SPOILERS MOST URGENTLY REQUESTED/STOP/SITUATION DESPERATE/STOP/NEED DETAILED SYNOPSIS OF THIS EPISODE/STOP/MUST HAVE OR WILL STOMP ON THIS KITTEN/STOP/HIS LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS/STOP/WHAT HAPPENED WITH HUNTER/STOP/WHAT HAPPENED WITH TED/STOP/WHAT BASHING?/STOP/HOW WAS BRIAN GUTTED/STOP/DID HE SAY I LOVE YOU TO JUSTIN/STOP/PLEASE HELP OBI WAN KENOBI/STOP/[YOU’RE MY LAST HOPE/STOP/[COLOR=Purple]I HAVE A DELETE BUTTON AND I’M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT
You wish is my command. Rather than give along drawn out, blow-by-blow (as it were) recitation, I’ll give you the short and sweet.
Brian
Ended up $100,000 in debt after finacing the ads to bring down Stockwell. Justinf offfers to help, but Brian refuses out of spite. Brian tries to go back to his ad agencyt, but his arrogant demands short-circuit that. Brian tries to open his own agency, confident that his clients will follow him, but they don’t. Finally, all his friends hold a benefit for him and give him a check made out to the fictitious citizen’s group that he used to buy the ads in order to salve his pride. He accepts the money.
Ted is in rehab. He is still a whiney, self-pity8ng mess. He has a crush on his drug counselor, who turned out to be Blsake the kid who gave Ted the drugs that nearyl killed him in Season 1. Ted gets with the program out of his lust for blake, but the he quits like a little bitch when he finds out that Blake has a boyfriend.
Emmett spend the episode being sad.
Mike and **Hunter[/b[, the HIV+ hustler that Mike and Ben took in are still on the run. After Hunter tricks to make them money and Mike freaks out, they return to Pittsburgh.
In family court, Hunter’s evil bitch mother pretends that she loves him, fooling the judge into awarding her full custody. Hunter kises hi s mother with tongue, and the tells her he has HIV. She explodes, calling him a disgusting faggot. Ben and Mike get custody.
The episode has been punctuated by a drag queen singing standards, and is revealed to be the entertainment at Brian’s benefit. As the drag quee is walking home out of drag, he is gaybashed by thugs.
Roll credits.
This is what’s known as verisimilitude. I’d say 99% of gaybashings in the real world don’t have immediate consequences for the attackers. Hell, at least half of them have no consequences whatsoever for the attackers. But even given that, we saw very, very little of an post-attack time in the episode. The episode ended with the end of the attack. We don’t know what’s going to happen on a judicial front with this yet. Give them a little time here!
Second of all, quite often gaybashings happen within 100 yards of a busy street (since many gaybashings occur near the venue of a gay bar or club). If the bashers are quiet, and they can manage to cause enough injury that the victim can’t get the breath to scream for help, an attack could very easily never even be noticed. The purpose of showing all of the regulars was to contrast their happiness to what was going on in the alley.
And the previews do show the victim coming back to the show, and I thought I saw a courtroom scene so there may actually be consequences for the attackers.
Oh, and I personally thought it was about time that Brian had to accept help from everyone else, after all he’s done for them. Insisting on being the benefactor exclusively is a power trip tactic, not selflessness.
gobear, you missed the part where Emmett, running into Ted at his apartment after Ted quit his rehab over Blake, basically gets fed up and stages Ted’s big suicide scene for him, including putting high opera on the stereo and handing him the dagger, then leaves with some biting final words. So incredibly un-Emmettlike, but so effective in showing just how far Ted’s stretched Emmett’s feelings and tolerance lately.
Thanks for the info. Was the drag queen Michael’s father, by any chance? Did it say how much money was raised? (I can’t imagine Brian accepting it if it weren’t a lot.) Did Justin cut his hair yet? (I saw the newly bald look on the previews.)
No, not Michael’s father. He was a new character, I think…although I didn’t see any of the 3rd season, so he may have been around a while and I just didn’t know it.
Justin’s hair was NOT cut. It was more or less a mess, and the sideburns make him look like some high school kid trying to look older.
(1)Not so different from real life. And it was the end of the episode. We don’t know what happens next week. (2)He was down an alley, actually. Not in clear view of the rest of Liberty Ave.
From the previews, Justin gets riled up after the bashed drag queen (a new character) from last night gives him a tongue-lashing and he hears an impassioned speech from a young firebrand. It’s not he bashing itself but the confluence of events that leads Justin to get involved with the Pink Posse group. I think the head shaving comes as part of that.
Brian’s demands didn’t short-circuit that, it was the non-compete agreement that he didn’t like. The boss was going to accept his demands otherwise. I’m somewhat surprised that at least one of the clients didn’t jump ship with him. I also don’t think his refusal to accept money from Justin was spiteful, rather it was foolishly prideful.
I could see the guys on Liberty Ave through a chainlink fence panning out over the attack. Anyway, the drag queen was good. Better than anyone on American Idol, I thought.
Oh, my QAF threads die slow painful deaths too. And I won’t even start on my Mad Mad House threads.
I didn’t open this thread until now because I just got done watching the season premiere. Once again I am completely annoyed at how a legal issue is handled by the show. I don’t know how things work in Pennsylvania but in Wisconsin there’s no way in gay hell that Melanie would be appointed guardian ad litem for Hunter. There is special training required to be a GAL, the GAL can’t represent the child and a party in the case and the fees for the GAL are paid by the parties. Regardless of whether that holds true in PA, no judge anywhere would appoint someone who has a personal relationship with the child or the people who were taking care of the child. I also wish they would’ve explained why Hunter’s mother was petitioning for “custody.” If Hunter was a runaway, she wouldn’t have lost custody. But I’m probably the only person this bothered.
Ted didn’t go into the program because he was lusting after Blake. He didn’t leave because of unrequited lust; he left because he transferred to Blake. Other than that, yeah, Ted was a jackass but he gets cut a little slack from me because of the withdrawal and everything. But Emmett’s calling him on his shit and setting up his suicide was a great scene.
We also got this ep a little setup for Emmett’s shipping off to a Radical Faerie weekend. Spiritual awakening is in the offing.
I was watching the last few eps from last season the other night and it struck me then that we don’t know whether Hunter is gay. He did crush out on Brian a bit but that doesn’t count since birds suddenly appear every time Brian’s near. I kind of hope he’s straight. That’d be much more interesting.
What do we think of the new opening? It was time for a change, but I’m not sure I like the issue-oriented vignettes. It’ll grow on me, I suppose, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.
Well, yeah, several hundred yards away. I think I’d probably miss a beating going on in the dark a couple hundred yards away outside my current field of focus with music from the clubs on the avenue blaring in my ears as well.
I mentioned the possibility of him being straight but gay-for-pay and very confused earlier in the thread; even if he is straight, he probably would have an aesthete for men because of his business.
BTW: his hugging of Ben in the last episode of Season 3: sweet or cheesy?
If they were several hundred yards away, then they were thirty feet tall.
sigh
Fine, Lib. I admit it. Every single person on Liberty Ave saw the attack and simply decided to ignore it so that they could continue having a great time and wouldn’t have to be reminded that gaybashings still happen.
Happy?
Seems appropriate to keep it to one thread.
I really liked Brian’s “honesty” campaign. Although I found the way he walked into the conference room and wasn’t promptly escorted out far-fetched.
Something about the whole visual appearance looked different to me. It almost looked like they were using film instead of video, especially a the Fairy Retreat. Speaking of which, I’m glad they had mushrooms involved before Emmett met the dead founder. I don’t go in for supernatural stuff like that. But it can be explained as a hallucination. And the kilt works for Hal Sparks.
The meeting at the community center seemed implausible. But I’ve never lived in a town with a Gay community center so maybe it’s true to life. I can believe Darrin backing out of identifying his attackers. So many do. It’s also realistic that that could spur Justin to be more aggressive and join up with the Pink Posse.
I forgot to mention Ted. What makes him think he’s ready to leave rehab? Why’d he leave the box open when he went to open the door. God, he’s a stupid one. And what’s he doin’ tossing the laptop! He doesn’t quite understand the whole getting rid of triggers thing does he. Or is he just so weak he can’t even have a computer without being tempted? (Don’t you dare mention my post count.)
I don’t have Showtime, so a few questions please-
Is Blake going to be on the show again or was he just a 2 episode cameo?
Are Ted & Emmett currently together?
Could you please describe the new opening?
Is Brian still desperate for money?
Yeah, I was rather surprised that Ted was out of rehab after a week, but I guess the storytellers felt the plot couldn’t stand up to the standard 28 day duration. He also said something about his insurance running out and that he would be returning on an outpatient basis, which as a former insurance worker who dealt with people calling about inpatient stays for AODA rang true. Coverage for that tends to suck, although people usually got more than seven days.
I assume that Blake will reappear. I envision a storyline involving a Blake-Ted-Emmett triangle but either way I’m OK with whether he returns or not.
Ted and Emmett are IMHO broken up but there is certainly the possibility of a reconciliation storyline.
The new opening involves a new song, shots of cast members interacting with each other and generic shots of muscle boys mixed in with “issue” shots (two men in tuxes for same-sex marriage, two men wearing shirts identifying them as a serodiscordant couple and the like). I still don’t care for it.
Brian is starting to build a small client base and has snagged a major account, a pharmaceutical company that has an HIV drug hitting the market. He’s still in debt but the implication was that by landing that big client he was past the worst of it.
It looks to me like he’s going to become a bit of a recurring character. He and Ted seem to be going through an awkward “getting re-aquainted” phase right now.
No, and after this weeks episode it looks like Emmet is finally getting over it.
Ugh. It’s not a huge departure, there’s still dancing guys, but now the background is white and the main characters appear while several of them (dancers and characters alike) wear these cheesy issue oriented T-shirts. God made me gay, I love my gay son, positive/negative, etc…
I don’t care for it.
Brian is just starting a new agency, with only one major client. He took some money the others had raised for him last week, which would probably have been enought to cover the bare minimum of living expenses… so naturally in a feat of great screenwriting :rolleyes: this episode has passed without him showing any undue concern for money even though he has no way of knowing where his next paycheck is coming from.
Thanks (and for the record, Blake is purty).
I thought they made it pretty clear that he wasn’t stressed at the end of the episode because the drug account was enough to keep him set up. It would be out of character for Brian to show any great concern about being without money (the scene from last season’s finale being an exception because of the immediate stress). He doesn’t want pity or charity so he’s not going to make a lot of noise about being broke.