There have been several new episodes of QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY recently and I haven’t watched any of them in their entirety. As much as I loved it in the beginning, I just can’t get into it anymore- they’re too “same”- it’s always a New Yorker, Carson always makes double entendres throughout (though still funnier than most scripted sitcoms), Thom is always brilliant, Otto’s Sweet Sweet Kyan® is always cuter than a pack of Bassett Hound pups, Ted still seems the guy you’d most like to know of the five and Jai continues to be sweet but useless, but the new car smell has been replaced by an olfactory cacophony of stale cigarettes, spilled coffee and air freshener, at least to me. I hate that because I really enjoyed the show at one point.
So, is anybody else feeling the same way? I notice there are hardly any QE threads anymore- was it a flash in the pan? Is there anything you can think of that would “fix” the show? (The main thing I can think of is “move it to NBC [Bravo’s parent company], give it a primetime slot, stop showing reruns all week, and give it a budget that allows the guys to travel all over the U.S. & Canada with slightly less blatant product placement offset by commercials”. Even then I don’t know…
Funnier than Frazier perhaps, but that’s not saying much. I always feel sorry for the guy who has to do all the work (the decorator fellow). Mind you, he can come and do my flat any day.
Carson’s a pain in the ass, and the bitching at the end when they’re all sipping their white wines gets, as you put it, so samey.
“Oh my God, he didn’t use the moisturizer!!”
“Yeek, he didn’t marinade the cous-cous!!!”
Camp’s fine, but gays camping camp is too much. And not funny.
They lost me after they made over a series of married men who, while perhaps benefiting from the makeover, weren’t that bad to start with. I caught one of the newer episodes this week, and while it was OK, I realized the magic was gone.
It really was a better idea for a miniseries. The book they put out is pretty good, but reading it gets you most of the info you’d get from the show and that highlights the problem; there’s only so many ways you can make over a guy and have him still be fashionable and trendy.
It’s suffering by familiarity and it’s also going to start suffering from format-awareness among the straight guys. Like how Trading Spaces has suffered from the homeowners having knowledge of the controversies that have come before and then either commenting on them or acting to top them.
That said I still enjoy the show and have no plans to stop watching any time soon. Unlike Trading Spaces, which I haven’t watched in months. I’ve been going out to play poker on Tuesday nights so I appreciate the repeats.
They’ve been running ads looking for guys in Texas, so obviously there are plans to move outside the tri-state area.
“It’s easy to improve your life, you unemployed loser with a cheap haircut! It only costs $25,000 in clothes and furniture, and then coating your body in thirteen different expensive oily greasy products! That way people will see you’re indistinguishable from a gay man, which obviously all the women will love.”
Yeah, I watch it every week. I admit I exaggerated for effect.
The only bits I don’t like are the fact that the home makeovers are so expensive, and the number of hair and skin products they expect you to use every day. The rest of it I still think is pretty good stuff.
However, I also think it has no longevity. As the OP said, it’s getting a bit too samey and it needs something added to spice it up and make it continue to be worth watching.
But the apartments look so good after their makeovers, and there’s some longevity there. The skin products stuff is nauseating. Sort of reminds me of a Ben Stiller movie.
Yes. I cannot *stand * Carson and am constantly amazed that anyone likes the snarky little bitch. I’m not a violent person but if I were on the show, I would have to fight to keep from strangling him with one of his scarves.
Jai and Kyan, on the other hand, would be more than welcome. And Ted and Thom can come too, if they want.
I enjoyed it in the beginning, when they were helping out a bunch of likeable guys who really needed all the help they could get, and were grateful. Then they started making over to rich lawyers with stupid beards who lived in huge mansions, and people who just weren’t needy or gracious or even entertaining, and I lost interest.
The Fab Five are cool (especially Ted and Thom), but for a real challenge, I’d like to see them move out of New York City and come to some poor schmuck’s aid in a town that only has a supermarket and a Target. Let’s see the miracles they could work then, with a more reasonable budget to boot! I think that would greatly add to the mass appeal of the show, whereas now us normal guys watch, but can’t really follow up on a lot of their advice due to finances and location.
The way I understand it, the subject doesn’t pay for anything, so getting on QE is like winning the lottery. The show’s producers pay for everything, but a lot of it must be paid for by the advertisers (DiSaronno Amaretto, anyone?), or the actual businesses and products they feature on the show must contribute free products and services. Can you blame them? It really gets the names out there into the stream of commerce, perhaps even better than traditional commercial spots!
Most is provided out of “promotional consideration” by the sponsors. Theoretically, the “package” involved in each makeover is adjusted to the subject’s capacity to sustain the future use of the products/clothes/appliances.
This is a predictable situation with this type of show – it’s hard to sustain the “reality” when most of your best potential subjects are so aware of it. I agree that they need to get their first outside-NY-area episodes out on the air soon, and see if the change of scenery results in broadening the appeal. And I don’t mean necessarily to “a town where the only store is Target”, though that would be a scream, specially for Mr. Kressly who’d likely say somethign really raunchy about it – but to AnywherebutNY, USA, where they would NOT have already “insider” tracks on the best stores, salons, outfitters, fishmarkets, shows, etc., so they can teach us how to SPOT a good haberdasher, spa, etc. …THAT would be an interesting feature (and you could make it an anchor segment in each week; i.e. one week, how to find a good vintage clothing store and NOT get ripped off, etc.)
Of course, they have to tread carefully on this: they ARE a show on the Bravo Network, their target audience is supposed to be dominated by “cultured urbanites” and their wannabes, who may not be too interested in Queer Eye for the Red States.
The F5 are at their best when dealing with interesting-in-some-areas-but-clueless-in-others guys who needed their eyes opened to a different way of doing things. It’s not as amusing when you suspect the subject (and/or their girlfriends/family/coworkers) probably DID know all along what was needed but just were looking for a way to have it done on someone else’s dime.
Didn’t they do that with the Grizzly Adams dude (the one who was a male model in the 70s and wound up looking like David Bowie)? Whoever it was still lived in the tri-state area, but I distinctly remember a show from the first season where they went to, like, Pier One or something for the furniture. Ditto for the clothes, which came from some well-known, affordable chain (maybe it was a department store, even). I remember the episode because I was so shocked that they were going to stores I’d heard of!
To respond to the OP, I agree that Queer Eye seems to have lost its ‘oomph.’ I still watch it from time to time, but not as religiously as I did the first season. It’s the same thing, with the same jokes, over and over. I think of it kind of like I do televised sports: I’ll tune in at the end to see the final score, but the game itself doesn’t interest me much anymore.
As for the F5: Carson has gotten on my nerves from day one. I have never liked flamers, and I find nothing about him attractive (I’m a straight chick, btw…and was quite the fag hag in my day). Kyan, of course, is the yummiest, with Ted a close second. Thom just seems like he’d be cool to hang around with, though I’d be reluctant to show him my house. I have very little use for Jai: he’s superfluous, so obviously there just because of his looks (though he’s too boyish for my taste), and is always scrambling to get the straight guy some theatre tickets or a beaded bracelet ( :rolleyes: ) or something to justify his presence.
Well, as has already been noted, the furniture and clothing is tied to the economic level of the straight guys, so the critique about “$25,000 of furniture and clothes” is wrong.
Ditto for the hair and skin care products, and the highest number of products I can recall is about five or six, which included shampoo, conditioner, some sort of hair “fixative,” shaving cream/gel, exfoliant and moisturizer. I fail to see how the “thirteen oily greasy products” critique is valid either. These are some pretty basic products that many of the straight guys were using anyway, but they were using ones that were wrong for their skin or hair type. Likewise, many of the straight guys were getting their hair cut anyway, but they weren’t getting it cut in a way that made them look good. It’s just as easy to get a good inexpensive haircut as a bad one.
The bit about being indistinguishable from a gay guy because that’s what the women like is just garbage and says a lot more about the person who said it than about the show.
The show is about marketing. They spend a big chunk of every episode showing the guys going to expensive food and furniture and clothing stores and specialty shops, spending a lot of time shopping, and then coming back to find major renovations done to their homes. There are always donations from sponsors (one episode, the guy got a free flat-panel TV) who want the advertising and name-recognition. For all I know, it is tied to the income level of the guy, but they definitely don’t emphasize that on the show. What they emphasize is: “if you have all this stuff, your life will be better.”
It’s not just about cost, and it’s not about seeming “too gay,” it’s about hassle, and the necessity of spending all that time and effort for something so shallow.
That whole segment of the show only exists for two purposes: to show off Kyan (who, admittedly, is quite hot) and to sell hair and skin care products. I use exactly one hair care product: Head & Shoulders, economy-sized bottle. I use the Edge shaving gel about once a week, and I get out the Oxy-10 when I have a break-out. Now, I’m definitely not rolling in tail or anything, but I have yet to hear any complaints. Once again, the whole “buy this and your life will be better” mentality is pretty shallow and borderline offensive.
And I have yet to find a place that will give a good inexpensive haircut.
All it says about the person who said it is that he understands exaggeration and hyperbole and has a sense of humor about it.
It’s pretty fatuous to suggest that the premise of the show isn’t a boneheaded one. It’s right there on the screen, and it’s based on a stereotype. Gay men are image-conscious and cultured, like women. Straight men aren’t. Three gross generalizations all wrapped up into one show (set to pounding dance music, which all gay men love).
Now the reality of the show isn’t quite that clear-cut, because the only one who acts as if his only qualification is that he’s a homo, is the clothes guy. But I’ve seen episode after episode that follows the same format: Let a bunch of gay men come in and fix you up, and you’ll end the show by getting laid.
And you’ll have to excuse me if I’m getting a little annoyed at the idea that gay guys can’t be every bit as much of a slob as any straight man. If the show were called “Well-dressed and cultured guy for the slob man,” I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with it. But I am getting more and more annoyed that people look at me with my lousy haircut and my shirt untucked and a few days’ groth of beard and ask me, “Dude, are you sure you’re gay?”
I have very little use for Jai: he’s superfluous, so obviously there just because of his looks (though he’s too boyish for my taste), and is always scrambling to get the straight guy some theatre tickets or a beaded bracelet ( :rolleyes: ) or something to justify his presence.