herself_nyc about QaF, and because I am lazy and like to recycle content, I thought I'd post my disjointed thoughts here. Some spoilers for season one, and cut for length.So, I'm still on season one. I've only gotten through episode 11 ("Surprise"). The little puppy sounds I make as I watch are kind of scary:
"Eeeeeeeeeeee!"
"Awwww."
"Mmmmphhhhh!"
"Arghhhh!"
"Oh my GOD!" (With laughter, and usually at this point I have to pause and get out of the room for a minute, quivery.)
"Ohhhhhh nooooooo."
"Ah ha ha ahhhhhhhhhh!"
Etc. I can't recall having this many seizures since watching Spuffy hit the screen in season six. Though, like Herself, I feel no need for fan fiction, at least not at this point.
Herself asked how I feel about the characters besides Justin and Brian, and I said: I love them ALLLLLL! Deb and Jennifer just kill me as the moms. With Sharon Gless, my first reaction was: nooooo, because I still see her as I did in Cagney & Lacey and she's practically a different actor now, but she's great, and Sherry Miller just nails her role as Jennifer. I was trying to figure out where I knew her from, and realized via IMDb that she played a minor character in "Due South," as a police chief that Lieutenant Welsh ("Walsh," says IMDb) is ambivalently smitten with.
Emmet & Ted are great. In a dozen eps Emmet has gone from annoyingly OTT queen to angstily human queerboy (he's just had his AIDS scare), and I feel for him. The ep where his online persona comes to life startled me, taking a magical realism turn I hadn't expected--it was right around then, too, that they started playing with split screens and other effects--not sure what you'd call that effect with the intercut brunches, but it was cool. And I kind of see this lineage being tapped, Tales of the City, Due South. QaF has shades of Tales, and Tales shades of DS, especially with Paul Gross starring in both. Though with Tales, it wasn't magical realism in the sense of flaming fantastical elements so much as a kind of mystical atmosphere of coincidence and connections, centering around this tiny Barbary Lane oasis in the middle of the city.
Lindsay and Melanie are cuties, in a very real way--real bodies, not airbrushed. Definitely lipstick-lesbian attractive, above the norm, but I like Lindsay's blowsy body, and Melanie's lean, neurotic energy.
Michael annoys me the most. It's partly an actor issue, partly character. Michael undermines himself, a love-puppet on Brian's string (so far), and his perpetual whininess grates. The love of other people--his mom, Brian, David--helps me appreciate him. Clearly they see something in him. But when I heard that one line of his mom's at the art gallery where she says to Emmet that Michael's a "fucking Picasso" at taking care of people, that that's his talent, I was like, wha...? Yeah, right. Whatever.
I love David (Chris Potter); his character is so exuberant and loving. He's got his dickheaded qualities like any other man, but dude. He's the perfect slash boyfriend: relentlessly nice and kind and generous, eager to indulge his boy. Being rich doesn't hurt either. Plus I'm a sucker about the whole bigger guy, littler guy thing, and the age difference. Every time David's big manly hands cup Michael's twinky little face I tingle. Heh.
[Whited in case you don't like to read annoying things about actors.]So the thing about actors (Hal Sparks, Potter)--they've apparently said some snarky things about doing sex scenes that didn't go down well with the gay community. I really, really hate knowing stuff about actors. It's never good. It distracts me from watching the characters. There are some exceptions. I'm one of the few people who like David Duchovny, I think, and nothing about him detracts from my appreciation of Mulder. Likewise with Burgi & Maggart on The Sentinel--they really, really liked each other; it was obvious from the blooper reel, from reports of cons and visits to the set, from interviews, etc. They were adorable, and it bled through into the character chemistry, I think.
But in general, I try not to know anything about actors. And now I must try hard to put stuff about the QaF guys out of my head. I'm going to take any remarks they might have made with the attitude that they were newer to the roles and nervous, and quotage can be out of context and distorted, and that sometimes people just blurt things that yeah, they really feel, but which don't necessarily make them bad people, because we're all full of ambivalencies and strange neurotic complexes.[/whited]
And I honestly hope I never hear another word about the actors. Can I stress this? I. Don't. Want. To. Know. About. Actors.
Now that I'm getting to the eps where they're diverging from their painfully close adherence to the British original, it's funny, but I'm very much the fannish Pollyanna again, and there's nothing I really have issues with. Quoting on Herself's comments again, its amateurish feel is very endearing; and it's very slashy (in fact, it may just give me a complex, because it keeps doing stuff I've done in stories). And it does the things you think it's going to do, and I find that oddly comforting. It makes me happy.
It took me several eps--maybe as late as 8 or 9--before someone said "Pittsburgh" and I realized the show was supposed to be set there and my reaction was a SQUAWK!!! of laughter, because I thought it was supposed to be San Francisco or something. Jesus god. *Pittsburgh.* Shyeahhhh.
Favorite moment so far, or maybe arc, kicks off with Jennifer coming into Brian's office and dumping Justin's stuff on him, handing over responsibility for him. "Make him do his homework, make sure he gets to bed at a decent hour," etc. I nearly lost it, I was nearly weeping with laughter. And Brian's struggles afterwards with keeping Justin in line, his absolute disgust (yeah, right), the expressions on his face every time it hits him what he's doing. Oh man. And then the family scene when his dad lays down those horrible rules and Brian gets ticked off and says to Justin, "You coming?" And just takes him right out of there. Eeeee! It's *so* *fucking* *slashy*. Likewise the scene before that, how he picks Justin up from school at the precise moment Justin's getting beat up.
Love the road trip, Brian's touching friendship with Michael that turns on a dime once again to a breathtaking display of emotional manipulation (Anna, moved and sniffly and then suddenly gasping in shock: "Oh, you fucking BASTARD!"). Then the New York reunion in the hotel. Jesus.
Can't even remember all the things I've cried at so far.
Love Emmet and Ted both, and how they interact--and Ted's snarkage at Brian, which is always so unexpected and so priceless. Love how they suddenly start to mix and match characters, so we see Ted hanging with Melanie as they talk finances and shop for sex toys. Love how Lindsay and Brian are so close, with no real need to justify it; so far they don't fill in much backstory before Gus's birth, they just let you get the feel for their history, and that's nice. (*Hated* the episode one hospital room kiss as it seemed to suggest they were going to shoehorn in some hetero UST, but they haven't gone that route as I'd feared, thank god.)
The scenes I like least tend to be with Michael. The Lady & the Tramp spaghetti scene made me cringe, as did David's dinner party. ("You gave me CRABS!") Gah.
Justin cooking for Brian. Sniff. Jambalaya. "It's always better on the second day." Yes, we *get* it. But still so very endearing. His anxiety, Brian's grudging praise, Justin's face lighting up. Tug my heartstrings, yeah...out of my fucking *chest*, why don't you?
And that has maxed out my squee quota for the day. Elvis has left the building, thankyouverymuch.