Five Reasons Queer as Folk Should be Considered Great TV

In honor of Pride month coming to a close, I thought I'd make a couple posts dedicated to LGBT themes and stories in contemporary TV and Film. If I were a smarter person, and if the season's end hadn't left me with more excitement than I could contain, I would have saved my Ian and Mickey post for this outpouring of queer love, but if it makes you feel any better, you can read that post here.

Premium cable networks have been producing top notch television ever since they got into the original programming game. Shows like The Sopranos, Oz, and Queer as Folk were critically acclaimed, artful, and entertaining long before Mad Men and Breaking Bad made it fashionable to be so. And yet, Queer as Folk seems to have taken up a darker corner of the TV universe since its final episode aired. While people still remember The Sopranos and Oz fondly, Queer as Folk seems to have become the red headed bastard step child of TV. It’s remembered solely as a show that was groundbreaking for its portrayal of LGBT characters, and nothing more. And yet, in my opinion, Queer as Folk is as good a television series as we’ve seen in the 21st century. Here are a few reasons why:



1) Balance of a fairly large ensemble cast.
In the first season alone, QAF focuses on a cast of 10 characters. Each with his or her own storylines, history, and character traits. Each equally important and useful, and that’s to say nothing of the multitude of different love interests and other characters to enter and leave the show in its subsequent 4 seasons. It juggles its characters perfectly by allowing some episodes to pass without much focus being given to certain stories only to have them brought back to the forefront the following week. It does not allow a story to take up space in an episode for the sole purpose of filling time or because of an obligation to cover it. Shows like Glee and True Blood simply cannot claim the same.

2) A deep understanding of the art of long form storytelling.
I can safely say that QAF is one of the only shows I’ve watched all the way through (multiple times I might add) in which each of its main characters experiences a great and fundamental change over the course of all five seasons. It is my experience that, in most series, character change is a slow affair. If a TV series were to be compared to a novel, then each individual season would be akin to a chapter, or perhaps a collection of chapters, while the entire series is the novel. The character doesn’t tend to change over the course of each chapter, but experiences a compounding effect over the course of the entire book in order to reach some cathartic moment in the end. In this sense, if a TV series lasts for 7 seasons, the characters might have experienced a great change by the end of the 7th season. Now consider the character of Justin (played by the adorable Randy Harrison) in QAF’s first season. In the first episode, Justin is a scared timid kid who has to steel himself to step off of the curb and onto Liberty Ave (the show’s equivalent of San Francisco’s Castro). He’s still closeted to his friends and family, and takes on a passive role in his first meeting with Brian (Gale Harold). By the end of the first season, Justin has persisted through all of Brian’s subsequent rejections and has convinced him to attend the Prom as his date. This all happens moments prior to the season ending cliff hanger in which Justin is bashed by his main tormentor and left bloody on a garage floor (which of course facilitates his next big journey in season 2) with Brian “I don’t believe in love” Kinney sobbing and screaming uncontrollably while cradling his bleeding head. These transformations would be enough to sustain a lesser show for multiple seasons, and yet it’s a feat QAF pulls off in just 22 episodes.

3) A deep understanding and love of each of its characters.
Brian Kinney is one of my favorite TV characters. Here is a man that claims not to believe in love, to value sex above all else, and who is often presented as the most self-interested person you will ever hope to find. Over the course of the show we discover that most of that is a facade to protect himself from getting hurt, but the show never makes any overt moves to break down this illusion. Whenever Brian is faced with a situation in which a few simple words could save his most prized relationships, he always keeps his mouth shut. There are multiple moments throughout the series in which he clasps either his best friend Michael (Hal Sparks) or his lover by the back of the neck and kisses them as passionately as you’ve ever seen two people kiss on screen. These moments serve as Brian’s own personal “I love you” to the only two people on earth that he has those feelings for. He won’t say the words, but he will show it in the most physical way possible because he respects the physical more than he does the verbal. This is perhaps because, as a top dog (pun intended) in the advertisement industry, he knows just how faulty and misleading words can be. A lesser show would need to spell out that this is who this character is instead of trusting the viewer to simply get it.

4) It celebrates the good without condemning the bad.
LGBT individuals are strong willed, resourceful, creative, talented, and intelligent people. The lives we lead of subterfuge and constant fear tend to produce and nurture those qualities. So when QAF takes a character like Emmett (Peter Paige) from being a clothing retail associate to being Pittsburgh’s premier party planner, or when it shows how a group of gay men can pull together in the eleventh hour to give their  friends the wedding of a lifetime, or how a young man can overcome the horrendous after affects of his gay bashing and still be a renowned and successful artist, it is showcasing these strengths and talents in a remarkable and uplifting fashion. However, LGBT individuals can often also be riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing, and can fall into deep bouts of depression (we're kind of like regular people that way). Living our lives within a society built to continuously remind us that we are somehow wrong or defective can have that effect. So when QAF tells the story of a once comfortable and successful accountant, Ted (Scott Lowell), who loses everything and spirals into a crystal meth addiction, it is being honest without being judgmental. That Ted beats his addiction is a testament, again, to the strength and resilience of the gay community, but that he goes through a really dark place in order to get there (and that the progression of this story is so nuanced and well paced) is a testament to the show.


5) It has balls!
And it’s not afraid to show them either. In a time when gays were still being showcased as the funny, sexless best friend, QAF stood up and said, “Guess what, straight people, gays and lesbians have sex too! And when they do, it looks a little something like this!” From its back rooms to its bedrooms, QAF never once shied away from its graphic nudity and depictions of gay and lesbian sex. But that’s not the only way that the show had balls. QAF had the guts to also talk about the darker elements of the gay community. From hustling, to HIV, to drug addiction, to gay bashing, to cheating, QAF left very few stones unturned in its glaring and honest look into this community and the lives its members led. I love Will & Grace as much as the next guy, but that show was far more interested in getting laughs and showcasing the simpler aspects of being gay than this show was, and as a result I don’t know that it did nearly as much good for the LGBT community as Queer as Folk did.

For all of its triumphs, Queer as Folk had flaws too. It was not nearly racially diverse enough (with the exception of a couple random sex partners, the show is devoid of people of color), it basically ignores the trans community all together, and it never really touches on issues of bisexuality, questioning youth, or the intersection of sexual orientation and religion. The series also can be said to have suffered for it's place as a pioneer within American TV. While it's storylines are almost always well executed, at times it feels like the show is more interested in making its point than it is in simply allowing its characters to be and its story to develop. So while Michael and Ben's (Robert Gant) relationship progresses in an organic and understandable manner, the point could be argued that these characters only exist and interact in this manner because the show wants to tell the story of one man with HIV dating one without. It's an important story to tell, and the fact that it progresses well and organically is to the show's credit, but when a show has the responsibility of representing an entire community in the manner that QAF does, sometimes the "message" can be seen as being more front and center than the story.

But the fact remains that in 83 episodes, Queer as Folk accomplished things that other shows couldn’t do over a much longer span of time (I’m looking at you, Weeds), and I can only imagine how much more it could have accomplished if the showrunners hadn’t made the wise decision to bow out of the game while the show was still on top (pun still intended).

TV Review: Looking (Season 1 Episodes 1-5)

Looking was one of my most anticipated shows of the year. I’ve been waiting for a contemporary version of Queer as Folk for awhile now. And while I’ve found a lot within the first 5 episodes of the show to be enjoyable and entertaining, I’m not at all ready to consider it to be within the same league as its Showtime predecessor.

In a lot of ways, I don’t think this is a bad thing. Setting itself apart from other queer shows that came before it could well be what rises Looking above the pack. It seems to have the frankness and sexual boundary pushing abilities of QAF coupled with some of (but certainly not all) the comedic timing of Will & Grace. Where I find the show to be lacking thus far is in nuanced and exceptional writing.

Looking is the story of Patrick (Jonathan Groff) and a few of his closest friends as they try to make their way through life in current day San Francisco. The cast of characters features no real surprises: Patrick’s best friend, Agustin (Frankie Alvarez) is in a committed long term relationship that’s in the early days of being opened to outside play, Dom (Murray Bartlett) is the aging man who uses his sex life to feel young and in charge of something, and Patrick is the romantic making his way through a string of dates to find the perfect boyfriend. The collection of characters is a bit hackneyed, but no less interesting and entertaining.

It’s hard to pin down exactly where Looking succeeds. The first two episodes were slow building and seemed far more interested in shock value than adding actual depth to the world and the characters. There’s an extended conversation within the second installment where the characters have an in depth and graphic conversation about sex. The conversation itself doesn’t ring false (indeed I’ve had some version of the same conversation multiple times over), but it’s placement within the episode, and the series as a whole feels forced, as if the writers were trying their hardest to slap viewers in the face with the fact of what kind of show this would be.

In fact, if I have one problem with Looking (and I have a number of them), it’s the dialogue. It hardly ever feels organic and natural, and the way a lot of the characters talk has left them feeling more like caricatures than actual people. The effect is such that it feels like the writers know what they want the characters to say but not why they need to be saying it, or perhaps it’s the actors who don’t understand why their characters are saying the things they say; the overall effect is the same.

But if I had to pinpoint a moment when the show started to win me over, it was towards the end of the second episode. Patrick has met a nice Hispanic guy (Richie played by Raul Castillo) who seems to also be into him; the two of them go home together and after having spent the entire episode giving in to his baser tendencies and some of his own racial notions, Patrick is surprised to find out that Richie is circumcised. The tentative foreplay they’re engaging in is peppered with a number of subtly racist (or at least stereotypical) statements being made by Patrick and we can see Richie becoming more and more uncomfortable by them. The outcome of Patrick’s shock over Richie’s lack of a foreskin is that Richie decides to leave, claiming that the two of them aren’t a match. Subsequently, Patrick makes a bowl of comfort food and has a phone conversation with his best friend that features him acknowledging that he might be a racist. This development in and of itself was remarkable, no queer themed show that I’ve watched in the past has seemed interested in tackling the issues of racism within the gay community in such a straight forward manner, but it wasn’t the statement that interested me so much as the effect it had an episode or two later when Patrick and Richie bumped into each other again and Patrick actually apologized and Richie actually forgave him beginning what should be Patrick’s first serious relationship of the series. While I was worried the show would make the statement and then have no follow through, what they’re actually doing is embarking on a story within which they’ll start to parse out some of the complexities and the rewards of interracial dating.

One of my longstanding annoyances with Queer as Folk was always that the cast was so whitewashed. Every main character and every one of their major love interests was white. While Looking still isn’t as diverse as I’d like it to be just yet (there are no African American characters and the one Asian American character is as minor as a character can be on a show. It’s the latter I have a bigger problem with as the show takes place in San Francisco, a city with a fairly large Asian American community), the fact that they’re at least striving to include Hispanic characters and looking at the effects of dating outside one’s race is interesting and promising.

The side plots of the show are interesting, but not a huge draw. The "will they, won’t they" element of Patrick’s relationship with his boss Kevin (longtime favorite of mine, Russell Tovey) is cute, but of course something we’ve seen before, the stories surrounding Dom (his relationship with Scott Bakula’s Lynn and his attempts to start a new business) are endearing but less than memorable, and the just about anytime Agustin is on screen I want to change the channel. But at this point in the show’s exceptionally young run, the writers at least seem to know what they’re doing with the lead character, so there’s that.

Right now, Looking is good. I enjoy watching it every week and I’m curious to see where it goes. If it finds itself capable of telling new stories, or at least telling old stories in new and interesting ways, and possibly even making grander points about being gay in America in the 21st century, then I think it might find itself capable of being truly great.