QUEER AS FOLK on Showtime!

Wonder what they all look like now. Is Sparks still straight?

Michael’s chiropractor bf was the hottest guy on the show. Showtime is also repeating The L Word this month if anyone cares.

[quote] Wonder what they all look like now. Is Sparks still straight?

Isn't Robert Gant now a motivational speaker? He looks the same.

Not sure about everyone else, but I seriously doubt that Hal Sparks is straight.

He's mid-50's and no girlfriend or wife.

Watching the first episode reminded me of how gays used to meet (yes Im old). You would go to a bar with friends, maybe make eye contact with someone who you were interested in. No internet, no Grinder, no details other than what they looked like in person, how they danced or if you were lucky a brief conversation. If they passed that test you just went somewhere and fucked. If it worked out - great, if it didn't that was okay also. It seemed complicated at the time, but compared to now, it seems so easy/innocent.

That sounds stupid

I always thought it was silly the way a good looking masculine-ish guy like Brian would go after a fem MONKEY like Justin. In the British QAF the Justin character was played by an actor who was much better looking and not queeny .

I binge-watched this show around the time I realized I was gay (alone in my room with headphones of course). It definitely gave me unrealistic expectations about gay nightlife. I've been to some crowded gay bars and clubs but I've never been anywhere even close to Babylon with it's three levels and wall-to-wall gorgeous guys. Brian was kind of a loser, wasn't he?

I have the complete set of DVDs.

And the DVDs have the real music.

Justin on British QAF was played by a young Charlie Hunnam.

Ted was a Republican.

R10-Wasn't he much better looking and more appealing in general than that blond MONKEY on the American QAF?

Gay sex on TV. It was thrilling at the time.

This has become an annual viewing for me.

The first few times I thought the show was dated.

But watching again, I'm actually becoming fond of the show.

And Hal Sparks was perfect casting for Michael. He was adorable.

Hal Sparks is an odd duck.

His wiki page said he grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons, became a "dungeon master," had a son in 2011 (but no mention of a wife or girlfriend), and he's also a Freemason.

Weird and random.

I watch The L Word, I watch Queer As Fuck.....

Hal seems geeky, eccentric, boyish and sort of asexual to me. Which made him the ideal cast for Michael, I suppose. Even when he curses or talks about sex (which he does a lot in his standup), it comes across oddly.

That said, I don’t think the character Michael was a good cognate for the Stuart character of the original U.K. version. Stuart wasn’t at all childlike or naïve, though he was geeky and socially-awkward.

[quote] Brian was kind of a loser, wasn't he?

Someone online once made the comment, ‘if Brian were poorer and fatter and shorter and had less confidence, he’d be Ted. They’re the same person underneath.’ And it really is true when you break it down. Both are lonely, sex-addicted, pretentious bores; the difference is that Ted starts off self-aware and honest about it, and eventually tries to change his ways in a more realistic manner.

I remember Ted being kind of ugly but after watching that clip, he's really not bad looking at all. Brain is unbearable. Gucci loafers? Wow so impressive, Brian.

R19 there’s a really funny episode where Ted ends up at a function with lots of single women in their 30s and 40s who don’t know he’s gay, and many of them are shown to find him attractive and try to hit on him.

The joke with Ted is that he isn’t generally hideous or ancient or an absolute loser, except by the stringent standards of young urban party gays.

Unpopular opinion: I found Aidan Gillen much hotter than Gale Harold as Stuart/Brian. Also the brit version somehow mangaged to make the already over the top annoying Michael character even more annoying.

R20- Ted's unattractiveness on the show was SO exaggerated. He was actually good looking. He was lacking in confidence and a bit meek.

It would have been interesting if they had a character who truly was someone that would be invisible in the bars and clubs-someone short and fat for instance.

I thought Ted was the cutest and most appealing guy on the show. Brian looked like he wore the same underwear 2 weeks in a row.

R23- While Ted's unattractiveness was exaggerated simultaneously Brian's HOTNESS was exaggerated.

Michael's chiropractor boyfriend (Chris Potter) was really handsome and hot.

Why did they drop him from the show? He was definitely a keeper.

I'm also surprised that he's married with four kids in real life.

I wonder what the kids think about dear old dad playing gay on television?

Chris Potter and Hal Sparks were very hot together.

They had real chemistry.

I wonder if they fucked in real life?

Showering...

What a waste! Of course Hal is gay but was so fucking triggered about people finding out he's still on the DL. LAME!

Back in his QAF days he could have had so much dick up his ass! Shame.

[quote]Showtime is also repeating The L Word this month if anyone cares.

If they want to revisit early 21st Century gay programming, they should do a triple feature with Queer as Folk, L Word, and Noah's Arc. That would be fun.

[quote] Wonder what they all look like now.

Justin still wears the same clothes like he's 17 and 2Hot2BeBelieved

Last time I saw Hal Sparks, he had long hair. He still had that youthful look to his face but I've always preferred with him with shorter hair.

Long hair on Hal = "I'm str8 God damn it!"

Why in the fuck won't Hal Sparks ever come out?

It makes no sense to me.

He played gay for five years on television.

He's not married. He doesn't have a girlfriend. And he's 52 years old!

Mary, we all know you're gay. And no one cares!!

[quote]Justin on British QAF was played by a young Charlie Hunnam.

You mean Nathan on the American version of QAF was played by some duck faced guy.

This is Hal from three or four years ago.

He was 49 at the time.

Hal is in surprisingly good shape.

I can't believe that Showtime runs this for the entire month of June.

As a Brit, the U.S. adaptation of QAF makes my senses hurt and is unpleasant to watch. Too glitzy, too jumpy, too noisy, too many grating accents.

[quote] won't Hal Sparks ever come out? It makes no sense to me. He played gay for five years on television. He's not married. He doesn't have a girlfriend.

Does he have a boyfriend or a male lover, though? Has he ever had? No-one seems to know.

Perhaps playing gay in a high-profile role, and a stereotypically-passive/bottom gay at that, has complicated his search for a wife or girlfriend? I'm not condoning that or saying it's right, but more sheltered or traditional straight women can be judgemental like that. Plus women in the entertainment industry with Hal can have their career optics to consider.

R37- We frequently find your accents grating too.

[quote]Showtime is also repeating The L Word this month if anyone cares.

Am I the only gay guy who prefers The L Word to Queer as Folk? I've watched both, but I've watched The L Word right through twice from when it aired and plan to start again soon, and I just enjoy the characters, the actors and the campiness more.

This guy was just on QAF as an extra, and he was really hot.

At first I thought he was straight, but he doesn't seem to have a gf or wife.

Still single at 52.

Anyone know his story? The actor's name is Mark Lutz.

Ted & Blake’s story was the only romance arc I truly cared about and invested in on the show. Their ending felt earned.

The guy who played Justin was in an episode of Mr Robot. He looks pretty much the same so good for him, I guess. I've never seen any of the other cast members except for Gless and Sparks.

It always felt like for QAF Sharon Gless was trying to do a thin take on Lainie Kazan.

I want Hal Sparks’ cum inside me.

[quote]While Ted's unattractiveness was exaggerated

Part of what is going on is that you are re-watching as an older person. Younger people look cuter. So when you were closer to the character's age, you would have been more critical.

I noticed this yesterday, going through old photos. People I never thought were particularly good-looking looked pretty handsome.

[quote] The guy who played Justin was in an episode of Mr Robot. He looks pretty much the same so good for him, I guess.

That's not just good for him, but fantastic.

Especially considering that he's 45 years old this year.

Yep, R46. I turned 40 recently, and I notice these days I find so many more types of men attractive than I did when I was 20.

what season and episode was 1) where justin jacks off that homophobic but studly jerk classmate in that basement while they are wearing their school uniforms, when they are being punished? so so hot, how justin turned him out and got him good! 2) what season was it where that musclebound porn star shows up to seduce and entice emmett?

R47- It's hard to believe how old he is now.

R49 I tried looking it up, but couldn't find it.

It might be season one, episode 4.

Right now, Showtime re-runs are up to season one, episode 13 (as of Friday).

So I guess we both missed it.

But I found a clip, if you're interested. It actually is pretty hot.

R10 Charlie Hunnam was the childhood crush of many a Northern kid, for his role in BYKER GROVE.

Later in life, Charlie garnered man-crush/bi-lust admiration from many a guy, for his part in SONS OF ANARCHY.

Watching season one, it pisses me off that Michael treated Dr. David like absolute shit.

Dr. David was a keeper, but stupid Michael kept chasing dirty Briain.

What a moron.

My first gay bar/club was a bar actually named Babylon in Redondo Beach California. Nothing like the show.

Random notes from someone who also "learned" about gay life as a teen watching QAF

1. They had trouble getting actors to take the role and so wound up with a mix which actually worked in that they portrayed the full masc-femme spectrum of gay men--there was one mincing nellie (Emmett) one semi-femme and the rest were varying degrees of normal.

2. I thought Sparks was wildly miscast. He was a standup, the others were actors and he was constantly mugging for the camera and seemed like he was Special Needs -- he was supposed to be in his 30s.

3, I thought the joke with Ted was that he actually wasn't all that bad looking, he just had no confidence whereas Brian was only marginally better looking, but had a lot of confidence and the difference that made. (FWIW ,the actor who played Ted, Scott Lowell, is straight, but a huge ally, he's been raising money for Tyler Clemente Foundation.)

4. The fact that Gale Harold looked to be about 22 when he was 30 in real life made a world of difference in selling the Brian-Justin romance. Sort of the reverse Hammer-Chalamet thing-- one looked like a college senior, the other a college freshman. Robert Gant is the same age as Harold, but pairing him and Justin would have come off as super-pedo.

5. For some reason the show has a major impact on a subset of frauen--many of the stalkers on DL (and on Twitter) are from places like Russia and Italy and Japan--but they are obsessed with it in a way that gay men are not.

r45, he's a bottom.

[quote]4. The fact that Gale Harold looked to be about 22 when he was 30 in real life made a world of difference in selling the Brian-Justin romance. Sort of the reverse Hammer-Chalamet thing-- one looked like a college senior, the other a college freshman. Robert Gant is the same age as Harold, but pairing him and Justin would have come off as super-pedo.

Interesting thinking of this in regard to the UK version. Russell T. Davies loves to show the reality of life, even when, or perhaps especially when uncomfortable, in a lot of his shows, and it seems he really deliberately made Nathan 15 years old for that reason. It's interesting that didn't carry over into the US version, but yeah I imagine that would've been too uncomfortable for people.

^oh and to be clear, by reality I don't mean that it is something that always happens among gay men, but that it is something that [italic]does[/italic] happen, at least especially at that time (I was the same age as Nathan when that show came out).

I always thought they made Nathan 15 and Justin 17 because their ages made them 'not quite legal' in their respective countries.

Justin being 15 would have made him a sophomore with two full years of high school ahead of him.

^17 generally is legal though in most places though, isn't it? I know people automatically assume 18=legal for everything, but in most places it's 16/17 for sex. Not sure what the AOC in Pennsylvania was at the time. But maybe it was a way to make it seem vaguely like Justin was underage for the shock value but in reality it could be defended because he wasn't? If that makes sense?

Whereas 16 is the AOC in the UK, so Nathan definitely was underage.

Then again, weren't AOC laws completely different between straight and gay sex at the time? So maybe they were all considered underage? Ugh, I'm just confusing myself now.

Where I grew up, being gay was completely illegal at the time the UK QaF was released so if a show was set here, it wouldn't have mattered if the kid was 21, it'd still be considered illegal.

I distinctly remember the character of Justin's dad telling Justin that what Brian was doing with him was illegal.

As for Randy Harrison and his attractiveness, I read somewhere that the original choice for the Justin character backed out.

I never found Randy Harrison attractive, I have to say. I thought he looked kinda weird. But nowadays as an older guy (quite shocked to learn he is older than I am, but of course he would've just been playing younger on the show) I think he fits his looks really well.

Whoever said that blond men age poorly, never met Randy Harrison.

He hasn't aged in over 20 years.

Randy gives a shout out to the QAF cast 20 years later.

I think they all look fantastic!

Remember when that lawyer lesbian was pressuring Brain to get life insurance because it was only a matter of time before he died of AIDS? Seems like a pretty stupid thing to say in the year 2000.

Has anyone seen the new Queer as Folk? If so, how would you say it compares to this one?

No, actually R65

I do not remember that all

The new QAF hasn't aired yet. Of course it will be entirely Woke! All black. All tranny. All sympathetic pedophiles.

R68, so are you saying that the Showtime version, which was virtually all-white, was any better? Isn't either extreme not helpful when trying to present a realistic portrayal of the gay community?

It seems pretty realistic that a bunch of gay guys in Pittsburgh circa 2000 would not have any Black or Asian friends

That's still true in most cities in the US, R70.

Even 20 years later.

How many cocks has Hal had in him?

Not a good show.

I first watched this show in a motel room with a guy I regularly hooked up with; he was a big fan & we saw it on his laptop, I think it was around 2000/2001. It was also the first time I ever had blueballs, which I feared was rapid onset testicular cancer!

R55- I would not call Justin semi fem- he was total fem

Does anybody remember the episode where Brian was fucking some Australian guy against the sofa?

That was hot.

I haven't watched the show since it aired and no doubt it's dated badly (and even at the time, it was clear this was no masterpiece). But.......yesssss it was like finding a water in the desert of tv back then when it came to gay stuff. We'd had Tales of the City and other things that showed some fleeting nudity or gay sex perhaps, but nothing this explicit and hot before and on a weekly basis and trying to show the spectrum of gay lives (at least in their sexual urges). So I cut the show a lot of slack. The worst thing about it was the lesbos - every second devoted to their storyline was a second wasted.

The thing I liked best about it--I was in high school when it came out--was that most of the guys were "normal" -- not overly femme, not overly masculine, just regular guys-- a sign that you didn't need to be Jack from W&G to be gay.. (Or even Will))

This show did not hold up well at all. So dated.

The first season, which recycled the Brit shows storyline and scripts (to a point) was okay. Like most "crossover" programming, it pulled a few punches and was mostly notable for existing. The original US storylines weren't very good and many people (such as myself) found the show rather lame and contrived pretty quickly. The story arcs vacillated between having the characters "grow" and having them do the same thing over and over again. The Gay message boards usually had divergent opinions about whether it was a good show. Gant and Harrison and the guy who played Emmett created the most buzz. Sparks and Harold, the nominal "stars" not so much, although Harold worked fairly steadily after the show ended.

R80- Gale Harold has worked fairly steadily- in OBSCURITY

R80 has a point--Harold was in a couple of network series- Desperate Housewives in particular,--after the show ended. He had some sort of accident, IIRC, that hung him up.

The US showrunnrers were a gay couple who had worked on soapy network TV shows and had a very different sensibility than Davies.

I just started watching the British version. Surprised how different it is from the American QAF.

Randy Harrison has been working the most after the show.

His Broadway resume is LONG.

Another gay era!

I remember reading the very funny novel "California Screaming" everyone was enjoying around then and watching Queer as Folk. Seems like a hundred gay years ago. I think it actually was.

I don't think Hal Sparks is gay. He's moved into a totally different area actually, working as a progressive pundit, with a youtube channel which as far as I can tell is successful and seems to be his fulltime job (with a radio show once a week and various appearances on Stephanie Miller, etc). Also, he does seem to be in a relationship, with a longterm girlfriend, and has a kid.

He kind of reminds me of Ron Reagan Jr. in that given his career path, into progressive politics, he would come out if he were gay or bisexual. There would be no price to pay for it, and it would probably give him a little bit of publicity for it if it were true. I just think he played a gay guy in a very sexualized gay show, and did his best to make it believable. (Although I do agree with r55 that sometimes his wide-eyed innocent routine seemed more like Special Needs.)

Hal Sparks only has 35k followers on YT, which is absolutely nothing.. His crappy vids get anywhere from 600 to 6000 views but usually more on the low end. He is not making any money off his lame channel that nobody watches.

Well, I like it, but if you are correct r88, I guess he must have some other income. Maybe he does standup still, but whatever is going on I don't think he's some Hollywood closet case desperate to fool everyone into seeing him as a totally straight actor. I think he'd come out if it were at all true.

R89 He is a severe SJW, so yes if he was a cock sucker he would never hide it.

Well, my goodness r90. What a saucy little Trump whore you turned out to be.

R91 Fuck you, aids whore.

Sorry, couldn't hear you with Trump's cock lodged in your throat. (You must have a small throat.)

I still remember that one time Brian bottomed for Justin. It was so special. I wept!

☝️Yes - that was special

Michael was definitely the Charlotte of the bunch.

I still tingle a little, when I think of it r94.

As a closeted teen at the time, the scenes of Emmett with his football playing boyfriend were everything to me. Not sure where in the series that happened, I think towards the end? I remember at the end the football player comes out and Emmett realises the boyfriend needs to go off and experience the gay life he hadn't until that moment.

[quote] I still remember that one time Brian bottomed for Justin. It was so special. I wept!

I have no respect for "tops" who bottom.

They're not tops. They're VERS.

As a total bottom, I will accept nothing less than a total top. Anyone else is a bottom, as far as I'm concerned.

That could've been a very special episode of QAF, r99!

That's nice R99, but we're talking about Brian here - not you and your preferences.

You type like a prissy BOTTOM, R101.

Man up.

[quote]Why did they drop him from the show? He was definitely a keeper.

They were following the UK series in the first season so his storyline was limited. But the cast hated him because he made disparaging remarks about playing gay (saying it made him feel dirty and wanted to spit after take). People hated on Hal top because he made a comment likening kissing a man to kissing a dog but it blew over.

R87- I can top that.

I don't think Richard Simmons is gay.

Gay? I'm not sure Richard Simmons exists these days. Didn't he disappear?

I would never have guessed that R103, based on the way that his character fucked on screen.

Sounds like he's a closet case.

[quote]Michael was definitely the Charlotte of the bunch.

Brian = Samantha, Ted = Miranda

I still haven't seen the Brit one all these years later. Perhaps I should give it a whirl. Charle Hunnam.

I loved Charlie Hunnam's response when people thought he dropped out of "Fifty Shades of Grey" because it was soon sexual.

[quote]It hurt him that the gossip mill suggested he might have shied away from contentious sexual material. “I was excited about that element of it.” Hunnam is a deeply physical performer. “The outside perception of that was that I got really cold feet and got scared of the explicit nature of the sexuality of the piece. When I was 18 I was getting fucked in the ass, completely naked on national TV, y’know?”

I thought Barna Moricz, the actor who played the co-worker who sued Brian for sexual harassment, was hot as fuck. Loved the scene where he was waiting for Brian naked in bed.

If a show like this went on the air to today the woke masses would proclaim that show to be ALL WHITE therefore it's RACIST therefore it needs to be CANCELLED.

It would be considered LITERAL violence. Not just because the cast of characters was all white because the cast was ALL cicgender- what a stupid word.

I dreaded every scene with Hal Sparks, couldn't stand him.

Harris Allan, who played Hunter the hustler, matured nicely.

I always thought they should have had Brian drive a 1963 Corvette instead of the 1970.

R113- He looks a lot better now than he looked then. He had NO appeal back then.

I was watching the episode where Dr. David and Michael hosted a snooty political fundraiser, and Michael didn't invite his friends because he was embarrassed of them.

So they crashed the party and ruined it for him.

But the worst part was their clothes!!

Uncle Vic dressed like a pimp, his mom dressed like an old hooker, Justin dressed in a cut off shirt like a little whore, Ted dressed in leather, and Emmett dressed in drag. It was hilarious.

This show didn't age well.

The first 2 seasons were good but then it got really bad, fast.

I prefer Looking.

7 surprising and somewhat problematic observations I made rewatching Season 1 of ‘Queer As Folk’:

The guy who played Blake (Dean Armstrong) was cute as hell.

Is Dean Armstrong gay?

Dean was such a twink back in the day.

I was Justin's age in the show and I had such a similar life. My parents were just like his in a number of ways (his mom was fairly supportive, mine were not), I left home and lived with the crazy, kindly gag hag. I had a much older boyfriend. I felt this was very accurate for life in 2000. I grew up in LA and SM Blvd was like a night out on Liberty. It felt so amazing to see this on TV. There was NOTHING back then that I related to other than new queer cinema like Gregg Araki. I hated W&G. I watched it over the pandemic, all 5 seasons, and I think it's a pretty solid show. I think it's the best gay series that we've had. The gay bashing when Justin gets smashed in the head and his arc with Brian I thought was really beautifully done.

I saw the billboard for QAF reboot on Sunset today. It looks like another Gossip Girl reboot. Hot, bald WOC, non-binary, and maybe a 1 to 2 good looking men. I don't have paramount so I won't be watching. Is Kim Catrall in this.

R122- Even with it’s faults Looking was a much better show than Queer As Folk.

I recently rewatched Looking and it was so much better than than QAF. The writing on QAF was just terrible once they had to stop relying on the British story lines.

The original American version has held up well and still seems relevant.

R115.. agree...

anyway, frankly the ONLY reason Why I watched QAF back in the day was for any episodes that had muscle in them.. (love love muscle then and now, and i'm talking the bigger the better!)...

I enjoyed Looking a lot. One of the many reasons is that the sex scenes were so much more realistic than you're used to seeing; I thought that was impressive as most TV doesn't really get sex scenes right.

R126- The Muscle between the legs🍆 ?

or the body?

R128 O, Gramps. Youse so saucy. Enough with that language. The children!

Rewatching episodes now on Showtime (I haven't seen the show since it went off the air 17 years ago). I find it mostly still entertaining, just very dated and comes off really cheesy in some respects (mostly because of the bad dialogue). The actors are fine, though, and I'm reminded of how much I used to love Emmett. He was just too fabulous for words (loved the walk) and Peter Paige's performance was just perfection and Emmy-worthy in my opinion.

The article at R118 is actually quite positive about QAF. The “problematic” parts are predictably about Justin’s age & the lack of trans & POC characters and these points are refuted in the comments to the article.

I just realized that baby Gus is about 21 or 22 years old now!

Damn.

THR reviews "Queer as Folk":

R133 A major character is an amputee?

r132 I hope Gus is hot.

Logan and Keegan Hoover played Gus.

Here's Logan.

Here's Keegan.

QAF had flaws but as a Torontonian, it's special to me as it gave a lot of actor friends jobs. I remember working in court and one of the paralegals was also an actor and had done a full-frontal nude scene (he was hot).

Let's not forget that Peter Paige co-created The Fosters and Good Trouble, two very successful series.

[quote]I just realized that baby Gus is about 21 or 22 years old now!

He could've been a good lead-in to a reboot of the original show, him now at 21 years old and his life? I wonder if they will bring back old characters?

Looking was made in a different era of TV - the sort of soapy drama that was normal when QAF was made had gone out of favor by then.

While I certainly was not complaining at the time in retrospect, the sex scenes usually seem forced--like here's the action and now we're going to cut to a soft porn scene and now back to the overwrought soap opera.

I agree that a 29 year old dating a 17 year old high school senior--and the high school senior's parents' reaction to it--would have been played very very very differently in 2022

TBH, that review at R133 sounds like they're saying the new series sucks, but because it's chock full of trans and non-white and differently abled gay people, they can't come out and say it sucks, just hint at it.

[quote]I wonder if they will bring back old characters?

R139, I was thinking about this very question just this week while watching episodes of the Showtime series. I was thinking how nice it would be if Peter Paige or Scott Lowell or hell even Randy, Gale or Hal would make a cameo appearance as one of their characters from the old show. It would just be nice to create that bridge between the two versions.

Do a lot of the extras have Canadian accents? I noticed this when watching the X Files

'Looking' was DULL and that's why it didn't last, but to be fair, sometimes with gay anything, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't. After QAF, everyone wanted more accessible characters and lifestyles. They all lived in typical, drab, rent controlled SF apartments and had boring jobs, QAF was sexy, it had style. "Looking" was bland. I appreciate it but I don't think it had the impact that QAF did. It came and went with little fanfare within the gay community and outside. Neither the gays nor the fraus were interested.

Not just any drag r116. Emmett wore the famous pink Chanel Jackie Kennedy suit.

Wasn't Emmet vers though. There was an episode where they alluded he was a top. I've known some big dicked, but nelly tops and I just can't.

R144: QAF had no "style". It borrowed from a British show and then lapsed into dreary soap opera. It had some risque scenes for its time, but ultimately wasn't that sexy (see "dreary soap opera"). Something can be sexy without showing much action (see what people did during the production code).

R147 - while I agree with you 100% there is a reason why soap operas are so popular

[quote]The writing on QAF was just terrible once they had to stop relying on the British story lines.

The original writing team quit en masse after S1.

I couldn't bear to watch the Showtime version. I tried at the beginning, but it was an inferior shot-by-shot remake during some scenes and it just seemed like a terrible, derivative show.

Is the good one available anywhere? I'd watch that again. Charlie Hunnam was very pretty before he erupted into the incredible hulk.

R144- I think you're confused. Queer As Folk was DULL. It was at best a MEDIOCRE show. Looking was not a great show but it was far better than QAF. The characters were individuals and they did not spend all of their time in club/bars they had full lives outside of the scene unlike QAF were the bars and clubs were the centerpiece of their lives.

R149 is right. Season 1 ended on a note that was far removed from the British show, and, whether for that reason or another, all the good writers on it quit (including the one who went on to write Buyer and Cellar, about Barbra Streisand's mall).

It never did follow the British show closely. In the British show the main relationship is between the Brian and Michael characters (Stuart and Vince). Vince is in love with Stuart and Stuart casually strings him along while playing the field (Nathan is only a short-term distraction), but the UK show implies they could end up together. The US series decided very early to make Brian and Justin basically Rhett and Scarlett, which sidelined the Michael character from from Season 1 compared with the original and made the US show a romantic melodrama of a kind Russell Davies has never shown any interest in writing.

I always found it interesting that A) Emmett the character who was the biggest "queen" actually had the best body of all the characters and B) how Emmett would, could and did go from seducing and being with that handsome as hell built, at the time closeted football star and then go to the old enough to be his grandfather sweet and wealthy "daddy"... talk about opposite ends of the spectrum...Just saying....

Emmett was the most appealing character in the American version. Quite different from the campy character in the British show, but he was cute, too.

Interview with Russell T. Davis, Cowan & Lipman and the new showrunner for QAF.

[quote] The original writing team quit en masse after S1.

Why, R149?

It's been ages since I've seen it, but I also seem to remember that the UK version went odd in the second season, and didn't it just do two sort of wrap-up episodes where the Aiden Gillen character became some sort of gay rights crusader or something.

Emmett was ugly as fuck and his relationship with Drew wasn't believable, but he and Justin were the most likable.

Pauline Kael once said of "Pretty in Pink" that it had nothing to do with what high school was like, but that it was successful because it was what a middle school student thought high school was like.

The same is true for "Queer as Folk." When it aired it was pretty heavily disesteemed by everyone on Datalounge, but it was popular with gay high school students and with straight women who thought it showed what they imagined gay life was really like. A friend of mine who worked on QAF said that the show deliberately went out of its way to court a female audience. They cast Gale Harold as Brian not because he was really any gay man's idea at the time of what a gay yuppie superstud would look like, but because women found his more androgynous type attractive and less threatening.

Watching this a second time around, Emmett brought a lot of humor to the show.

I saw an especially funny episode where he found his "soul mate," and they planned their future together, had a long term relationship, and then had a bad breakup all in the span of one hour and forty five minutes. It was fucking hilarious.

I disagree R159 - I think QAF was exactly what life was like in the late 90's/early aughts, especially if you lived in a big city, were attractive, and under 30. People went out...often. And people went out dancing a few nights a week. If you wanted to meet someone for sex or find a boyfriend, you had to go out, there were no other options. Obviously it's fiction, but there are clubs that rivaled Babylon. Dance clubs were more a thing. Also, the show made it 5 seasons which is a very good run. Much better than the UK QAF and the watching of paint dry, that is 'Looking'. All you queens screeching about how great it is said it was boring as fuck on here when it came out. I know b/c I was living in SF at the time and came here for the threads on it.

[quote] If you wanted to meet someone for sex or find a boyfriend, you had to go out, there were no other options.

There was AOL, lol.

I remember my friends and I always going to the bars and clubs and saying "Oh, look there's such and such (screen name)" and having a good laugh about it.

Or talking to them in chat rooms, and then meeting at the clubs.

When I watch especially the first 2 seasons on QAF, it takes me back to being underage, sneaking intoclubs, thinking I was going into this all inclusive world where I would finally be understood. The drinks, the dancing, a full night of possibility and minimal hangovers the next day. I was jaded by the time I was 21, but it was fun and QAF is a nice piece of nostalgia.

The British version was very relatable to me when I saw it as an 18/19 year old. It was relatable emotionally, if not all the elements precisely. It was a coming of age story that came at the right time, it showed the fear and excited anxiety of exploring sexuality, something we all do at that age regardless of orientation, in an environment where it was not entirely taboo but still brought fear and some level of shame with it. It directly addressed the sexual experimentation aspect but also extended to integrating that evolution into family life—how parents and friends will react, etc.

The story dealt with really high-stakes issues, emotionally speaking, and did it in an overall uplifting and optimistic way, and at that time in history, many of us needed it to be done that way. These days, a coming-of-age gay story might get a little darker because different sexualities are less taboo and so there's room to show more human dimension without an obligation to telegraph hope, but at that time it was necessary. We were still in the AIDS-is-certain-death era, and while it was unlikely most people would be beaten to death for being gay, we were very openly discriminated against in many places, made to be second-class citizens who many regarded as "gross."

Beautiful Thing was an emotionally deeper dive that perfectly balanced the fear and anxiety of being gay set in a pretty bleak realistic working-class setting with a fantastically uplifting and hopeful direction. I think it belongs on the shelf of LGBT history alongside Paris Is Burning as an artistic document of what life was like at the time. The British Queer as Folk shows some progress toward the superficial (which signifies to me greater societal acceptance), and the US one is a trashy mainstream soap opera. That does represent some progress.

Like it or not, Will & Grace was a primary cultural force that made people stop seeing gay men as scary creeps and instead made us seem harmlessly fun. Queer as Folk was a necessary next step to layer sex back onto gay men, apart from the AIDS terror, so that people could integrate those ideas and begin to realize we are just human beings—not victims of biology, not neutered sidekicks with sassy punchlines at the ready, and not worse or better than any average person.

Everything that is edgy culturally is edgy because of associated taboos. That's where the jaggedness and perceived dangers come from. With acceptance comes mainstreaming and with that comes dilution and softening of all edges. You end up with a watered-down version, and that's what we got.

R161- QAF was not a good show. The writing ✍️ SUCKED and the acting 🎭 SUCKED.

I went to high school with the guy who played Emmet's cybersex buddy, usemyhole27. He graduated before me.

R161 --it certainly wasn't representative of gay life in a big city at that time. By then, there were plenty of non-bar options to meet people from bowling leagues to hiking clubs in bigger cities. It was meant to show gay life in a provincial city (Manchester in the UK, Pittsburgh here) and even those places had multiple options for people. It was a "crossover" show run by guys who did prime time soaps, so it was never going be a realistic version of anything. Lasting 5 years on cable is not a mark of anything special, it's like saying Lucy was a great actress because her show was popular---she wasn't a great actress and people watching her schtick says more about her audience than about her.

[quote] . I've been to some crowded gay bars and clubs but I've never been anywhere even close to Babylon with it's three levels and wall-to-wall gorgeous guys.

Maybe that's what's Pittsburgh is like.

I've been to clubs like that. All years ago. In DC, I referred to them as warehouse clubs, and they were two or three levels and packed. I always preferred them to bars because I went out to dance, not to get drunk. The first club I ever went to, in the late 90s in DC, was called Tracks. It was in a bad neighborhood in Southeast DC, and it had a small dancefloor in the front room, a two (three?) level very large dancefloor-balcony area, and another smaller dance floor surrounded by ceiling-to-floor stacked TV monitors that played music videos. It had a fenced-in outdoor area with a volleyball net in a sand pit. It was big and exciting to me.

Also in DC was the smaller bar called Ozone and then Cobalt after Ozone burned down. They were three floors, with each floor having its own theme. I think I remember that Ozone's first floor was a bar, the second floor was a dancefloor and the third floor was a dancefloor that was very hot (hence the name) to encourage patrons to take off clothes.

In London, both G-A-Y and Heaven were very large. If I recall correctly, G-A-Y was an enormous, open warehouse type club with live performances onstage, and Heaven was more compact but three or four floors high.

And I went to some club in Miami that was enormous, being big and open like a warehouse and many floors high.

I hate the S2 ending of the British QAF.

Might I point out Eldergays arguing about how realistic Babylon was, that there have been a few threads on Datalounge pointing out that Pittsburgh did not have anything vaguely resembling QAF's "Liberty Avenue" gay district nor did it have any major gay dance clubs.

Manchester did, which was why it made sense for the UK version, but it was just easier for the US version to go along for the ride.

[quote]it certainly wasn't representative of gay life in a big city at that time. By then, there were plenty of non-bar options to meet people from bowling leagues to hiking clubs in bigger cities.

I was thinking about this last night while I was watching it. I never thought about it much back during its original run because you only saw episodes one week at a time, but now, seeing them back to back over successive nights, it's just so fucking repetitive. Yes, I know it's about young gay men and remember how much clubbing we did back in the pre-Grindr days (when QAF is set), but it's like every episode we must have the obligatory scene in Babylon. It almost felt like these guys had no life whatsoever outside of that club and just becomes very tiresome very quickly when you watch so many episodes at a time.

Jaded whore, it lasted 5 seasons. When another gay series beats that (and neutered Will&Grace do not count), let me know. The sex was hot, the guys were hot, the story lines were realistic of the time, and the acting was decent. I'd rather watch that QAF and Looking for that matter than the hideous freak show that is QAF 2.0.

I came across this article from a Syracuse University communications prof, Gael Sweeney:

“Why Are All the Straight Boys Running Out of the Room?” Teaching Queer as Folk as a Challenge to Heteronormativity (April 2008)

It’s an interesting perspective (and it mentions Datalounge

I had no idea that Jack Wetherall, the actor who played Uncle Vic, was the Elephant Man in the show's original Broadway production. As for QAF, I always thought he deserved more than the "also starring" billing they relegated him to when he was clearly a regular for the show's first 4 seasons. He deserved principal billing just like the other actors.

Apologies if this was posted already. I think they all look great, Randy, Scott and Sharon especially:

How queer ARE folk, actually?

Hal Sparks aged like shit. Woof.

I wonder if the QAF actors realized at the time how iconic that show was and how much influence it would have on their future careers.

R177, Non' so queer as folk.

Thanks R174 and FWIW, I did not need to sign in to read it.

What's most interesting is that it was written about 15 years ago (2008) though is still valid today

[quote] I wonder if the QAF actors realized at the time how iconic that show was and how much influence it would have on their future careers.

I was just thinking about this, while watching the show this week.

Poor guys. The show pretty much destroyed all of their careers.

It just goes to show that Hollywood is still homophobic and conservative at heart, despite their paying lip service to gay people.

There was an episode on Thursday, which was about Brian getting an award for helping Justin fend off his attacker after the prom.

The award organizers backtracked on giving him the award, because a prominent gay writer criticized Brian for dating Justin who was "under aged" when they met, and he called Brian a predator.

Naturally, the QAF writers made the columnist the bad guy, by having Ted and Michael "accidentally" catch this guy having bareback sex at some orgy/sex party.

I'm guessing that the show got a lot of criticism from prominent gays, about the Justin and Brian relationship, so they tried to address it by calling the critics "hypocrites" who need to check their own questionable behavior.

Clearly, the QAF producers were very thin skinned, if they couldn't handle that kind of criticism.

^ wasn't that a dig at Andrew Sullivan who was very moralistic at that time about people who did not always practice safe sex and was caught soliciting "milky loads".

I remember of all people a gay ex-priest mentioning it and saying "moralizers who get caught out."

Interesting, R184.

I didn't get to watch the show when it first came out, so I'm watching it again for the second year in a row, since Showtime has made airing QAF an annual June event.

But that would make sense, after watching the episode.

In fact, an episode on Friday was about how Brian saw his mother's Priest in the back room of a gay bar getting fucked. Lol.

Sometimes this show was just ridiculous in the sex scenarios.

[quote] The show pretty much destroyed all of their careers. It just goes to show that Hollywood is still homophobic and conservative at heart, despite their paying lip service to gay people.

Not really R182

Gale Harold had a good career going -- Fox gave him a cop series to star in that didn't go anywhere and he had a prominent role in Desperate Housewives.

He got into a very bad motorcycle accident in the middle of Housewives which seems to have done more damage to his career than playing Brian Kinney.

Randy Harrison has worked steadily on Broadway and had a minor role in Mr. Robot

Peter Paige went into producing and had The Fosters and another hit show.

I know I should know this by now, but which of the cast are actually gay or bisexual?

R187, I think the gay cast members are Peter, Randy and Robert. I also read that Thea is bi.

It's also worth noting that the premise of the hundreds of Obsessed Fan-Frau Gale Harold threads that were on Datalounge about 5 to 10 years ago was that (you can't make this shit up) Gale and Randy were in a relationship during Season 1 and the sex scenes were real, that Gale, in a Brian Kinney-esque move, ended things because he did not want to be in a gay relationship, but that they continued to pine for each other and would have occasional secret hookups despite living on separate coasts and having other romantic partners.

Suffice to say the fan fraus desperately wanted Gale to come out of the closet and admit his love for Randy so that the two of them could live happily ever after. All male friends of Harold were presumed to be love interests keeping him away from Harrison, and all girlfriends of Harold were presumed to be beards.

^^and these fraus believed that Gale and Randy were hooking up during season one the way Trumpists believe the election was stolen--there was no doubt in their minds that the two were madly in love and fucking like bunnies, facts and actual boy and girlfriends be damned.

I just added the UK one to my Amazon Video list. It's free! I'm curious about how well it has aged. I rewatched Beautiful Thing and it had me laughing and sneezing up a storm.*

I have no interest in the American one.

It seems like a stretch to say it killed Hal Sparks' acting career, though. I remember him primarily as the Talk Soup host. Greg Kinner had a short-lived movie star career after Talk Soup. Aisha Tyler became an it girl, very popular, but I don't remember her establishing herself firmly as an actor. Joel McHale had one show, Community, but like Sparks with Queer as Folk, it seems to have been his one big break. Community was well received, and just because his notable career ended there, I wouldn't say the show ended his career. Most of these sorts of working comic actors just bump around from project to project and sometimes hit it big once or twice. Kinnear's talent served him well. McHale's fake boobs also did right by him.

*I sneeze when I cry.

[quote]The show pretty much destroyed all of their careers.

Michelle Clunie (Melanie) is Bryan Singer's baby mama. Hopefully that provided her some financial security.

R192 Bryan Singer had children with a woman?!

I didn't know he is bisexual. I pray she keeps them locked in a cabinet somewhere and has swallowed the key so he can't get to it.

Hi R193

I am the turkey baster that made that child happen!

R190- FRAUS aside- Gale Harrold IS gay in real life too

R195 = lingering Frau from mid-10s threads

Harold is hetero, has had multiple long-term girlfriends over the years.

Gale Harold, Hal Sparks, and Randy Harrison are all gay.

End of story.

PERIOD.

This is what it says on Gale Harold's Wikipedia page:

[quote]The actor's sexual orientation was the subject of speculation from the public for many years, until Harold finally identified himself as a straight man.

If he's lying (and I'm not suggesting he isn't), it just strikes me as totally unnecessary. I mean it's not as if he's Bradley Cooper and has an A-list career to protect. And that's not throwing shade, I'm just saying he'd have about as much to lose at this point as NPH or Bomer did when they came out.

Same thing goes for Hal Sparks, R198.

He claims to be straight, but nothing in his personal history would suggest that to be true.

No girlfriend, no wife, etc.

It's so weird.

Sparks has been dating Summer Soltis for years.

LOL R198 - that was a marketing ploy-- being ambiguous about Harold's sexuality so that viewers wouldn't fixate on the sexuality of the various actors. IIRC, he came out as "straight" sometimes during the first season of the show.

Harold had at least two serious relationships with women, as the fan fraus posting on DL were furious at them for keeping him from realizing that he was really gay and belonged with the true love of his life, Randy Harrison.

To be fair, the same vitriol was aimed at Harrison's boyfriends.

R189, jesus! Just when I think humans can't get any weirder..!

I'm rematching and say what you will Gayle & Randy have fantastic chemistry. There was an episode where Brian is talking to Justin and is shot from behind with Harold nude, You can see his cock and balls swinging between his legs. If they didn't have the chemistry, I don't think the show would have been as successful. Hal Sparks character is the most annoying of the bunch. All he does is pout and sulk. He's not an adorable man child.

[quote] He's not an adorable man child.

But he sure thought he was.

It was funny watching him mug for the camera on QAF, as if he were doing an episode of Talk Soup.

The Michael character was mind-numbingly annoying as often as the Justin character was insufferable and self-righteous. I still remember the point where I despised Justin - in Season 2 where he fucked another college student at Daphne's party, taking his virginity. The guy ended up tracking Justin down at the diner, where Justin cruelly told him to fuck off (he also either called him a f@g or a fairy, can't remember which). OK asshole, you clearly had forgotten how YOU acted after Brian fucked you the first time.

[quote]Emmett wore the famous pink Chanel Jackie Kennedy suit.

And one of the waiters at the party accidently spilled shrimp cocktail sauce all over it. That was an amusingly dark touch.

R205: Yeah, not Justin's best moment! Some serious amnesia there!

It's all coming back to me....

Sparks was a stand-up while the others were all actors. Unknown actors, but actors nonetheless

That is why Sparks always seemed to be on a different show, mugging for the camera as R205 noted and playing Michael as if he were Special Needs.

The fact that the showrunners decided to focus on the Justin-Brian relationship made Harold and Harrison the stars, which led to tension with Sparks, who had been promised he'd be the lead--in the UK version the Michael and Brian characters were the leads.

There were also allegedly tensions because Soarjs never fit in with the rest of the cast--he was a corny comedian, they were all Serious Actors and more intellectual. Think Daniel Day-Lewis having to hang out with Joe Rogan. (A massive exaggeration, but you get the point.)

But yeah, he was really awful and, more than that, you never understood how he and Brian were friends, as they did not seem to have anything in common beyond being gay and still stuck in their hometown.

As for that scene with Justin, R205, IIRC, it was a ham-fisted way of saying "Look! He is trying to be just like Brian now and treating other people the way Brian treated him!" only he realized, in a Very Special Episode kind of way, that this was not who he was, that treating people like shit did not feel good, and he felt remorseful and Learned A Lesson About Life.

That said, he could be insufferable at times in that way that 18 year olds can be when they think they know better than everyone. He was, after all, an 18 year old college freshman hanging out with a bunch of men and women in their early 30s and I think they wanted to show the contrast in maturity levels.

I also remember watching an interview with one of the two showrunners and he was telling a story about having a friend who was so femme that he was often embarrassed to be out in public with him. And I remember thinking "Wait.... there's someone even more femme than you?"

So not a lot of self awareness from those two.

Brian's "I'm so above it all, and so much better than you" schtick got REALLY tired after just a few episodes.

His character became unwatchable.

I remember some DLers blaming this series for gay teen suicides back when it first aired.

How so, R210? I don't get the logic of that argument.

I agree Sparks never really meshed with the cast or the show in general. I never believed him as a gay man and it did seem like he was in a different show.

I didn't watch the US one beyond the first couple of episodes. (They seemed to be shot-for-shot replicas of the original, and that was unwatchable.) But I did read the celeb blogs that were popular at the time and I think I remember lots of complaints about Hal Sparks, basically that he was protesting too much and defensively pointing out at every possible opportunity that he wasn't gay. Am I remembering that correctly?

If so, I can understand that for a couple of reasons. The first would be a fear for future employment. The second would be that as a star of a show centered around gay sex, I'm sure he would have been propositioned/harassed constantly by aggressive gay men. It's inevitable. Possibly enough to freak him out and make him want the world to understand it was just a job, not his real life.

But then, that would just 1) beg the question of why take the job, and 2) substantiate arguments that gay actors should play gay characters.

R211, I didn't really get it either. My question of how a show about a group of gay guys living their lives and being happy, or at least trying could be hurting anyone, was met with "Happy? This shit isn't happy, and it's killing kids!"

I'm assuming they were homophobe interlopers drawn by the show's popularity to spread as much shit about it as they could.

R197- Thank you.

I think the only time suicide was mentioned in the show was Brian’s 30th birthday and that was ambiguous. The show did address violence against gays several times, though.

R212- I never believed him as a gay man either.

I do believe him as a CLOSETED gay man.

Yes, it was crap, but I enjoyed it immensely as TV comfort food and rewatch it every year.

Usually I like the UK, European or original better in everything, but I think the American QAF was much sexier and interesting. People like the UK QAF b/c the characters were not nearly as attractive as the US version (with the exception of Charlie Hunan and I think he actually is a hotter man than twink) and so perhaps more reliable to unattractive DLers.

I see why women liked QAF better than gay men. Justin is thrilled by bad boy lover Brian and tries every way he can to seduce him into a relationship, but as soon as he succeeds, he wants to change him into a more romantic partner. It’s Justin who breaks all the promises and leaves. When Brian finally breaks down and offers to become the romantic partner Justin wanted, Justin tells him he prefers the sexy bad boy he fell in love with. All very frau-ish.

Meanwhile, Brian keep paying all the bills. Of course.

I was reading Salon's review of the new QAF reboot and they included a link to their review of the Showtime QAF back in January 2001 (they were not impressed):

It's an odd review R222 - the writer has seen the entire British series and fallen in love with it and is comparing it to the first episode of the American version. (Or maybe the first two episodes)

R216, it wasn't because of the suicide plot line. The reasoning was apparently that it was such a shit show that gay teens were killing themselves because it was on. I'm really not kidding.

If only everyone that loved the Goilden Girls would have killed themselves. LOL.

I'm re-watching and Melanie, the lesbian lawyer, can literally win any case regardless of whether it's lewd conduct, gay parents rights, immigration, human resources - she can handle it all.

Hal Sparks was on my FB feed during Covid. Live roasting of Trump's bullshit. Sort of a comedy riff fact check kind of thing. He was not a fan of Trump at all. He still had the long weird hair.

Hahaha, R226! I love shit like that on TV, always makes me laugh!

I thought maybe during June I would rewatch QaF, but I've kinda got caught up in rewatching The L Word at the moment, so maybe later.

[quote]the writer has seen the entire British series and fallen in love with it and is comparing it to the first episode of the American version

I remember at the time it was almost a rote thing people would say: "the British version is better than the American version", but honestly, once you get past the part where they are using the same storylines, the US version becomes its own thing and honestly, I always thought there was room for both. And I generally prefer British TV myself.

Lots of memories of the US version being on late night SBS and me staying up late with the volume almost completely down to my parents couldn't hear. Maybe recording an episode or two off the TV if I had a spare tape. So much sneaking around in my teen years!

I had no idea that Michael's father was a drag queen!

That was a fun episode that I saw for the first time yesterday.

I also saw the episode where the two lesbians had a wedding ceremony, and I completely forgot that gay marriage wasn't even legal back then.

We've come a long way.

I wonder if that episode helped change peoples' minds about gays getting married?

If it did, then that would be QAF's biggest accomplishment.

What does Queer as Folk mean anyway? Is it a British saying?

Basically QAF killed everyone's career

R230, yes it's a British (Yorkshire/Lancashire) saying: "there's nowt so queer as folk". Meaning: "there's nothing as strange as people".

[quote] But yeah, he was really awful and, more than that, you never understood how he and Brian were friends, as they did not seem to have anything in common beyond being gay and still stuck in their hometown.

That's often the reason gays in small towns and cities stay friends--because they're gay and there arent too many of them

The reboot is just awful.

EVERYONE is a mincing queen who don't work, just go to Drag shows or want to be in Drag shows and do little else.

No-one speaks without a thousand purses falling out of their mouths.

The original was so much better.

That is too bad R234.

One very redeeming factors of the US show was that it showed a full range of gay men's personalities from mincing queens to nerds to bros.

Much more reflective of the real world

Here is a link to a thread on the reboot. The comments are mostly negative, but some people are enjoying it.

That scene of Emmett's old boyfriend dying in the airplane bathroom while fucking Emmett was awful!!!

He died stuck in Emmett in the lavatory, and they never explained how they both got out of there.

It was creepy as fuck!

And even more unbelievable - Emmett just walked away from the million dollars George wanted him to have! Guess Melanie wasn’t such a good lawyer after all.

Staying at a hotel with Showtime. The show is at least as bad as I recall--the dramatic cut aways and heartfelt exchanges---just dreadful soap opera at its worst.

A few years back Aidan Gillen (Stuart, UK QAF) he couldn't speak for Charlie Hunnam or Craig Kelly but he was really interested in the idea of doing a QAF follow-up to see where the characters are. He said RTD never got back to him about it.

I was surprised Gillen would want to revisit the role. I remember after it came out he complained about how people couldn't separate him from the character and he had men propositioning him while he was out and about with his kid.

We know what happens to Hazel (the Debbie Novotny of the UK series). She appeared in an episode of RTD's "Cucumber". She died of a heart attack while doing karaoke and now her ghost hangs around Canal Street watching over the guys and trying to warm them away rom danger.

Gale Harold was too beautiful and masculine to ever be gay. Hal Sparks always gave me faggy vibes though.

R234

that's bc everyone is actually queer on the new one and half of the cast of the original is straight. Genius.

R242- WRONG

EVERYONE on the original American/Canadian QAR was gay/lesbian including Sharon Gless.

Well, no, r243. Hal Sparks isn't gay. And I don't think Gale Harold is either, despite all the obsessive, truly crazy obsessive threads his "romance" with Randy Harrison sparked on DL.

Why does it matter so much whether an actor is gay or not? They are not the character they play either way.

It doesn't r245, but in a highly sexualized gay show, I guess people will wonder. Could a straight actor do THAT? Yeah, I think they could, and did.

Yes R244 you're probably right. Hal Sparks and Gale Harrold are straight. They are actually hardcore PUSSYHOUNDS like

Richard Simmons

Ryan Reynolds

Tom Cruise

John Travolta

It's okay if they are, r247. It doesn't negate your life or your sexuality. It's okay.

I’d swallow Gale Harold’s cum.

R241: So, only unbeautiful/femme guys are gay? And "faggy" guys are like Hal? STFU homophobic troll!

I couldn't finish the first episode. It was the corniest shit---I felt uncomfortable watching it.

The most comparable show today is probably Elite. Soap opera with attractive young characters and lots of explicit gay sex.

Yep - Elite then Love Victor

Emmett and Ted's scenes together always made me laugh.

Especially Emmett.

I'm not usually a fan of fem guys, but his character was very endearing.

R249- In ca. 2001 or even today?

Today, yesterday and tomorrow

Emmett emerged as the least annoying cast member by the end of the show.

Ms Gay has spoken! It's quite the claim - I can't remember the show well enough but I know many people didn't like him. But the fictional character you hate the most is quite a claim.

Someone in the comments mentioned: "...and Jenny Schechter". I think I might be the only person out there who found Jenny really interested to watch, and enjoyed watching her (weird fantasy sequences aside). Mia Kirchner acted the fuck out of that character too, which really helps. But I am pretty sure I am alone in this.

Why does she hate Michael so much?

^Your guess is as good as mine. Even if you don't like the character I would've thought there were many more worse characters in history to choose from.

Bingo R260

I also think it's less about Michael the character than Sparks the actor: as has been noted on DL many times, Sparks seemed to be on a different show than everyone else in the cast and played Michael like a special needs teenager, not a slightly insecure 30 year old man.

It made all his relationships questionable--what would a chiropractor and (especially) a college professor talk about with someone with the emotional and intellectual capacity of an 11 year old?

And Brian always seemed like he was taking care of a special needs sibling as a favor for Mom, rather than actually bonding with his lifelong best friend.

Still, Roxanne Gay's comment is from out of left field (I know she is working on current QAF reboot, but still...)

Maybe Sparks and/or other cast members will start a flame war with her

[quote]Still, Roxanne Gay's comment is from out of left field (I know she is working on current QAF reboot, but still...)

I know what you mean. It's like, where did this come from? Is she trying to start trouble, or..? I think somewhere else she was complaining about Vic too?

I really need to rewatch QaF again. I can't remember having any particular feelings about Michael, except that sometimes Hal Sparks' acting was a bit ropey. Emmett was the character I always enjoyed, he seemed sweet.

Agreed R262. Emmett was a very effeminate gay man who was portrayed sympathetically and as a whole person, rather than as a wacky clown and foil for a straight woman like Jack on Will and Grace.

There was a scene where they were all talking about the homophobia they experienced growing up. Emmett had it hardest because he was so obviously gay and lived in a small Southern town. He said people would throw lighted matches at him.

^It really brings home to you how those of us who can't assimilate as easily really can have a hard time of it. Poor bugger!

Yes. I was a teenager when that show was on, but it left me very sympathetic to the lived experience of that type of gay man.

Many (most?) of us can have basic interactions with strangers (shopping at a supermarket) without anyone being aware of or giving a second thought to the fact that we are gay, versus types like Emmett who are always clocked as gay wherever they go. It must be similar in many ways to being Black

Exactly, R265. Myself, I was always fortunate in being able to assimilate. I think sometimes people would pick up on it, but I was so much safer because most people didn't, so I could choose to be open about it only when I felt safe.

The Emmetts of the world are the real trailblazers, I always think.

Gale Harold has had a couple of well publicised but quite short relationships with women, both of them after QAF. He was sharing a place in San Francisco with a guy when he auditioned for the show. (On the other hand he was poor, so a legit housemate is certainly not out of the question.) He came from a family of Pentecostals in Georgia, which if he WERE closeted might be more of a consideration than his career.

I have no idea what his sexuality is, but I do know that if the fangirls hadn't adopted him first, or if he'd been as attractive to gay men as he was to women, y'all would have scoffed that this record was nowhere near enough for a guy of his looks and age, who was willing to do that many gay sex scenes dressed only in a cocksock. Good to see the double standard being kept up, DL. (That was pointless bitchery.)

Gale Harold is a straight pussy hound. He LOVES eating snatch.

None of that is true R266 as it looks like the Old School Gale Harold Is Gay Fangurl Posse has found this thread.

It's been about 5 years, so welcome back.

He had been a struggling actor in LA for several years before getting cast in QAF

His relationships were pretty long-term and one of them, with a woman he sued because she tried to attack him when he broke up with her, was major tabloid fodder.

I think you have to be a least bi-curious or bi-tolerant, especially in Gale Harold's role. I can see how an actor can push themselves into one or two love scenes to get through a movie or short term project. If your role as the star is to have fairly graphic gay sex in every episode for 5 years, I feel like that would be difficult if there wasn't some attraction, especially the deep kissing that is required. As a gold star gay, if I have to deep kiss a woman and cuddle nude with her in every episode, it wouldn't be happening. I wouldn't sign up for a show like that.

[quote] Jenny Schechter....

I have seen all of the L Word years ago, but might need to watch during this free month. I am definitely the minority, but I liked Jenny Schecter. I thought she was interesting, somewhat ruthless and I really like the actress who played her. She was in a couple of other indie films and I always thought she did a good job as a cold, calculating woman.

Jenny was a great character but that last season of the (original) L Word was an abomination. The whole "Who Killed Jenny" storyline was so stupid.

Oh absolutely, R271. And in Generation Q they give a passing mention to her having killed herself in the end, so it wasn't even relevant in any way.

I'm glad to see others liked Jenny too. I've just finished rewatching season 2 and I thought Mia Kirchner did such a great job. As a gay man, I actually really could identify with the early parts of the seasons where she realises she's gay now, but doesn't feel she fits in anywhere, that others don't see her as gay and she's really trying to find her place in the community.

[quote]The Emmetts of the world are the real trailblazers, I always think.

Sweet sentiment, R266, and I agree.

In 2022, Brian would be a Log Cabin Republican.

Guaranteed.

So why did the show end after only five seasons?

Was it because the cast members hated each other, and were becoming divas?

I remember hearing that there were some major divisions among the cast.

It had kind of reached its natural conclusion. All the characters were moving on with their lives.

Surprise anal was a big thing on QAF. This is the first time I really thought about, probably having spent too much time on DL. There is a lot unplanned mid day anal happening - to close a deal, in a dressing room, etc. I remember douching not being this huge thing like it is today.

Exactly, R277.

Only on television could a bottom be ready to go for anal, at the drop of a hat.

The thought of it it just gross.

I can't recall a single time during QAF's entire run where douching was brought up. On the other hand, it was a plot line for one of the early episodes of Looking, with wide-eyed Patrick acting like he had never heard of such a thing.

R279, that scene of Jonathan Groff laying on his bathroom floor, sarcastically muttering how sexy this was sticks in my mind haha. And then Russell Tovey ends up wanting to bottom after all that.

These gifs are from the show...

QAF U.S. imploded at the end.

They all hated each other, and left on very bad terms.

Why r282?

It's not like any of them were A-list actors.

They're all divas, R283.

It happens.

That's the problem with Looking - we were forced to think about douching. In QAF, everyone was fresh, douched and ready to go without having to make it a plot point.

[quote] That's the problem with Looking - we were forced to think about douching. In QAF, everyone was fresh, douched and ready to go

I think it really depends on the writers.

For the QAF writers, the sex was incidental. The focus was on the character storylines.

In Looking, maybe they actually wanted to delve into the nitty gritty of gay sex.

To be honest, I prefer glossing over the "yuck factor."

"everyone was fresh, douched" - or not lol.

Except the Patrick character on Looking said he didn’t know a lot about douching because he was a “self-cleaning oven.”

Great show . A gay Melrose Place

I tried watching it again recently and I had to stop around 2x3.

Everyone is insufferable except for Justin and Ememtt.

The mom is cute, even if she's such a caricature of a hag mom.

Looking is the superior show.

The characters didn't all want me to gouge my eyes out.

Also more eye candy, more realistic, more relatable.

make me want to*

R291, I've said it before, but what I really appreciated about Looking was the realism of the sex scenes. In the movie, I think it was, there was a scene where Jonathan Groff was fucking this guy and the guy was like: "Slow down, I don't want to cum just... oh fuck, too late, fuck me hard NOW!" which was really hot and I've definitely been with guys who haven't been able to contain themselves just like that.

R293

yes agreed, the sex scenes were super realistic/intimate without being overly crude for gratuitous purposes.

R281, is that from the episode written by Roxane Gay? It looks like the kind of writing she would do.

I can’t get over the Justin character casting. What the fuck were they thinking?? He looked like an ugly lesbian version of Mary Stuart Masterson as “Watts” and he was a terrible actor.

[quote] Great show . A gay Melrose Place

It is!

In one of Monday night's episodes, there was an election, Hunter's deadbeat mom came to take him home, Ted woke up from a drug binge and found a group of men watching a video of him getting gang banged, Brian sold all his belongings to buy $100,000 worth of television ads against a homophobic Mayoral candidate, Deb forces everyone to vote, the homophobe loses the election, Ted enters rehab, and Michael runs away with Hunter so that his mom and the cops can't take him away.

All in one episode!

Whew!

Spoiler! At the end of the season, a red-headed drag queen will take off her wig and reveal a huge scar on her head, and then she will blow up Babylon as huge cliffhanger and a way for the showrunners to get rid of all the actors who aren't focus testing well!

Who is the hottest guy on the show?

[quote] Who is the hottest guy on the show?

Ted's former addict boyfriend Blake, played by Dean Armstrong.

Robert Grant - Ben Bruckner - Michael’s HIV pos boyfriend

IIRC, at one of the gay pride parades here in NYC in the early aughts (while QAF was still on the air), both Gant and Armstrong rode on a float coming down the street and both seemed very friendly and even nodded hello to me as they were passing by (I was standing on the front line).

[quote] Also, the show made it 5 seasons which is a very good run.

So? A long run is not indicative of quality, just of popularity. "NCIS" ran for nineteen seasons, and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" ran for 20.

Everything after season 2 was unnecessary.

The show became really preachy after Season 3. Five seasons was enough.

Ted gangbanged on crystal meth was my personal limit.

R306, mine too.

the bodybuilder porn star

and the closeted gay football star....(including the handsome built guy at the nightclub bar he was picked up by leaving emmett)...

That's interesting, R282. I'd certainly love more detail if you have it and feel comfortable sharing.

Perhaps it was just my imagination but in that video of their recent reunion, Thea Gill came off to me like she was annoyed to be there (while Melanie seemed quite thrilled).

Is Harris Allan gay?

I think he's cute.

There seems to be no indication on the internet or social media, at all.

Some might disagree but I really felt Peter Paige's work was Emmy-worthy. He was just heartbreaking at times, particularly the scene the other night when he was fighting with a coked-out Ted, who told him no matter what he'd always be nothing but a "piece of trash" from Tennessee (or whatever state Emmett came from). He basically responded that that remark couldn't hurt him because that was what he told himself every day of his life.

Watching the episodes back-to-back, the sex scenes were just so boring and repetitive. One episode this past week ended with Justin giving Brian a blowjob, then the episode directly after started off with Justin giving Brian a blowjob. After a while you're just like enough already.

[quote] One episode this past week ended with Justin giving Brian a blowjob, then the episode directly after started off with Justin giving Brian a blowjob. After a while you're just like enough already.

Thank you for saying that. I thought I was the only one who felt this way.

Sometimes, an over abundance of sex is TOO much sex.

It all felt so gratuitous.

I actually became bored/sick of it.

I thought that Ben, Michael and Hunter made a cute little family.

Am I the only one?

Did Melanie and Lindsay break up at the end?

I think they moved to Canada together.

I just realized that Daphne was the only non-white character on the entire show.

And she was just a bit player.

For whatever flaws the original US QAF may have had, it was a special show at a special time for many of us. A 'gay' show about gay men and putting gay sex front and center. The gay Melrose Place...perfectly stated.

So much since then just feels too safe, saccharine, or pretentious...let alone completely void of any real sex appeal. "Looking" was as boring and un-sexy as it gets. The worst. The new QAF might as well just be Pose.

The original actors didn't all hate each other at the end of the show. If they did they certainly hid it well. I understood most of them were unhappy with the showrunners by then, and Randy Harrison was vocal about that during the last season. Hal Sparks was never popular with the rest of the main cast. He and Harold were billetted together when they first moved to Toronto and that was clearly a big mistake. Personality was doubtless an issue, but also the word was Sparks thought he was going to be the star because Vince [Michael] in the UK original is the show's main POV. He got his nose out of joint because the fans went wild for the Brian/Justin pairing, which is much more minimal and less romanticised in the UK series, and the showrunners ran with it, making him a second string player.

The other four guys all seemed to be fine with each other at the end, and certainly there were reports after it ended of them going to each other's plays etc. Thea did have some gripe with the show but IDK why.

R311 and R312, you aren't alone, count me in as another one.

So on Showtime, QAF is now up to the episode where Uncle Vic died.

I was shocked! I didn't know that they killed him off.

I guess he must have asked for regular cast billing, and they gave him the ax.

The final episode on Wednesday was kind of dark. Justin found out (by accident) that Brian went for cancer treatment, and when Brian found out that Justin kept it from him, he kicked him out of the apartment. Like, he literally threw him out!

It was confusing why he did that.

R313... how I SO SO wanted hunter to give ben a mind blowing brain mushed greatest blowjob ever and then they find out who is who and the emotions when hunter moves in with ben and michael... that would have been so damn kinky wicked hot!..

Damn R321, that would have been hot.

Oh, and I forgot how super hot Matt Battaglia was on this show.

I'm seeing how he met Emmett and hooked up for him the first time, and it was crazy sexy.

Matt has a nice ass too.

R322, that was one of the first scenes I ever saw in this show, and I nearly rubbed myself raw over it, haha.

American (Canadian) version sucked. Cagney as the mother was funny from time to time, though. Otherwise, boring, sorta soft core porn for gays. And really what is the point of that??

Most of them were horrid actors and the characterizations were one dimensional. The way they would just randomly start swearing with no pathos or conviction.

R322... add in the fact that it was "effeminate" emmett who was the one who seduced the closeted macho straight acting football star into being his lover! and coming back for more! love the whole power control role reversal... However, I do wish that at least one scene had the football stud going down on emmett after kissing his body and so on... now THAT would have been off the charts hot hot hot!.... seeing the handsome football stud on his knees submissively and horny so horny blowing emmett, imagine the power trip thrill emmett would have had looking down and seeing this and of course feeling it!....

would like to have seen as well the two going at it in the shower, in a hot bubble bath and others places and so on...

I am with you all R311, R312 and R319

The sex scenes were boring soft core porn and rarely had anything to do with the plot. We knew Brian and Justin had sex so the scenes did not serve any narrative purposes other than to show how "racy" the series was.

Once Justin got banged on his back and straight people realized that missionary was a popular position, there wasn't much place to go.

As for the actors, they've been doing Cons with obsessed fans in Europe for years--frauen will pay big bucks to have dinner with the actors and get their pictures taken with them.

Also the surprise anal all seemed t involve men with self-lubricating asses as we rarely if ever saw lube, just condoms.

For years I have seen complaints here that gay men are never shown having sex in tv roles. Along comes QAF and it’s “Eww, too much sex!”

It wasn't that it was too much R330, it was that it was gratuitous -- it wasn't "Brian and Justin are having a romantic dinner, cut to them in the bedroom after" - it was "After the opening credits we see Justin blowing Brian. Once he cums, we cut to two different characters in a work setting and the reason for and context of the blowjob are never explained"

For me, sex scenes get dull very quickly if they are clearly just there to titillate rather than to move the plot along. Which is no different actually to any other scene that is gratuitous, to be honest. You can have a show with steamy sex scenes that are still relevant and well done, without going crazy with them.

I'm noticing this sort of thing on my rewatch of The L Word, interestingly. I'm not into women at all, so there's very little for me to enjoy about the scenes. But I'd say a good 50% of them actually are telling a story as they are happening and so they are interesting from that perspective. The other 50% have me looking at my phone or going to the kitchen or something until they are done, because they're not important to the storyline and therefore bore me. But they do have several scenes I can discuss as being well shot and vital/pertinent to a storyline.

I am hard pressed to name more than a couple of such scenes in the US QaF, if I'm honest.

[quote]I understood most of them were unhappy with the showrunners by then, and Randy Harrison was vocal about that during the last season.

Given the spotty quality of the first four seasons, it's interesting to hear that the actors didn't become unhappy with the scripts until the last season but okay. Unlike many of you here, I always thought the cast itself was fine, they were just too often done in by low-rent, subpar writing. In fact, watching the series again now after all of these years (I think I mentioned previously in this thread that I haven't seen it since it originally went off the air in 2005), I think it's a shame that the producers/writers chose soap opera/soft porn over a more insightful drama about gay life in America (but then, I suppose that's what "Looking" was going for and it wasn't considered a great artistic success either, so who the hell knows).

The L Word definitely has a lot of gratuitous sex. On QAF, they are at least real or real enough. On the L Word, the women are so overcome with lust that one will finger bang the other, the one doing the fingering quivering in ecstasy. I always though this was very unrealistic, women acting animalistic like men in public toilets, etc. Also, it cannot be that pleasurable to finger someone. Lesbians, cares to weigh in on this?

Ahh, but so many of Jenny's sex scenes in the first season are fantastic because Kirchner's acting shows you a range of emotions in this young woman discovering she is a lesbian, and also having a breakdown. I thought they were great.

The final sex scene of Tina and Bette in season 1 was so important because it comes after Tina has found out about Bette's betrayal, and it involves Tina turning the tables. It's uncomfortable at times, close to an assault, but I think works well.

Later in the series there was a scene where Shane and Paige are fucking, interspersed with a 1950s fantasy of their life together, which told us, without Shane having to say anything, how fruitless this relationship would be for her.

Those are just a few of the ones I thought were great. As I said, other times I'm looking at my phone, haha.

[quote]Given the spotty quality of the first four seasons, it's interesting to hear that the actors didn't become unhappy with the scripts until the last season but okay.

I didn't say they were ONLY unhappy with the showrunners in the last season; I was commenting on a post that said they hated each other at the end of the show, so I was commenting on their feelings at that time. They were all pretty much unknowns except Sparks and the older players, so enthusiasm for the big roles might have carried them through the first season or two, but I imagine those who went off the showrunners started to do so around the time the better writers left, at the end of Season 1. By the end of the show some of them were prepared to be open about it, but as you'd expect they tried to be professional when doing publicity while it was filming.

I'm starting to see why the show ended at season five.

QAF's run on Showtime is almost done (it ends on June 30). They've been showing three to four episodes per day for the entire month of June.

Friday's episodes were the final ones from season four and the first episode of season five.

Season four ended with a "Liberty House Bike Ride" to raise funds for an AIDS hospice house. Mel and Linds broke up while Mel was having her baby, Carl proposed to Debbie, and Ben and Michael got married in Canada. It ended with Brian recovering from cancer while doing the 300 mile bike ride, and Justin accepting an offer to move to LA long-term.

Everything was just coming to its natural conclusion.

However, the first episode of season five was a shocker. Poor Emmett was clearly losing his hair (very quickly), Ted was gaining weight (I think that the actor who played him had just turned 40), and everybody was looking more "mature."

I can't wait to see Monday's shows because Season 5 episode 1 ended with Brian buying Babylon! I don't think I ever caught the final season of this show, so it'll be like watching it for the first time.

Wonderful analysis, R335. Fair enough, Jenny, to me anyway, was everything on that show. She was by far the best actor in the series and had the most complex character.

Also, killing off Carmen and replacing her with Poppy was very upsetting.

My free Pride month on Amazon only includes season 1 of QAF so that's all I've been able to revisit this month, but I think it includes all of The L Word.

As a little gayling, I worked with one of the women that the series was apparently based on. Sally Hershberger = Shane, the heiress = Francesca Gregorini and so forth and so on. These weren't the women I worked with, but they were all friends w/ my boss.

R318/R336, thank you for that clarification. That makes a lot of sense and totally understandable on the actors' part.

[quote]Ted was gaining weight (I think that the actor who played him had just turned 40)

My impression was that Scott Lowell was wearing padding under his clothes for those scenes, not that he had actually gained weight, but I could be wrong about that.

[quote]I can't wait to see Monday's shows because Season 5 episode 1 ended with Brian buying Babylon! I don't think I ever caught the final season of this show, so it'll be like watching it for the first time.

R337, I just checked and season 5 episodes are available On Demand, so if you have OD you should be able to watch them any time and not have to wait until Monday (unless, unlike me, you actually have a life and leave the house sometimes).

That’s what I liked about Looking. All of the sex was integral to the plot, like that hot scene in the first season with Patrick and Richie being used to introduce one of the characters having issues with bottoming.

I was getting bored with the sex scenes between Brian and Justin, until season four when Justin hooked up with Adam Harrington.

I find Adam very attractive, so the sex scene with Adam and Randy kind of excited me.

Btw, what ever happened to Adam? Also, is he gay?

[quote] It wasn't that it was too much, it was that it was gratuitous

And that's what made the show so much fun. We deserve some salacious fun as entertainment too.

In comparison, Looking was so un-sexy.

R176 I watched the clip and didn't recognize Hal Sparks. The first thing I thought was, "who is that aging butch lesbian wearing rouge?"

Also, why are they all wearing beige?

[quote]In comparison, Looking was so un-sexy.

I find it strange that, even though I saw every episode during its original run, I remember basically nothing about "Looking" now other than it starred Jonathan Groff and Murray what's-his-name. It has almost completely slipped from my memory.

[quote] I find it strange that, even though I saw every episode during its original run, I remember basically nothing about "Looking" now other than it starred Jonathan Groff and Murray what's-his-name. It has almost completely slipped from my memory.

SAME! That's the problem with Looking. I binged the whole series living in San Francisco and I do not remember any of it. QAF, I remember quite a few things from it. That is why Looking didn't last - it was boring. Gays are never happy though. QAF is TOO much sex and over the top, Looking was watching paint dry. I guess we haven't found our Goldie Locks "just right" but it certainly is not "Fire Island".

Haven't watched the original in a long time but the football player episode always stood out to me.

[quote] QAF is TOO much sex and over the top, Looking was watching paint dry. I guess we haven't found our Goldie Locks "just right" but it certainly is not "Fire Island".

It'll be the movie "Bros."

[quote]SAME! That's the problem with Looking. I binged the whole series living in San Francisco and I do not remember any of it.

I really enjoyed Looking, and as I said earlier, the sex scenes were great because of how realistic I found them. I will also admit, I don't really remember much of it either. I do think I liked the low-key nature of it though.

Sadly, the Queer As Folk annual marathon on Showtime ends this Thursday, June 30.

Can't wait to see how it ends.

Thank God, R349.

Screw you, R350!!!!

I also found very little of Looking to be memorable (in a good way, I don't want to re-watch the disastrous Halloween party episode, or the dumb Grindr argument Patrick and Kevin had near the end of the show's run), and thus it's never high on my list of things to re-watch on a quiet evening.

The one exception I can think of is the rave they went to at the very beginning of Season 2, and maybe it was because the scene was not that far off from any Babylon scene from Queer As Folk. Or perhaps, even though the reason was that they were all high on E, it's because they were clearly having a good time and there wasn't someone whining or complaining about something.

Queer Ass Folk!

When in the hell did Rosie O'Donnell join the cast?

The US Queer as Folk is an example of what happens when gay people make films and only hire gay people behind the scenes. Gay film is uniformly bad, or was for a very long time, because it was seemingly done based on who was sleeping with whom, or the most attractive people getting important roles behind the scenes.

Similar to how when I hired gay realtors, gay landscapers, etc., they turned out to be disappointing at best. Hiring based on whether or not someone is gay/attractive does not end well unless you are hiring for a position that uses it, like a salesman role.

Rosie had a brief storyline during the last season as a housewife who takes a job at the diner after leaving her abusive husband, comes out as a lesbian, and falls in love with Debbie.

Rosie is also in the reboot of The L Word as Tina's new partner/fiancée, who seems to be on the spectrum or something.

This 5th season is quite dark.

I was shocked at the animosity between Melanie and Michael over their baby. She really turned evil.

I missed the episode in between the one where she threatens him before going to court, and then two episodes later she's handing over the baby to Michael and Ben. What the hell happened in the one episode I missed?

Then I didn't realize that Hunter was taken away from Michael and Ben. What happened there?

There's also hostility between Michael and Brian. Michael has always been a shit, but Brian was right in calling him a judgmental "breeder wannabe." Michael really became sanctimonious once he had the baby with Mel, got married to Ben, then moved to the suburbs. He's the kind of gay I despise in real life.

Emmett got the job at the tv station. I caught the part where everyone treated him like shit, and he bombed on his first telecast. But what happened after that??

Jeez, I can't believe how much you can miss in just one episode.

I think went Ted went into the porn business the show jumped the shark. This and a lot of stuff from there on felt contrived and ridiculous. There were definitely running out of storyline for these characters in the latter seasons.

really stupid in that episode, that Emmett after realizing the conversion therapy wouldn't take, did NOT have Ted get the super built, super hung porn star Back (after emmett didn't go thru with it) so Emmett could indeed live out his ultimate sex fantasy and blow zack o'toole!....That is how that episode should have ended!...

It creeped me out when Rosie kissed Sharon Gless.

Blech!

I always wondered why it wasn’t Ted going to conversion therapy and not Emmett. Emmett seemed to me the out and proud gay guy vs Ted who seemed like a self loathing one. Even in season 1 there were fuck ups.

How do Melanie and Lindsay get back together?

With all of the animosity between them in seasons four and five, it doesn't seem possible that they could ever reconcile.

Yet someone upthread mentions that at the end of the series, they move to Canada together.

Seriously?

It's funny how only Debbie is ending the series in a good place. She and Carl are a cute couple.

Looks like the writers ran out of things for Emmett to do.

At least Ted could work for Brian as an accountant.

There really seemed to be a huge divide in the storylines of these former friends. It's like Michael and Ben were in a completely different show, from Brian, Justin, Emmett and Ted.

As the series comes to a close, it really paints a negative picture of gay life.

People aging out of the social scene and being shunned by younger gays, fighting and back biting, not being able to give up the club/party life, being constantly under attack by right-wingers, being pushed out of gay neighborhoods due to gentrification and straightification, and lots of other problems.

I'm so surprised that the show is ending on such a negative note.

There is, unsurprisingly, a mountain of frau-authored fan fiction out there that imagines happier endings for all the characters, Brian and Justin in particular.

The same fraus who desperately wanted Randy Harrison and Gale Harold to be a real life couple wanted the same for Brian and Justin and I suspect that the fact that the showrunners did not give them the latter was why they fantasize about the former.

I actually found the ending particularly sad from Brian.

Justin was going to go on to NYC and Brian was doomed to be a punchline in Justin's back story, "this older guy I used to date when I still lived in Pittsburgh" while Brian was quickly entering Eldergay territory.

I thought Rosie would stay until the end of the series, but she only had a guest spot for a few episodes.

Do Michael and Brian ever make up, or do they just go their separate ways?

R386 Both!

For those curious how it ends, the final episode (entitled "We Will Survive!") airs tomorrow night.

I don't remember much about the finale other than Brian and Justin parting ways. I found it hopeful though. I didn't take it to mean that they would never get back together or remain in each other's lives.

To me the British one really cemented the end of Nathan and Stuart's relationship. Granted, they didn't have the relationship Brian and Justin had, but was more of a teacher-student relationship and the student/Nathan came into his own and became Canal's streets cock of the walk, supplanting Stuart.

R364 The creators mentioned that the final season was greatly affected by what was going on in the US at the time. They were not feeling hopeful because of George Bush and the direction of the country, and the finale was reflective of that.

I'm currently rewatching it and in season 2 there's an episode where Justin is being told by the dean of his prestigious art school that if he's having trouble keeping up because of his neurological disorder from his getting gay bashed with a bat to the head and falling into a coma (WHICH the school knows about!) that he will be kicked out of the school.

What school would do that even 20 years ago? Couldn't they get sued into oblivion?

So someone bombed Babylon??

What the hell??

Such an odd way to end the series.

The worst episode - besides all the one with Ted and his porn business or getting gangbanged - was that stupid radical faerie episode with Emmett where he's in the woods, and they disappear af the end. You knew it had jumped the shark then.

r2, I couldn't agree more If I were Michael, I would have left Brian behind in the rear view mirror after calling him out on decades of teasing him.

You want me? You missed your chance. I've found a rich, DOCTOR, who lives in a great house.

AND he's a top!

Chris Potter was almost too well cast; they should have gone with someone less hot.

R374 I feel like Robert Gant was just another version of David. But agreed. I'm currently re-watching and I think out of all the characters I hate Michael the most. His character is so childish, stuck in the past, and unself-aware even though everyone is telling him the obvious.

It’s hard to see what a college professor would see in Michael.

The show should have ended with all the cast members dying in a grease fire!!

Fuck!

I missed the final episode!

What happened?

R375- They replaced one BLAND hunk with another.

I was in my 20's when I watched this show in real time and I thought Brian was sooo cool and sexy. Now I think he's a tedious insufferable douche.

I wonder if Gale Harold looks back on his "Brian" character and just cringes.

I can't even count how many times he said that he's the "hottest guy in the club."

Mary, please!

R373- The show was not good from the FIRST episode but I cancelled my subscription early in the second season when Emmett was hired by this gay couple to be their houseboy and at one point all three of them start having sex- LAME

yeah, the concept (I realize now) was already a bit dated when it came to the US, and stretching a two season story over six seasons watered it down to the point of dirty bathwater

So why did Brian and Justin have to break up for Justin to pursue his dreams in New York? That made no sense to me. So we were supposed to believe Brian was this super-rich guy who could afford to buy Babylon and that gargantuan mansion in the country but he couldn't afford an apartment in Manhattan so he could be near Justin? And yes, I know his business was based in Pittsburgh but I'm sure he could've found a way to keep it going there (with Ted's help) while he spent 3-4 days a week in NYC with Justin. Instead we got him telling Justin something to the effect of "even if we never see each other again" or some such nonsense, as if Justin was taking off for Bulgaria or something. Ridiculous.

I think the takeaway was that Brian realized that Justin was just 22 and just starting out in life, that he had a bright future ahead of him as an artist in NYC that would not happen if he was tied down to a much older boyfriend back in Pittsburgh, and that the old cliche, "if you love something, set it free..." applied here and that Brian finally learned the value of being selfless in a relationship.

Sadly, reading this thread is reminding me of a lot of what I didn't like about the US show, and rather than inspiring me to rewatch it, has kinda had the opposite effect, haha. I don't think I ever really enjoyed it that much. I do seem to remember though that it was kinda unapologetic about different facets of gay life which is pretty cool. Some of the characters wanted a life where they could settle down, others wanted to live outside the "heterosexual norm", and from memory it was all portrayed as being valid. Didn't they also make a lot of fun of the idea of gay shows that have been completely neutered from sexuality too?

On the other hand I'm already up to season 3 of my L Word rewatch, go figure. If I were a lesbian, Bette would depress me so much because I know I'd want her but wouldn't be able to get her, haha.

[quote] People aging out of the social scene and being shunned by younger gays, fighting and back biting, not being able to give up the club/party life, being constantly under attack by right-wingers, being pushed out of gay neighborhoods due to gentrification and straightification, and lots of other problems.

This is real life in the gay world - welcome to WeHo. This is why I think there is such ambivalence amongst the US gays towards this US QAF - it hits a little too close to home. There are a lot of toxic elements to the gay world. It's necessarily a pretty picture all of the time.

R381 did he ever work again? I saw he had a brief unmemorable stint on Desperate Housewives but then disappeared.

His acting - with the extreme pauses - is so cringe worthy, always has been.

R386 I had the entire series on DVD for some reason (I think it was gifted) but I ended up donating it to Goodwill rather than watching it again. Just nothing on it was worth rewatching. I never found any of the main cast that attractive, and after watching the UK Queer as Folk - that has kind of a sweetness about it - the US one just seemed embarrassing.

I watched the UK show after the US version had had its run. Gotta say that even though the UK show was not that great (soap opera-style acting, cartoonish characters), it was Strindberg compared with the US show and it was obvious that Cowlip were out to sea in terms of plotting once they had recycled the UK material. Like their other show, once the premise and characters were established the whole thing became dreary.

I don't think the show "ruined" their careers. If you go to the IMDb page for each, most of them appear to have gotten steady acting work over the years. None have snagged another starring role in anything significant since QAF, though, if that's what you mean.

[quote]Also, killing off Carmen and replacing her with Poppy was very upsetting.

I felt a bit sorry for the actress playing Papi - you could see as the season went on that the writers completely lost interest in that character, and really she has no real point. She was best when she called the "elitist" main characters out on their shit, like their treatment of Tina after she starts dating a man. The basketball scene is fantastic. After that, well it shouldn't surprise anyone she just disappears from the show at the end of the season.

A thread about Brian Kinney for QAF fans.

I don’t have a problem with the sex in QAF except for characters, especially Brian, having an unlimited sex drive and so many orgasms in a short time frame. As soon as he cums, he immediately goes on to to do it with someone else. Is he never satisfied? Does he have no refractory period? I’ve seen criticism of fan fiction by fraus for doing this, but these show runners were gay men.

[quote]As soon as he cums, he immediately goes on to to do it with someone else. Is he never satisfied? Does he have no refractory period?

This happens in so much of television and it always stands out to me as being so unrealistic, with me thinking: "wait, do none of these guys ever have post nut clarity?" And as you say, the showrunners here were gay men, they should absolutely know this.

They're showing it again on Showtime for Pride month. Every time I watch, I wish they had picked actors Damon Runyan and John Bregar for the Brian and Justin roles, as both are way hotter than Gale Harold and Randy Harrison. Damon would end up appearing in a bit part at the end of the "Doctors of Dickology" episode.

There's an actor named Damon Runyan? What the fuck is up with that?

All these years later, I STILL can't believe they kept the original British title QUEER AS FOLK for the title of the American version, when that phrase is meaningless in American English.

Yes R397, and he has the nips of life.

Is anybody watching this year's annual QAF marathon on Showtime!

It's an annual event.

I missed earlier episodes, but I was home sick today and caught it on tv.

Ah, it's nice seeing the boys again.

One of Tuesday's episodes was the one where Emmett was getting fucked by the rich old man in the airplane bathroom, and the man had a heart attack and died - while inside Emmett.

That scene was SO stupid.

I like to watch it when it airs for Pride month. Brings back a lot of fond memories.

I never used to think so, but looking back I think Robert Gant is the best looking of the entire cast.

Oh for sure r403. He was a good mix of hunky-dreamguy.

I'm watching the episode right now where:

-Emmett is a jerkoff cam model

-Ted is his boss

- Michael is there watching, gets a boner, jerks off into a paper cup, runs through the streets, delivered it to Lindsay & Melanie, where Mel is cooing like a dove with her panties off waiting to be inseminated.

This is the middle of season 3 and its such a humiliating wreck. Just terrible writing.

Best part of the episode just happened: Robert Gant fully nude from behind, giving himself a shot in the butt.

There are two recent podcasts that discuss QAF episode by episode (both hosted by gay men): Still Queer As Folk & Liberty Diner Dish.