on the mouth. However, feeling guilty when the guy (I don’t remember if he was even given a name) tries to kiss him after they sleep together, he gives in and kisses him.

The next day, Brian kisses Justin and tells he kissed someone else, so now Justin feels guilty. The guy comes to the diner to find Justin and tells him they have a connection and he loves Justin and Justin tells him never to come back there and that he is acting like a pathetic little fairy.

The main reason I hate this scene is that he is such a hypocrite. The only reason he and Brian are together is he wore him down and was persistent. He clearly fell in love with Brian after Brian took his virginity, so it seems illogical for him to not understand it could happen if he takes someone’s virginity (as it happened in S1 with Daphne.) It also felt a little out of character. Justin could be moody and emotional, but he was rarely mean without reason. I assume he does this so the guy doesn’t pursue him like he pursued Brian, but I think it was ultimately because he felt guilty about breaking his rules with Brian and was taking his anger out on the guy.

I know it is just a tv show, but it made me so angry and sad for him, as you never see him again. I wanted the character to come back later and be some sort of antagonist or something. Justin could have taken him in as a friend, as Brian’s friends took him in the year before. Part of me also wonders if Justin saw himself in that guy and didn’t want the competition or it was his chance to lash out at himself over his behavior to finally get Brian to like him back.

I guess I felt so bad for that guy because I relate to him a lot. He didn’t want to sleep with a lot of guys, he was just looking for someone special, and he thought he’d found that in Justin (I’m assuming him being a virgin didn’t help, though I never developed feelings for the guy who took my virginity), and he was wrong. I get wanting to make more of something than it is and maybe developing feelings for someone faster than you should, which is part of why I keep my distance, emotionally, from people.

At this point, his story was more interesting to me than Justin’s. I wanted to know what happened to him after he was told never to come back. They live in a small town. Did he finally end up going out (as he seemed like he was still in the closet), did he become a heartbreaker?

I think I would have felt differently if the guy hadn’t been a virgin, as Justin took Daphne’s virginity and she got emotionally attached to him after, even after they said things wouldn’t get weird, so he really should have known better than to sleep with another virgin. And to outright banish the kid from the diner too. It was just overall shitty and it pushed me from disliking Justin to hating him.

Altered Carbon

I’ll start by saying I love cyberpunk and film noir, so I am a little shocked and disappointed that I didn’t give this show a chance sooner. I remember seeing advertisements along Santa Monica Blvd that looked like real people encased on the sides of bus stops, but other than that, I wasn’t really sure what it was about.

I watched the first episode a few weeks ago, and I instantly thought it was a lesser version of Dollhouse, and I was incredibly mistaken. I don’t know if one is better than the other, as I love both for different reasons. I do wonder what Dollhouse could have been had it been a Netflix show rather than Fox, but that’s a different topic for a different blog.

The first episode confused me a bit. There was a lot of information to take in, but something I learned from being a Whedon fan (though this is not a Whedon show) is sometimes you have to let a show warm up a little bit, and I found myself hooked by the third episode.

I’m going to try not to spoil anything and just go into the things I really loved about the show. One, I love, love, LOVE Dichen Lachman. I first discovered her in Dollhouse and for some reason, I expected her to just have a side role (don’t ask me why I thought that), but she was pretty integral and I loved her character. I thought the acting, in general, was done really well. I felt I cared for all the characters, be they good, bad or in-between, though aside from Rei (Dichen’s character), my favorite character is Poe, an AI inspired by Edgar Allen Poe with a fascination with humanity.

One of the things that drew me to Dollhouse was the theme of what makes one human, and Altered Carbon also asks this question, though I fell the two shows went about it in different ways. Altered Carbon is definitely more violent and sexual than Dollhouse was (and even if Whedon had made Dollhouse on Netflix, I don’t see a lot of violence and sex being his thing.) In Dollhouse, it is a secret from the world that there are dolls. Dolls are blank slates of people, people who willingly, most of the time, signed away a set amount of time to live as dolls. Who they are is wiped from their body and stored away and they are imprinted with personalities for engagements, which are usually sexual. After the engagement, they are wiped and go back to the infantile doll state. Dollhouse is all about exposing the Dollhouse exists, led by Agent Paul Ballard, played by Tahmoh Penikett, who is also in Altered Carbon. (Sidenote, learning Dichen and Tahmoh were in Altered Carbon is what made me decide to start watching.) Dollhouse is also about the client favorite, Echo, played by Eliza Dushku, starting to remember engagements even after being wiped.

Altered Carbon is more like the Epitaph episodes of Dollhouse. The technology is out there already and widely used and the world has changed. We start with Takeshi Kovacs being killed, and then he wakes up 250 (I believe) years later. Everyone has a slack, which is essentially what makes them who they are, and they can be implanted into sleeves (bodies). So long as the slack remains intact, the person can just go from sleeve to sleeve.

The concept is so fascinating to me because it really questions what makes you, well, you. Is it your body or is it something more. You inevitably get to the question of the soul. Would I still be the exact same person if I were in a different body, and what if that body had originally belonged to someone else? How would that alter my interactions with people? As the show progresses, you learn that Takeshi’s new sleeve is no accident and it does affect how he is treated.

Something else I found fascinating, and both Dollhouse and Altered Carbon touch on this, but I’m hoping maybe Altered Carbon will get a chance to explore it further, is the concept of love in the world full of dolls/sleeves. One example from Altered Carbon, as it is fresher in my mind, is a mom is resleeved, but in a man’s body. She has a husband, and when they reunite, Poe says something about love transcending all, and they do continue their relationship, despite her being cross-sleeved. In Dollhouse, a male doll in imprinted with a female personality (I can’t remember the why at this moment), but in the Dollhouse universe, multiple dolls can be imprinted with the same personality (one of my favorites was episode 4 of season 1, called Gray Hour. Echo and Sierra, Dichen’s character, are imprinted with a personality that reminded me a lot of Faith, my favorite Buffy character.) In Dollhouse it seemed more for comedic effect though. It really makes you, or at least me, think, if you love someone and they come back in a different body or their body alters in some way, would you still love them? (And I would really like to see someone reference that part of the show in an argument for the LGBT community in a paper or something.)

There are two criticisms the show had that I would like to address before I move forward. One was whitewashing and the other was violence, particularly against women. When I first watched the first episode, it did bother me that a man named Takeshi was being played by a white man. I thought if it is all about sleeves not mattering, why not make the sleeve another Asian man? From my understanding, as I did not read the book, and just learned it is based on a book, this is done intentionally, as part of his conflict and coming to terms with being an Asian man in a white man’s body. Also, aside from that, the cast on this show is quite diverse.

As for the violence, there is quite a bit of violence, and quite a bit of it done against women, and lots of naked women (though there were bits of full front naked men, which is quite surprising for an American production.) I don’t want to say it didn’t bother me because violence against women always bothers me, but I felt it was done intentionally as well. There are a lot of sex workers in this world, and they tend to get mistreated, even killed, as so long as their slack is intact, they can be given a new sleeve and continue on. For me, it made the final episode that much more rewarding to see those in power pay for what they had done (again, can’t give too much without spoilers.)

I felt both shows did an interesting job of discussing gender and class. In Dollhouse, though there are male dolls, a majority of the dolls you see are female. In Altered Carbon, though everyone has slacks, the sex workers are mainly female. You don’t see a male one until the final scenes of the finale (I hope it is just the season one finale, and not the end of the series.) In Dollhouse, as it is a secret organization, one must have a lot of money to be a client. In Altered Carbon, it is more about, even though everyone is essentially immortal, there is still a way to divide the haves from the have-nots. The Meths (I don’t know if that was short for something) are wealthy, they live in the sky, above the poor people. It made me think a bit about The Time Machine. They have more wealth than can be imagined, have the best sleeves and even clones of themselves. The show is really about how that wealth mixed with immortality causes them to lose their humanity.

There is also a relationship that felt a bit incestuous to me, but it is hard to explain it without spoilers. I will just say, there is a particular relationship that reminded me of Flowers in the Attic. I saw the film but didn’t read the book. In the film, a group of siblings, two boys, and two girls, are locked in an attic by their mom and become a family unit of sorts. As such, the oldest two, a boy and girl, become the mom and dad to the youngest two. In the book, I believe it leads to an actual romantic and sexual relationship between the two. Anyway, there is a brother-sister relationship, and I felt the sister’s love for her brother was more than just, well, brotherly. She was extremely jealous of any woman he showed interested in, and at one point she is in the sleeve of one of these women. It made her character all the more interesting, and I wonder if it had to do with them being abused and orphaned as children, and as such, having to be the mom and dad, much like the older kids in Flowers in the Attic, but that may be me just reading too much into it.

All in all, I’m glad I watched it, and I’m glad I gave it a second chance, as after watching the first episode the first time, I didn’t think I would watch it again. From what I hear, there is going to be a second season, though Joel Kinnaman may not be in it, despite playing Takeshi Kovacs, the lead character. However, in a show about people being slacks, not the sleeves they inhabit, the entire cast could change if they really wanted to do so.