QAF finale

[thebratqueen]

So season 2 of QAF comes to a close. Sigh. No more QAF until next year - and apparently March at that. WHINE!

Still, it was a good year. Solid sophmore effort. A few eps here and there which were directed strangely (which director was it who has the fetish for disgusting closeups?) and/or written weakly, but on the whole a solid season.

What stands out most about the season is, I think, the fact that all the characters were given depth. We moved away from the two-dimensional stuff, and the dimensions they were given made them more human. Mikey got a spine and kept it. Brian was still a bastard but he was a human bastard. Flighty Emmett showed strength and loyalty in his relationship with George. Ted stopped being a sad sack at work and struck out on his own. It was all of the good.

I mourn for the plotlines we were given which were so cliched. Em's relationship with George deserved better than Ye Old Writing Cliche of "he gets the million dollars, then walks away from it in the end". Why, on a show which enjoys ongoing story arcs, were we given an arc which brought Em back to square one? That's the kind of thing you expect on lesser television.

I wish we'd seen a different outcome to that storyline. I would have preferred Em think of the gay kids he could've helped with that cash - even if it wasn't officially in George's name - and try for the money anyway. Or remember that it made George happy to give him the cash so therefore he should honor his memory by keeping it. Or something.

Hell, for that matter, why do it with cash at all? Why not have a highly symbolic moment of George giving Em, say, a piece of artwork that Em had expressed appreciation for but which the ex-wife utterly hated, only to have it be revealed that the painting is worth serious cash and Em could be rich if he sold it at any time? But of course Em wants to have something of George with him so he keeps the painting and stays in his poor lifestyle. Then you can maintain the status quo without insulting our intelligence too much.

But the season was more than that one storyarc so let's move on.

Brian/Justin. Loved their development this year. I liked how they became a couple yet stayed true to the characters. And what makes me especially happy is that their breakup at the end was a natural thing and not done because either one of them was suddenly demonized. It wasn't like the Buffy/Riley breakup where instead of acknowledging the real problems with the relationship the writers completely screwed over Riley's character in order to turn him into an unsympathetic jerk. Brian and Justin's relationship failed because of things that were there the whole time.

This makes me esp happy because quite frankly this is truer of relationships. It is possible for people to have a relationship arrangement like Brian and Justin do (wherein they live together but can fuck other people) and be perfectly content with it. So I'm glad that it was never the arrangement itself which killed things. What killed things was the fact that A) Brian refused to let himself express his feelings and thought he could get away with it and B) Justin was deluded about the reality of the relationship and got spanked on the ass accordingly.

[Sidenote: Contrast that with the Linds/Mel/Leda (sp?) threesome which could have had potential but which was totally crushed the next time it came up and done in such a way that we as the audience were obviously supposed to pretend it never happened. Why? I'm not saying they had to stay a threesome, but how about exploring the depths of that situation? Why bring it up only to squish it so fast and squish it by the nature of what it is? There are poly people who enjoy threesomes beyond the realm of "Dear Letters to Playboy" you know.]

Brian's stoicism biting him on the ass pretty much speaks for itself. Justin's contributions to the downfall are interesting. I liked how it was always true to Justin himself. He's a teen. He still has overly romantic ideas about what a relationship should be. Some of those ideas were correct (he wanted Brian to give him a good birthday present), some were immature (he wanted Brian to go to Vermont without actually telling him that's what he wanted) and some were immature but in a reasonable way for someone his age (he wanted a boyfriend who didn't have work that took away from his time with Justin).

Given the fact that Brian always seems to twig to people's emotions even if he can't relate to them it makes me wonder how aware Brian was of the fact that Justin wasn't old enough yet for a commited relationship - or a relationship of that nature with a guy like him. It's pretty obvious, to me, that Brian deliberately helped to make Justin's choice for him by fucking the guy who played Rage. Judges will allow that you could interpret it as Brain just being a tool who couldn't wait for Justin and therefore fucked the first guy who came along, but given Brian's self-sabotaging actions in the past (like Mikey's birthday party) my money's on premeditated act.

The act itself was right at the border of anvilicious - and by "right at the border" I mean "crossed it" - but still, can't fault the writers for taking the symbolism while they could. The relationship had to end because Justin's hero-worship of Brian wasn't what the relationship needed. So Brian literally had to fuck that vision of himself over to show Justin that he wasn't perfect. It makes me wonder if sometime down the line the two of them will get together again but now on better terms because Justin sees Brian as a person, not the Ideal Man who introduced him to the wonders of gay life.

I don't have much to say about the Mikey storyline except that I'm glad that Ben is sticking around. It's nice to see Mikey in a good relationship. I also liked the turnaround of the moment of Mikey kissing Brian comfortingly when he knew that Brian was hurting over what was going on with Justin.

The Ted and Emmett stuff was cute. It'll be interesting to see them as a couple. I think I would have appreciated at least a tiny "Throw Me A Line" of Em saying something like "It's so soon after George" but then again since they never really indicated how much time had passed anyway judges will allow.

I think that about taps me out comment-wise. All in all a good ep.

Minor quibble: When Ethan ended his argument with Justin by turning to the violin and playing I was laughing. I know what they were hoping to do there but IMO they didn't succeed. All that happened is that I came out of it thinking Ethan was a prentious drama queen, not that he was really hurt by Justin's relationship with Brian. Granted, Ethan is something of a pretentious drama queen but that's not the side of him they were hoping to emphasize just then, I don't think. Silence would have worked better, or even just Ethan tuning his violin. Ah well.