Queer As Folk Recap, Episode 1.22
Huzzah, hooray, and glory be! I have finally made it to the end of Season One of Queer As Folk! From the depths of dullness that was the previous episode, the first season finale pulls itself up a long, long ascent for an absolutely brilliant final eight minutes or so.
Queer As Folk 1.22
We’ve got one of our Artsy Openings for this one. Brian shtups away like a machine against his dramatic blue bed lights while his chums pop up on Sesame-Street-like squares all chatting on the phone to each other about where “the condemned man” might be spending “his last moments.” Are they all in one giant phone conversation? Didn’t party lines go out of style in the 1970s or something? Oh, and did I mention the boxing bell that goes “ding” every few seconds or so? Someone’s been sniffing around in Blake’s pockets, I think.
More of the special effects budget goes down the drain as we switch to Brian’s perspective the next morning, which looks suspiciously like an irised-in fish-eye lens. The rest of the cast crowd into its view, cooing to Brian to wake up and see whatever godawful horror they have prepared for him.
It’s Brian’s 30th birthday, and the rest of the cast have chosen to celebrate this with a death-themed party, complete with coffin and tombstone-shaped birthday cake (which reveals, incidentally, that it’s 2001, and that Brian was born in 1971). Brian is . . . ambivalent about the whole thing. He recognizes that his friends see this as a loving prank, but he really does have lots of issues with the idea of aging and turning thirty. Justin, who is eighteen, rubs his youth in Brian’s face. Mike, who is already thirty, and Ted, who is a few years older, mock Brian only a tad bit more gently.
Brian was already in a pissy mood, and the “deathday” party doesn’t cheer him up. He retaliates by dropping the bomb that his New York job offer fell through. No one quite knows what to think about this.
After the party, Mike returns to The Architectural House to find David directing the movers about what boxes to ship off to Portland and what to put into storage. Everything in the house has been packed into one or the other of these categories, including Mike’s things, as he is horrified to discover. Yes, David just packed up all Mike’s stuff without his knowledge or his input. And rented them a house off the Internet, sight unseen. Isn’t he just the guy you’d want to abandon your entire life to move three time zones away for?
Over at Mel’s law firm, Ted and, surprisingly, Emmett, have shown up to collect Blake to take him out for lunch. How did Ted get Emmett to agree to sit through an entire meal with Blake? We don’t know, and it turns out to be a moot point, since Blake didn’t show up to work today. It’s not the first time, either, and when he does show up, he does terrible work. Given that he has no discernable marketable skills of any kind, this comes as a surprise to no one - not even Ted, really, even as he sails toward the equator, searching for the source of Denial.
Vic, Debbie, and Jennifer are stuffing envelopes and discussing some PFLAG function or other. Enter Justin, and before he can get three words out of his mouth, Debbie informs him that he will be going to the PFLAG Barbecue with Jennifer. Sounds like a hoot and a half. It’s a family affair, which causes Deb to begin mourning the fact that her thirty-year-old “little boy” is cutting the apron strings. Jennifer’s offer to share Justin doesn’t improve her mood, since Justin is about to graduate from high school. The prom is coming up, and Vic supplies the requisite “when I was a kid” prom nostalgia, making a truly nasty comment about his unattractive prom date. Oh, for a time machine and a chance to switch out his prom date for someone . . . different.
Of course, Vic really wanted to take a boy named Lance Rocko, and I kind of suspect that the reason he couldn’t had less to do with the whole same-sex prom date issue than with the fact that people named “Lance Rocko” tend to be a very specialized sort of thespian rather than high school students.
Justin bravos that he’s not going to prom because it’s for straight kids, which makes Deb and Jen drop their jaws in horror and start in on how prom is a rite of passage and they’d hate to see him deprive himself of the experience because he thinks he doesn’t belong. The more I watch this scene, the more I think it’s a really sneaky move on Justin’s part. Not everyone goes to their high school prom, and I think there are probably more straight kids than gay kids who don’t go. They don’t go because they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to, or for any number of reasons, and this late in the game, no one really cares all that much. But adults care a lot about proms and their symbolism. If you’re a teenager who wants some attention, there’s no better way to do it than to turn the prom into a political issue.
Ted sits at home listening to Offenbach. Who should come Bach but Blake, gasping and giggly, and clearly having enjoyed quite a bit of magical white powder. Ted tries to have a Serious Conversation with Blake, but Blake is way too high to pay attention, and attempts to jump Ted’s bones instead. Ted tries to protest, but the lure of the pretty blond boy is too strong.
Angels and Devils night at Babylon. Emmett is trying to come to grips with the idea that Mike will be leaving their little Babylon group, and he wonders if there’s any place like Babylon in Portland. From what I know of Portland, I’d guess that there are plenty of clubs, but from what I know of David, it’s a sure bet that Mike won’t get a chance to find out. Emmett decides to channel his emotion into throwing Mike a flannel-themed farewell party, which is a lovely, sweet idea. My friends did that for me right before I left Chicago, and I appreciated it enormously. Emmett is someone I’d love to have for a friend.
Brian listens to Emmett emoting, and his pissy mood darkens even more. He does something utterly in character, taking his hurt and upset and his envy of Mike for getting a chance that Brian wishes he had (in this case, leaving Pittsburgh) and snapping out an uncomfortable truth in the most aggressive and hurtful way possible. He wonders what Mike’s going to do in Portland, now that David has packed him up like so much bric-a-brac. Mike doesn’t really have an answer to that, but the look on his face is the look of a small animal illuminated by the headlights of a very large vehicle.
Truth Bomb dropped, Brian wanders off, only to be waylaid by Justin, who invites Brian to prom with him. Brian initially stares at him, stupefied by the naïve dumbassery of the invitation. Justin is all about going to the prom with the male date that he loves, and has to be reminded that, in this instance, Brian is exactly like most thirty-year-olds in that he instinctively recoils in horror at the prospect of spending an evening dressed up at a party full of hormonal eighteen-year-olds. Seriously, one thing that I suspect that adults of every sexuality can get together on is the idea that prom becomes exponentially less appealing once you are actually out of high school.
Emmett is breakfasting at the diner when Ted limps in, worn out from a night of cavorting with Blake. That close up, even Ted could no longer deny the reality of Blake’s problem, and he spits bitterly at Emmett to make himself feel better. Emmett is sympathetic, but pragmatic in his advice to Ted: kick Blake out and change the locks. Ted is aghast at the idea of abandoning Blake to his fate, but as Emmett lays out the realities of dating a meth addict, you can totally see his point. There is a particular kind of person who has the strength of character needed to love someone in the grip of so self-destructive a problem, and Ted is not that kind of person. He whimpers to Emmett in horror, so Emmett suggests rehab as an alternative.
Over at Smug Exeter Academy, Chris Hobbes knocks Justin down in the hallway, just to remind us that he’s the school’s Resident Homophobic Bully, since we haven’t seen him in a while. Daphne comes to Justin’s rescue, all post-sex weirdness forgotten. Huzzah! It’s always a joy to see Daphne in this show. Conversation turns to the prom, and Justin hits on the much better idea of going with Daphne, just as friends (which I think is how half the straight kids end up going to prom anyway).
We cut to Brian and Lindsay, shopping at a high-end men’s store that may well be the same place as Ted and Blake went last episode - the décor is similar, at least - where Lindsay coos about how adorable it is that Justin asked Brian to prom, and then smugly insults Brian, which says a lot about Lindsay right there. Line Of The Episode goes to Brian in this scene. After Lindsay waxes just a little too cheaply poetic about the quiet joys of aging gracefully, Brian shoots back, “That’s from the ‘La Jeunesse’ anti-aging commercial. I wrote that fucking copy.” Game, set, and match. Nice to see you, Lindsay, thanks for playing. Brian buys himself a white silk aviator scarf as a thirtieth birthday present.
Mike rifles through an increasingly empty closet at The Architectural House looking for a flannel shirt for the party. David has packed it, but tosses Mike one of his own castoffs without so much as a backward glance. Increasingly disturbed by how little David cares about him, he tries to initiate a discussion about what sort of a life he might make for himself in Portland, ways in which he can find opportunities to grow and change as a person. David takes the opportunity to grown and change as an asshat, and cuts him off to go put up screen doors. Mike just stands there with his mouth open, forming a perfect target for the This Is A Terrible Idea Fairy to smack him with her baseball bat.
The party looks like fun, at least. Emmett has chosen lumberjacks rather than hipsters as his Portland theme, but everyone’s enjoying themselves anyway, which is the main thing. Emmett is inappropriate, Ted is misogynistic, and Brian is . . . absent.
Brian is in fact throwing himself a Very Special Party, involving candles, fine whiskey, fresh poppers, music, and his new, silky, sexy aviator scarf. His issues about aging are far more real than any of his friends suspected, and he’s in a dark, dark mood.
Tearful goodbyes are happening over at the Lumberjack Party, topped off by Debbie, who can’t bear to let Mike go upon hugging him. After Mike is forcibly freed from his mother’s suffocating embrace, he bequeaths her to Justin. Aww. Ted takes the occasion of a goodbye party to deliver a “rehab or the highway” speech to Blake. David offhandedly takes the occasion to mention to Mike that he changed the time of their flight. Mike wonders why David didn’t think to tell him this when he did it, and David answers blankly, “Well, does it matter?” Man, this relationship has more red flags on it than the Kremlin on May Day.
The marching soldiers and the rousing choruses of the “Internationale” finally penetrate Mike’s thick skull, and he blows up at David, angrily explaining how much he resents being treated like a cross between a pet, a child, and a trophy wife. David just walks away.
Over at Brian’s, we see that his “party” is also starting to slide off the deep end. He’s using the scarf as a prop in an extremely dangerous autoerotic asphyxiation game. I don’t think he’s actively suicidal - he’s smart enough that, if he really wanted to kill himself, he’d be more efficient about it - but he is doing the very Brian thing of acting out dark, powerful emotions that he can’t bring himself to put into words, and in this moment, the process of acting out is much more important to him than the question of whether he lives or dies.
Fortunately for Gale Herold’s continuing paycheck, Mike shows up and cuts Brian down. They exchange angry, hurt, loving words, with Brian attempting to talk about his fears of his own image and power, and Mike showering Brian with the spiky, intense love and assurance that Brian craves. There’s a look in Brian’s eye right at the end of the scene, after Mike kisses him on the mouth and wraps him up in a desperate hug, that just sells this scene for me. It’s soft, private, sad, and utterly relieved that someone found him and cared enough to be angry at him. I love that little look, probably the clearest look at the inner core of Brian Kinney that we ever see in the whole series.
We lighten up just a little with Ted fumbling through dropping Blake off at rehab, leaving him with a gift copy of La Traviata. Some couples have “their song,” but Blake and Ted have “their opera.” Aww. All seems well, except that Blake now realizes that Ted lied to him. The lovers in La Traviata don’t live happily ever after. Ted tries to cover with a limp sequel joke, and waves goodbye.
David is taking off, and he’s pissed at Mike. For once, Mike retorts, the issue in their relationship isn’t Brian. It’s David. He makes another impassioned effort to shake David out of his cloud of smug narcissism, but it makes as little impression on David as when Hank tried it back in Episode Fifteen. I am so totally not going to miss David when he goes to Portland. Mike may or may not go after all. Depends on if David can flatter-shame him enough to entice him away anyway.
It’s Prom Night! Over at Deb’s house, Your MC, Emmett Hunnicutt, trumpets in Justin, all dressed up in a tuxedo, looking like . . . well, like a high school boy in a tuxedo. No matter what their proud mothers (and mother-substitutes) say, boys don’t actually grow into tuxedos until they’re around twenty-five or so. But Justin pulls it off reasonably well, considering that Randy Harrison was actually around the right age to fill out a tux.
Prom turns out to be pretty much what you’d expect. Lights, bad music, an arch made of balloons (do those appear at any other occasion besides a prom?), and teenagers in formal wear bopping around stiffly.
Quick cut to rehab, where Ted and Emmett discover that Blake has checked himself out and run away, leaving behind the CD of La Traviata, and incidentally proving that he has a much deeper understanding of the way opera works than Ted ever will.
Back at prom, Brian shows up! Justin and Daphne stare in ramp-shot shock, possibly at the realization that their school’s prom chaperones really will let any random stranger off the street into a high school dance. How much are their parents paying to send them to this place again?
Brian thrills Daphne with a kiss and gracefully removes her from the scene so that he can dance with Justin. He’s wearing his silk scarf and a nice suit, and looks ten times more natural in it than any of the kids who actually bought tickets to the dance. He and Justin proceed onto the dance floor, which obligingly switches over to Ben E. King’s “Save The Last Dance For Me,” shines a spotlight on them, and, I don’t know, maybe electrifies the floor to chase off all the other dancing couples so that Brian and Justin can have Their Moment, just like a cheap-ass movie musical. They dance a number that is expertly choreographed to be recognizably romantic-ish, highlight Randy Harrison’s dancing skills, and disguise Gale Herold’s lack of same. Kudos, mad props, and cheers to the choreographer! Daphne giggles with glee. Chris Hobbes snarls in anger. Most of the rest of the students just look puzzled.
All alone, Mike stares at his old-school paper plane ticket. Should he go to Portland or should he decline? Why is this even a question?
Brian and Justin are still dancing, falling further into cliché with every turn, dip, and twirl. They dance and dance and dance. I notice that there doesn’t seem to be a Prom Queen or Prom King anywhere in evidence. I guess this means that no one is going to put on any displays of telekinesis, either.
Mike dashes madly through a pre-9/11 airport, dashing through security in a way that would become but a fond memory less than a year after this scene aired.
Brian and Justin dance out to the parking garage. Well, Brian walks, but Justin is singing and dancing on air, giddy and happy enough for both of them. A few other people are leaving as well. Brian presses Justin up against his car and kisses him, and allows as how he just might have enjoyed himself despite himself. Justin smiles dreamily as Brian lets him go. Brian gets into his car and allows himself a fond glance in the side mirror. He smiles back as Justin floats away, and his smile turns to terror when he sees Chris Hobbs stalking up with a baseball bat . . . that he brought to prom because why? It doesn’t matter why. Chris, who has been consistently let off the hook time after time as his bullying of Justin escalates from insults to physical assault to property damage, finally takes it to attempted homicide, smashing Justin’s head with the bat just as Brian calls out a warning to Justin.
Justin drops like a rock, and Brian gets there just after the nick of time. He wrests the bat away from Chris and kneecaps him with it before falling to his knees next to Justin and screaming out his helplessness to the suddenly empty parking garage.
Over at the airport, Mike is actually trying to jam his carryon bag into one of those size indicators that no one actually uses in real life. It’s stupid, but it keeps him out of the jetway and off of the plane for a crucial few seconds, in which his phone rings in a distinctly fateful way. He pauses, just inside the jetway. David ponders the empty airplane seat next to him.
We look directly down on the back of an ambulance as the paramedics open the doors to pull out a gurney. Justin is lying on the gurney, wearing a cervical collar and many pints of blood. On its own, it’s effective and scary, especially since the music is one of the show’s best choices yet. Jan Garabek and the Hilliard Ensemble, from their 1994 album Officium, playing “Parce Mihi Domine,” a jazz saxophone version of a selection from a 16th-century Spanish Requiem mass by Cristóbal de Morales. It’s a fantastic piece of music, well worth listening to in its own right, and it sets just the right tone of solemn, mortal uncertainty for this scene.
It’s actually even more interesting to observe that this particular visual effect - the shot straight down on an ambulance disgorging a severely, potentially fatally, wounded patient - had already been used in another high-profile television series during that same season. This episode of Queer As Folk aired in June of 2001. But back in October of 2000 (the beginning of that TV season), The West Wing used the same setup to show the arrival of Josh Lyman at the hospital, where he would spend the two-part season opener undergoing lengthy surgery to save his life after he was shot by white supremacists in a dramatic assassination attempt against President Josiah Bartlet.
It’s a brilliant shot in both shows, conveying both the real precariousness of the situation for Justin and for Josh and yet also holding out the thread of hope that they will survive. The West Wing used it as an energetic beginning, following it up with a mad dash into the ER, and a delirious conversation between Josh and his friend Sam Seaborn propelling the show into a series of “how the cast met” flashbacks. Here, in Queer As Folk, it comes at the end of a season, and the followup is in stunned slow motion, as Brian exits the ambulance, the bloodied silk scarf dangling from his hand.
As he waits, lost and terrified, in the hospital hallway, Mike appears at his side, offering the wordless physical comfort that will allow Brian to let out the grief that he finds so difficult to express.
Of course, there’s always a flaw in the ointment, and some idiot decides to supplement the Baseball Bat of Homophobic Assault with the Clue Bat of Cheap Callbacks. We get a slo-mo shot of Brian and Mike and Justin dashing down the corridor of the hospital the night that Gus was born. Fortunately, common sense reigns victorious, and we end by returning to the much more powerful image of Brian’s silent tears. Garabek and the Hilliard Ensemble take us into the credits.
So. Season One of Queer As Folk. Its flaws are many and large, but its successes are equally grandiose. What it lacks in subtlety it makes up in heart, and what it lacks in logic and common sense it makes up with wit and a few memorable characters. As strange and, at times, unpleasant as they are, they are certainly compelling enough to make you want to follow them and see what Season Two will bring for them.
Queer As Folk 1.22
We’ve got one of our Artsy Openings for this one. Brian shtups away like a machine against his dramatic blue bed lights while his chums pop up on Sesame-Street-like squares all chatting on the phone to each other about where “the condemned man” might be spending “his last moments.” Are they all in one giant phone conversation? Didn’t party lines go out of style in the 1970s or something? Oh, and did I mention the boxing bell that goes “ding” every few seconds or so? Someone’s been sniffing around in Blake’s pockets, I think.
More of the special effects budget goes down the drain as we switch to Brian’s perspective the next morning, which looks suspiciously like an irised-in fish-eye lens. The rest of the cast crowd into its view, cooing to Brian to wake up and see whatever godawful horror they have prepared for him.
It’s Brian’s 30th birthday, and the rest of the cast have chosen to celebrate this with a death-themed party, complete with coffin and tombstone-shaped birthday cake (which reveals, incidentally, that it’s 2001, and that Brian was born in 1971). Brian is . . . ambivalent about the whole thing. He recognizes that his friends see this as a loving prank, but he really does have lots of issues with the idea of aging and turning thirty. Justin, who is eighteen, rubs his youth in Brian’s face. Mike, who is already thirty, and Ted, who is a few years older, mock Brian only a tad bit more gently.
Brian was already in a pissy mood, and the “deathday” party doesn’t cheer him up. He retaliates by dropping the bomb that his New York job offer fell through. No one quite knows what to think about this.
After the party, Mike returns to The Architectural House to find David directing the movers about what boxes to ship off to Portland and what to put into storage. Everything in the house has been packed into one or the other of these categories, including Mike’s things, as he is horrified to discover. Yes, David just packed up all Mike’s stuff without his knowledge or his input. And rented them a house off the Internet, sight unseen. Isn’t he just the guy you’d want to abandon your entire life to move three time zones away for?
Over at Mel’s law firm, Ted and, surprisingly, Emmett, have shown up to collect Blake to take him out for lunch. How did Ted get Emmett to agree to sit through an entire meal with Blake? We don’t know, and it turns out to be a moot point, since Blake didn’t show up to work today. It’s not the first time, either, and when he does show up, he does terrible work. Given that he has no discernable marketable skills of any kind, this comes as a surprise to no one - not even Ted, really, even as he sails toward the equator, searching for the source of Denial.
Vic, Debbie, and Jennifer are stuffing envelopes and discussing some PFLAG function or other. Enter Justin, and before he can get three words out of his mouth, Debbie informs him that he will be going to the PFLAG Barbecue with Jennifer. Sounds like a hoot and a half. It’s a family affair, which causes Deb to begin mourning the fact that her thirty-year-old “little boy” is cutting the apron strings. Jennifer’s offer to share Justin doesn’t improve her mood, since Justin is about to graduate from high school. The prom is coming up, and Vic supplies the requisite “when I was a kid” prom nostalgia, making a truly nasty comment about his unattractive prom date. Oh, for a time machine and a chance to switch out his prom date for someone . . . different.
Of course, Vic really wanted to take a boy named Lance Rocko, and I kind of suspect that the reason he couldn’t had less to do with the whole same-sex prom date issue than with the fact that people named “Lance Rocko” tend to be a very specialized sort of thespian rather than high school students.
Justin bravos that he’s not going to prom because it’s for straight kids, which makes Deb and Jen drop their jaws in horror and start in on how prom is a rite of passage and they’d hate to see him deprive himself of the experience because he thinks he doesn’t belong. The more I watch this scene, the more I think it’s a really sneaky move on Justin’s part. Not everyone goes to their high school prom, and I think there are probably more straight kids than gay kids who don’t go. They don’t go because they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to, or for any number of reasons, and this late in the game, no one really cares all that much. But adults care a lot about proms and their symbolism. If you’re a teenager who wants some attention, there’s no better way to do it than to turn the prom into a political issue.
Ted sits at home listening to Offenbach. Who should come Bach but Blake, gasping and giggly, and clearly having enjoyed quite a bit of magical white powder. Ted tries to have a Serious Conversation with Blake, but Blake is way too high to pay attention, and attempts to jump Ted’s bones instead. Ted tries to protest, but the lure of the pretty blond boy is too strong.
Angels and Devils night at Babylon. Emmett is trying to come to grips with the idea that Mike will be leaving their little Babylon group, and he wonders if there’s any place like Babylon in Portland. From what I know of Portland, I’d guess that there are plenty of clubs, but from what I know of David, it’s a sure bet that Mike won’t get a chance to find out. Emmett decides to channel his emotion into throwing Mike a flannel-themed farewell party, which is a lovely, sweet idea. My friends did that for me right before I left Chicago, and I appreciated it enormously. Emmett is someone I’d love to have for a friend.
Brian listens to Emmett emoting, and his pissy mood darkens even more. He does something utterly in character, taking his hurt and upset and his envy of Mike for getting a chance that Brian wishes he had (in this case, leaving Pittsburgh) and snapping out an uncomfortable truth in the most aggressive and hurtful way possible. He wonders what Mike’s going to do in Portland, now that David has packed him up like so much bric-a-brac. Mike doesn’t really have an answer to that, but the look on his face is the look of a small animal illuminated by the headlights of a very large vehicle.
Truth Bomb dropped, Brian wanders off, only to be waylaid by Justin, who invites Brian to prom with him. Brian initially stares at him, stupefied by the naïve dumbassery of the invitation. Justin is all about going to the prom with the male date that he loves, and has to be reminded that, in this instance, Brian is exactly like most thirty-year-olds in that he instinctively recoils in horror at the prospect of spending an evening dressed up at a party full of hormonal eighteen-year-olds. Seriously, one thing that I suspect that adults of every sexuality can get together on is the idea that prom becomes exponentially less appealing once you are actually out of high school.
Emmett is breakfasting at the diner when Ted limps in, worn out from a night of cavorting with Blake. That close up, even Ted could no longer deny the reality of Blake’s problem, and he spits bitterly at Emmett to make himself feel better. Emmett is sympathetic, but pragmatic in his advice to Ted: kick Blake out and change the locks. Ted is aghast at the idea of abandoning Blake to his fate, but as Emmett lays out the realities of dating a meth addict, you can totally see his point. There is a particular kind of person who has the strength of character needed to love someone in the grip of so self-destructive a problem, and Ted is not that kind of person. He whimpers to Emmett in horror, so Emmett suggests rehab as an alternative.
Over at Smug Exeter Academy, Chris Hobbes knocks Justin down in the hallway, just to remind us that he’s the school’s Resident Homophobic Bully, since we haven’t seen him in a while. Daphne comes to Justin’s rescue, all post-sex weirdness forgotten. Huzzah! It’s always a joy to see Daphne in this show. Conversation turns to the prom, and Justin hits on the much better idea of going with Daphne, just as friends (which I think is how half the straight kids end up going to prom anyway).
We cut to Brian and Lindsay, shopping at a high-end men’s store that may well be the same place as Ted and Blake went last episode - the décor is similar, at least - where Lindsay coos about how adorable it is that Justin asked Brian to prom, and then smugly insults Brian, which says a lot about Lindsay right there. Line Of The Episode goes to Brian in this scene. After Lindsay waxes just a little too cheaply poetic about the quiet joys of aging gracefully, Brian shoots back, “That’s from the ‘La Jeunesse’ anti-aging commercial. I wrote that fucking copy.” Game, set, and match. Nice to see you, Lindsay, thanks for playing. Brian buys himself a white silk aviator scarf as a thirtieth birthday present.
Mike rifles through an increasingly empty closet at The Architectural House looking for a flannel shirt for the party. David has packed it, but tosses Mike one of his own castoffs without so much as a backward glance. Increasingly disturbed by how little David cares about him, he tries to initiate a discussion about what sort of a life he might make for himself in Portland, ways in which he can find opportunities to grow and change as a person. David takes the opportunity to grown and change as an asshat, and cuts him off to go put up screen doors. Mike just stands there with his mouth open, forming a perfect target for the This Is A Terrible Idea Fairy to smack him with her baseball bat.
The party looks like fun, at least. Emmett has chosen lumberjacks rather than hipsters as his Portland theme, but everyone’s enjoying themselves anyway, which is the main thing. Emmett is inappropriate, Ted is misogynistic, and Brian is . . . absent.
Brian is in fact throwing himself a Very Special Party, involving candles, fine whiskey, fresh poppers, music, and his new, silky, sexy aviator scarf. His issues about aging are far more real than any of his friends suspected, and he’s in a dark, dark mood.
Tearful goodbyes are happening over at the Lumberjack Party, topped off by Debbie, who can’t bear to let Mike go upon hugging him. After Mike is forcibly freed from his mother’s suffocating embrace, he bequeaths her to Justin. Aww. Ted takes the occasion of a goodbye party to deliver a “rehab or the highway” speech to Blake. David offhandedly takes the occasion to mention to Mike that he changed the time of their flight. Mike wonders why David didn’t think to tell him this when he did it, and David answers blankly, “Well, does it matter?” Man, this relationship has more red flags on it than the Kremlin on May Day.
The marching soldiers and the rousing choruses of the “Internationale” finally penetrate Mike’s thick skull, and he blows up at David, angrily explaining how much he resents being treated like a cross between a pet, a child, and a trophy wife. David just walks away.
Over at Brian’s, we see that his “party” is also starting to slide off the deep end. He’s using the scarf as a prop in an extremely dangerous autoerotic asphyxiation game. I don’t think he’s actively suicidal - he’s smart enough that, if he really wanted to kill himself, he’d be more efficient about it - but he is doing the very Brian thing of acting out dark, powerful emotions that he can’t bring himself to put into words, and in this moment, the process of acting out is much more important to him than the question of whether he lives or dies.
Fortunately for Gale Herold’s continuing paycheck, Mike shows up and cuts Brian down. They exchange angry, hurt, loving words, with Brian attempting to talk about his fears of his own image and power, and Mike showering Brian with the spiky, intense love and assurance that Brian craves. There’s a look in Brian’s eye right at the end of the scene, after Mike kisses him on the mouth and wraps him up in a desperate hug, that just sells this scene for me. It’s soft, private, sad, and utterly relieved that someone found him and cared enough to be angry at him. I love that little look, probably the clearest look at the inner core of Brian Kinney that we ever see in the whole series.
We lighten up just a little with Ted fumbling through dropping Blake off at rehab, leaving him with a gift copy of La Traviata. Some couples have “their song,” but Blake and Ted have “their opera.” Aww. All seems well, except that Blake now realizes that Ted lied to him. The lovers in La Traviata don’t live happily ever after. Ted tries to cover with a limp sequel joke, and waves goodbye.
David is taking off, and he’s pissed at Mike. For once, Mike retorts, the issue in their relationship isn’t Brian. It’s David. He makes another impassioned effort to shake David out of his cloud of smug narcissism, but it makes as little impression on David as when Hank tried it back in Episode Fifteen. I am so totally not going to miss David when he goes to Portland. Mike may or may not go after all. Depends on if David can flatter-shame him enough to entice him away anyway.
It’s Prom Night! Over at Deb’s house, Your MC, Emmett Hunnicutt, trumpets in Justin, all dressed up in a tuxedo, looking like . . . well, like a high school boy in a tuxedo. No matter what their proud mothers (and mother-substitutes) say, boys don’t actually grow into tuxedos until they’re around twenty-five or so. But Justin pulls it off reasonably well, considering that Randy Harrison was actually around the right age to fill out a tux.
Prom turns out to be pretty much what you’d expect. Lights, bad music, an arch made of balloons (do those appear at any other occasion besides a prom?), and teenagers in formal wear bopping around stiffly.
Quick cut to rehab, where Ted and Emmett discover that Blake has checked himself out and run away, leaving behind the CD of La Traviata, and incidentally proving that he has a much deeper understanding of the way opera works than Ted ever will.
Back at prom, Brian shows up! Justin and Daphne stare in ramp-shot shock, possibly at the realization that their school’s prom chaperones really will let any random stranger off the street into a high school dance. How much are their parents paying to send them to this place again?
Brian thrills Daphne with a kiss and gracefully removes her from the scene so that he can dance with Justin. He’s wearing his silk scarf and a nice suit, and looks ten times more natural in it than any of the kids who actually bought tickets to the dance. He and Justin proceed onto the dance floor, which obligingly switches over to Ben E. King’s “Save The Last Dance For Me,” shines a spotlight on them, and, I don’t know, maybe electrifies the floor to chase off all the other dancing couples so that Brian and Justin can have Their Moment, just like a cheap-ass movie musical. They dance a number that is expertly choreographed to be recognizably romantic-ish, highlight Randy Harrison’s dancing skills, and disguise Gale Herold’s lack of same. Kudos, mad props, and cheers to the choreographer! Daphne giggles with glee. Chris Hobbes snarls in anger. Most of the rest of the students just look puzzled.
All alone, Mike stares at his old-school paper plane ticket. Should he go to Portland or should he decline? Why is this even a question?
Brian and Justin are still dancing, falling further into cliché with every turn, dip, and twirl. They dance and dance and dance. I notice that there doesn’t seem to be a Prom Queen or Prom King anywhere in evidence. I guess this means that no one is going to put on any displays of telekinesis, either.
Mike dashes madly through a pre-9/11 airport, dashing through security in a way that would become but a fond memory less than a year after this scene aired.
Brian and Justin dance out to the parking garage. Well, Brian walks, but Justin is singing and dancing on air, giddy and happy enough for both of them. A few other people are leaving as well. Brian presses Justin up against his car and kisses him, and allows as how he just might have enjoyed himself despite himself. Justin smiles dreamily as Brian lets him go. Brian gets into his car and allows himself a fond glance in the side mirror. He smiles back as Justin floats away, and his smile turns to terror when he sees Chris Hobbs stalking up with a baseball bat . . . that he brought to prom because why? It doesn’t matter why. Chris, who has been consistently let off the hook time after time as his bullying of Justin escalates from insults to physical assault to property damage, finally takes it to attempted homicide, smashing Justin’s head with the bat just as Brian calls out a warning to Justin.
Justin drops like a rock, and Brian gets there just after the nick of time. He wrests the bat away from Chris and kneecaps him with it before falling to his knees next to Justin and screaming out his helplessness to the suddenly empty parking garage.
Over at the airport, Mike is actually trying to jam his carryon bag into one of those size indicators that no one actually uses in real life. It’s stupid, but it keeps him out of the jetway and off of the plane for a crucial few seconds, in which his phone rings in a distinctly fateful way. He pauses, just inside the jetway. David ponders the empty airplane seat next to him.
We look directly down on the back of an ambulance as the paramedics open the doors to pull out a gurney. Justin is lying on the gurney, wearing a cervical collar and many pints of blood. On its own, it’s effective and scary, especially since the music is one of the show’s best choices yet. Jan Garabek and the Hilliard Ensemble, from their 1994 album Officium, playing “Parce Mihi Domine,” a jazz saxophone version of a selection from a 16th-century Spanish Requiem mass by Cristóbal de Morales. It’s a fantastic piece of music, well worth listening to in its own right, and it sets just the right tone of solemn, mortal uncertainty for this scene.
It’s actually even more interesting to observe that this particular visual effect - the shot straight down on an ambulance disgorging a severely, potentially fatally, wounded patient - had already been used in another high-profile television series during that same season. This episode of Queer As Folk aired in June of 2001. But back in October of 2000 (the beginning of that TV season), The West Wing used the same setup to show the arrival of Josh Lyman at the hospital, where he would spend the two-part season opener undergoing lengthy surgery to save his life after he was shot by white supremacists in a dramatic assassination attempt against President Josiah Bartlet.
It’s a brilliant shot in both shows, conveying both the real precariousness of the situation for Justin and for Josh and yet also holding out the thread of hope that they will survive. The West Wing used it as an energetic beginning, following it up with a mad dash into the ER, and a delirious conversation between Josh and his friend Sam Seaborn propelling the show into a series of “how the cast met” flashbacks. Here, in Queer As Folk, it comes at the end of a season, and the followup is in stunned slow motion, as Brian exits the ambulance, the bloodied silk scarf dangling from his hand.
As he waits, lost and terrified, in the hospital hallway, Mike appears at his side, offering the wordless physical comfort that will allow Brian to let out the grief that he finds so difficult to express.
Of course, there’s always a flaw in the ointment, and some idiot decides to supplement the Baseball Bat of Homophobic Assault with the Clue Bat of Cheap Callbacks. We get a slo-mo shot of Brian and Mike and Justin dashing down the corridor of the hospital the night that Gus was born. Fortunately, common sense reigns victorious, and we end by returning to the much more powerful image of Brian’s silent tears. Garabek and the Hilliard Ensemble take us into the credits.
So. Season One of Queer As Folk. Its flaws are many and large, but its successes are equally grandiose. What it lacks in subtlety it makes up in heart, and what it lacks in logic and common sense it makes up with wit and a few memorable characters. As strange and, at times, unpleasant as they are, they are certainly compelling enough to make you want to follow them and see what Season Two will bring for them.