Queer as Folk: Season 5 Premiere
By: Mark Runyon | Category: Show Archive | 05/27/05 | 06:14 PM
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 Grade: B |
Genre: Drama
Summary: While it's still lugging around a lot of soap opera baggage, the season premiere has shown a lot of promise by getting back to the roots of what made the series magnetic in the beginning.
The boys of Liberty Avenue are back opening their fifth and final season of Queer as Folk. It doesn't seem like five years have passed since the Showtime series began the Herculean task of opening minds through their raw portrayal of gay and lesbian life, helping to pave the way for other series like the L Word. It's first season marked the first time that gay and lesbian characters really took center stage and weren't a comedic device for their heterosexual cast members to apply tired stereotypes. Folk has never shied away from the gritty realities of gay life, frequently including explicit sex scenes and raw dialog that would make the major networks squirm in their seats. Though the story of these lives is finding its way to an end, the imprint of this show will be felt in programming long after the music stops and the dance floor vacates at Babylon. |
This wasn't a write-up I was planning on doing this week because the show has of late, well sucked to put it mildly. What started out as a cutting edge drama, focused on the uncensored look at gay male life in Pittsburg, has become so watered down that it resembles Will & Grace more than the early days of Folk. It's very disheartening to see a once great show get mired down in trite relationship fodder and generic storylines, effectively extracting the poison from the bite. In my eyes, the couplification of Folk killed this drama, ruthlessly domesticating the show until it resembled some boring hetero soap opera. You have to admit single people tend to get themselves stuck in many more interesting, sticky situations than there plain Jane couple counterparts. Just look at Friends in the yawn comitted relationship years versus the dynamic single years. The writers must have felt the life painfully draining out of their precious series because as we open this new season, they've seen fit to dose the Folk universe with a bit of pizzazz to give them a proper farewell.
When we left our Folk last season, the boys were completing the trek from Canada to Pittsburg in the grueling Liberty Ride. Ben (Robert Gant) and Michael (Hal Sparks) got married in Canada in the series symbolic gesture to weigh in on the raging debate over homosexual marriage, cropping up in every burrow in the country. Melanie had her baby, and Melanie (Michelle Clunie) and Lindsey (Thea Gill) are still on the rocks after Lindsey's momentary lapse into infidelity with a (gasp!) man. Justin (Randy Harrison) is in Hollywood producing the feature length film Rage based on the comic he and Michael created. Snap back to the present, where the opening scene at Babylon seems to signal the direction of the new season. Michael and Brian (Gale Harold) are doing their usual plutonic dance thing that has become their signature when Michael comments how "Nothing changes, everything's the same." It's an ominous statement taunting the winds of change to sweep through their sedentary lives.
Michael and Ben have become so bland and domesticated they look like Ozzie and Harriet. They have slowly become the two most boring characters on the show and they seem to be wallowing in that boredom. Per Ben's prodding, they purchase a home on the other side of town to get away from the excesses of young gay culture forever present on Liberty Avenue. Brian has started lovingly referring to them as the "Stepford fags." Brian is every trace as cool and suave as we've come to know as he fills the role of Nip/Tuck's Christian Troy in the Queer world. He's resigned himself to the fact that Justin has found greener pastures with tighter abs and bigger packages in L.A. He smears over that hurt in blowjobs and by tasting the latest man candy at Babylon. The burgeoning success of his new advertising agency, Kinnetic, has afforded him some extra cash to plug into a new toy. When Babylon gets put on the auction block after getting shut down for illegal activities, Brian couldn't think of a better place to call his own. What he wasn't expecting was, that in the short transition of ownership, all the boys would find a new dance heaven to wish the night away.
Melanie and Lindsey officially swap out their 10 years of domestic bliss for separate living spaces and custody arrangements with the kids. It's nice to see that heterosexuals don't have the monopoly on screwing up relationships. When all of their friends throw a surprise party to celebrate their anniversary, Lindsey shatters their friend's world with the truth of the break. The news sends "I must to take everything personal" Michael into a tailspin, hiring a lawyer to fight for custody rights over the new child because he doesn't feel like a single mom can provide a stable living environment, which of course sparks Debbie (Sharon Gless) to chew her son a new one.
Teddy (Scott Lowell) has packed on the pounds in the off season and seems to like his new look until his latest boy toy starts fawning over him for how fat and old he looks. This triggers Ted's mid-life crisis about 15 years early. Emmett (Peter Paige) parlays his event planner gig into becoming the resident Queer Guy for the Channel 5 News team. The show's writers seem to be having a bit of fun at the expense of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. They also are looking to punch out a few demons along the way. As Justin is compiling storyboards for Rage, we discover our heroes' arch nemesis is a wild boar spouting messages of hatred and bigotry from the pulpit of the church. That's the kind of jabs that this show has been missing. Unfortunately, the show's creators don't see fit to leave Justin in L.A. so Brian can continue his philandering ways. Rage tumbles onto the studio's ax as the moneymen weasel out in early-production to back The Passion of Moses. "Gay is out, God is in," replies the fickle movie producer.
While Queer as Folk is still lugging around a lot of soap opera baggage, the season premiere has shown a lot of promise by getting back to the roots of what made the series magnetic in the beginning. It seems to be crumpling up the TV movie of the week storylines to instead focus on deeper issues that affect all of our lives in this changing world. The dialog seems to be sharper and the characters are beginning to show some new dimensions. It remains to be seen if this is a return to the days of uncensored gay America that doesn't apologize for being queer, but it's a great start that will hopefully provide a fitting close to this groundbreaking series.
Catch Queer as Folk on Showtime Sunday's 10pm ET/PT.
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