“How can his heart be accessible when the world around him isn’t?”
That’s the kind of line I live for. I love a good moment of disclosure wrapped up in near-cringe-worthy wordplay. As I mentioned in my last recap, we’re clearly being encouraged to think of Buffy as a key intertext for how Queer As Folk (2022) is tackling its sprawling cast of characters, and that line has a quippy, zippy quality that would feel right at home at Sunnydale High. It’s also a perfect summation of Julian and how Brodie’s brother has come to wall himself off emotionally and sexually from the quote-unquote LGBTQ community. He has already told us he’s not into the “gay scene” (unless that gay scene involves a glory hole in a mall bathroom?), and with the prospect of an inclusive sex party at Ghost Fag giving him a chance to maybe meet fellow disabled queers, he clams up even as he claims he’s not “anti-sex party.” It’s just … not for him. Maybe.
Julian’s reticence — especially in contrast with Marvin’s exuberant confidence; he has clearly found a great way to spend his survivor’s fund: a sex worker! — is a reminder that it’s futile to look at these people as stand-ins for any one segment of the queer community. When you’ve got such a colorful cast of characters, you haven’t created avatars through which you speak for specific community members. Instead, you’ve got three-dimensional people who illuminate and refract experiences from those whose identities they may share.
But let’s go back to Julian for a second. Specifically, when Noah walks in on Julian sniffing the underwear he left behind. It’s a moment so awash in kink and potential embarrassment that I was delighted to see it played instead as a tender (if bumbling) moment of flirty courtship between daddy Noah and sweet Julian. If the episode aims to pit (or if not pit, at least juxtapose) Marvin’s transactional if hands-on take on sex with Julian’s more cagey if romantic approach to hooking up, it’s soon clear that neither fits neatly into their tidy little boxes. The former may cloak himself in a wry knowingness that allows him to see his sex-worker paramour as a man to have at his beck and call and thus neuter any kind of rejection he may otherwise anticipate, but, similarly, the latter finds that a picture-perfect date with a picture-perfect guy (A+ casting of Nyle DiMarco, folks!) may not always be what it seems.
The bittersweet endings we get for both storylines are crushing because you know Marvin and Julian’s insecurities are real, are born out of past experiences, and are as much armor as they are scars. I almost wished this had been a kind of bottle episode that just focused on these twinned storylines with their steamy sex scenes and ability to center disability when it comes to sex and desire so effortlessly. Instead, we stumble over additional storylines featuring the rest of our cast that couldn’t measure up. Why is Noah, who, last we heard, is a successful lawyer, begrudgingly deciding to become a one-time go-go dancer in a wrestling singlet for Marvin’s party? Why are Shar and Ruthie going to an upscale restaurant for their anniversary when such a venue feels so out of character for both? Why is Brodie caught in a 1980s film about how babysitting is hard?
At least Mingus finally showed us what Bussey’s Drag School is all about: surprise! Drag isn’t merely an art form or a form of self-expression. It is/can also be a tool for self-empowerment, self-knowledge, and self-love! But only if you allow it. The young teenager may not be quite ready for the requisite self-disclosure that Bussey wants out of them. How to present a version of yourself in drag if you’re constantly hiding who you are and what you’re going through in your everyday life? You can’t don a mask onstage if what’s behind it is merely another mask that keeps you from truly showing yourself to the world.
That scene where Mingus finally begins to open up about what has become their newest trauma and what may well drive their new drag incarnation is touching because they articulate something QAF is slowly and carefully exploring: How can queer art respond to trauma without being subsumed by it? Mingus may slowly be figuring that out for themselves, but the show is firmly focused on making that question legible at every turn; some turn to nightlife (Ghost Fag), others to sex (and sex workers), others to family (like a pair of twins), others still to the comfort of a stranger (even if they also turn out to be a sex worker who leaves their phone lying around), but they’re all trying to find ways of building something for themselves that help them move onward, forward, slowly picking up the pieces of a broken mirror so as to create a mirrored ball that illuminates the spaces they wish to inhabit. It’s as lovely a mission statement as anything else we could have expected from a 2022 reboot and a message many of us could heed as a guiding North Star as Pride season continues.
Fun as F - - -
• “You look like Emily in Paris.” A READ. (Also, delivering a line about poppers while wearing said Emily in Paris outfit? Iconic. Never change, Juliette Lewis).
• Speaking of outfits and ensembles, I’ve talked about the show’s fab costume design, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also spotlight the work of Bailey Domke, the makeup-department head, and Everett Brannon, the show’s key makeup artist. Every time I see Mingus’s gorgeously beat face (their eye shadow!), I’m reminded that those little details make this show feel so textured and lived-in. There’s a hyperstylized aesthetic to parts of it, but it’s the more grounded tidbits (like Brodie’s body glitter or Ruthie’s “going out” make-up) that elevate this and make QAF one of the most fabulous-looking shows this side of Euphoria.
• I want to spend some time talking about my most recent favorite storytelling trope in contemporary series: typing/deleting/retyping text messages. For the longest time, TV series and movies could never quite figure out how best to grapple with how a lot of us communicate via our phones (shout out to Insecure, which contains among the best depictions). Too often, text messages, for instance, were used for lazy exposition or to move the plot forward in a way that felt all too sterile. Watching Mingus agonize over what to text Brodie and then painfully wait to see what they’d respond (something we had seen Brodie himself do with his texts with Noah and, later still, with Julian’s use of Brodie’s phone to lure Noah their way) was a reminder that QAF keenly understands that these exchanges exist and take up space in our heads just as much as they do on our screens (how many conversations have we had/typed out before outright deleting them when we realize self-editing is the best way to temper potential conflict?).
