It’s apt that the first lyrics we hear in the second episode of Queer As Folk, which takes place six weeks after the tragedy at Babylon, are “Hot, hot, hot†(courtesy of Last Artful, Dodgr’s “Hotâ€). Because even as we begin with a dour reminder of what took place all those weeks ago, our cast of characters is otherwise preoccupied. They’re each laying in bed — lounging, more like. And soon, they begin coping with the mess that is their lives by making, well, the kind of mess a lot of us make when we want to ignore the life around us. And yes, kudos to the QAF team for giving, in true Girls-style, an actual come shot that immediately made me want to ring up the props master to learn how they got the consistency (and the trajectory!) oh so accurate.
Getting off, as it turns out, is on everyone’s minds. And such is the through-line of this sophomore outing, which finds ways of making sex central to how we understand Stephen Dunn’s reimagined QAF characters. Take Ruthie, who gives the episode its title. The onslaught of motherhood and the loss of whatever freedom she once enjoyed (and which Brodie’s arrival has reawakened, in a way) has left us feeling adrift. Shar (Candace Grace) worries that, without aptly coping with the trauma of the events at Babylon, Ruthie is obsessing over her sexual needs — no wonder she’s found her masturbating any which way like she’s a teenager all over again.
And actually, the entirety of Ruthie’s arc in this episode is so beautifully realized and explored that it may well excuse any small quibbles I may have with the episode otherwise (see below). Because one of the things I realized I am most enjoying about this rebooted Queer As Folk is the way that, like its predecessors, it’s fostering conversations that happen within the queer community and that can only happen within the queer community. Not because we should be afraid of having them in public but because the safe spaces we create for ourselves are where the hardest, thorniest conversations can happen. It’s how a line like “I miss being called a fag†ends up reading like a melancholy confession, mourning an identity marker that always felt as empowering as it was demeaning. Ruthie admitting she wants to think of herself as “a woman of fag experience†is a lovely shorthand for a lot of intersecting identity categories she’s come to experience during her life. And the fact that the show allows her the time to be vulnerable and share these things with Brodie shortly after watching porn and trying to get off just makes it extra sweet.
So is the later conversation she has with Shar when she clarifies why it is that getting off is so important to her and isn’t a mere distraction or a way to shut herself off from the world with vapid, vain concerns. No, desirability for Ruthie is tied up in all sorts of interconnected ways to how she’s seen herself through others eyes and how she tied her own changing body into a knotted sense of possibility and sexuality. “I went from being this super cute gay boy who pretty much everyone wanted to fuck to a trans woman that, well, people just didn’t see me that way anymore,†she shares with Shar. And hearing her explain how she navigated finding pleasure in her own body as she grappled with hormones and the way now the rest of the world saw her is so heartbreaking and lucid and lovely that it gave me hope that what we have here is something very, very special. This isn’t about teaching or educating but is something much more entrancing; it’s a window into vulnerability about the messiness of identity labels that seldom gets explored because we’re often so focused on calcifying those markers in order to establish our place in the world.
It’s why it makes sense we’d begin with solo sessions and end with two couples; sex, after all, the show wants to remind us, is not only a way of connecting with others but a way to connect with ourselves. And it can be just as much an escape from our lives as a way to dive into it headfirst. Ruthie and Shar are clearly on one end of that spectrum; Noah and Brodie on the other. Whether they’ll be able to leverage what they’re learning about themselves in the episodes to come is yet to be seen. But boy am I excited to keep going on this journey with them.
Fun As F - - -
• The vigil! I guess we should talk about it. But it’s so much easier to just let it wash over you in all its super-cringey sensibility. “Not survivors … thrivers!†killed me, as did everything else Benito Skinner is doing with his character. We were overdue for a scathing satirical look at the trauma-slash-mourning industrial complex, and we’re in great hands with Skinner, who comes off as just smarmy enough to turn us off and yet palatable enough that you see why he’d get traction elsewhere (and especially online). But also, how skillful of the show to shuttle between such broad comedy and the pathos of the vigil itself.
• I love using recaps to spotlight the behind-the-scenes crew that makes the world of QAF come alive, and I have a feeling I’ll be talking about Cristina Spiridakis’s costume work in every single one of these. After imbuing the likes of Difficult People, High Maintenance, and Betty, Spiridakis here gets a whole swath of a rainbow to work with. And details both big (Mingus’s marbles mall sweater) and small (Shar’s “God Is Trans†tee) are winking reminders that self-fashioning is as integral a part of the queer experience as anything else. Let the FYC Emmy campaign for next year’s awards start now.
• Cruising at the mall! Honestly, the fact that I get to write about how public cruising is an apt character beat for a guy like Julian who would wallow and revel in public spaces that actually keep his privacy intact is so refreshing. The kind of lovely sex-based detail that actually reveals something; this is no mere titillation or needless lurid plot line. Huzzah! (Speaking of, love this queer reclaiming of Aladdin and his (w)hole new world.) And yes, this may mean Julian is turning out to be my favorite character on the show; anyone who can con his way into using another gay man’s phone is a-okay by me.
• “In my defense, that was a particularly sad gum commercial.†Am I insane that I now need to find out if there was an actual gum commercial that made someone in the show’s writers’ room cry?
• I really hope, for all of our sakes, that Noah’s story line gives Johnny Sibilly more to do than just mope and brood. Those are hard one-notes to play over and over again without them feeling stale or boring. And since he’s such a bubbly, fun, charismatic actor, I really want the show to loosen him up a bit, even as the plot requires him to be the dour sourpuss of the ensemble at this moment in time.
• Speaking of Noah, I can’t be the only one who didn’t really follow why Brodie and Julian would move in with him. It might be the only narrative misstep of the series so far (too “sitcom premise†for my tastes), but it does help bring these characters closer together. Which, again, feels more like a plot device than a move rooted in organically developing these story lines. But maybe it’ll pay off in future episodes? We’ll see!