Queer As Folk Recap, Episode 1.20
Closing in on the end of the first season! Today's offering is another one of the set piece episodes, which is something the show does well. But it's also one of the Morality Theme episodes, which is something the show doesn't do well. Music, fun, excitement, and a cast of dumbasses running around in it. What's not to love?
Queer as Folk 1.20
A hot beat ushers us into the cheesiest porn shoot you ever did see. There’s this random hunky actor who can barely keep his giggles controlled as he parades around in a crown, a faux ermine-trimmed cape, and an orb and scepter to shield his . . . orbs and scepter. He’s being photographed by a guy who is rolling around on the ground and actually exhorting him to make love to the camera. The photographer doesn’t actually get “love,” but does get “slinky, mostly naked guy wearing royal signifiers,” which I suppose is good enough for government work.
It turns out that this was the photography session for a poster advertising the “King of Babylon” contest, which is tonight, as Debbie makes sure to plaster all over the diner’s copy of the poster. Our Gang spouts some formulaic exposition of same. Basically, it’s an amateur strip contest at Babylon. Like pretty much every single event that Babylon hosts, it’s amazingly over-hyped and then quickly forgotten. Today, Our Gang includes Blake, much to the discomfort of Mike and the outright nose-wrinkling disgust of Emmett. Emmett manages to work a snide comment about drugs into the conversation, and I have to wonder if he doesn’t have some interesting issues with meth users in his own past, since he seems so amazingly, aggressively hostile towards Blake, who seems to be doing everything in his power to kick what I’m told is a very sticky addiction indeed.
Hostilities continue until it’s time to make actual plans for Babylon. Mike isn’t sure that David will want to go, and cue the expected round of old-age jokes and Brian making sure that the lone audience member who hasn’t picked up the Clue Ball knows that he (Brian) loves to have lots of athletic sex. Incidentally, he’s also the only one of Our Gang who thinks that Blake should be allowed a bit of autonomy in deciding where he’d like to spend his free time.
Over at The Architectural House, Mike catcalls David and his worn-out laundry day jeans. He then actually manages to manipulate David into agreeing to come to the King of Babylon contest. His technique is more transparent than my worn-out workout t-shirt, but David totally falls for it. Must be an off day in the Land of Chiropractica.
Pre-King, Babylon is nautically themed and hopping. Ted offers to buy everyone a round of drinks, but nobody’s taking, opting for the dance floor instead. Ted and Blake are a bit put off by this, but decide to go along. Blake is briefly stopped and greeted by the most obvious drug dealer ever to obvious his way across the obvious landscape, but he resists temptation for the nonce.
An announcer introduces us to our MC of the evening, a deliciously over-the-top drag queen named Sheba, who - I am not making this up - enters on a palanquin borne by muscular young men to the dulcet tones of an electronic version of the hootchie-kootchie song. I gotta say, for the money that this one event has already cost in just these first ten seconds, I can only imagine that Babylon has secret ties to Mexican drug cartels that really finance all of its events.
Well, whatever the legality of Babylon’s deep pockets, Sheba is totally worth it. She’s a fabulous MC, in the great style of some of the best drag queens it has been my pleasure to be acquainted with. She gets the show rolling by announcing a guy whose nom de strip is “Four-Alarm Fred,” and whose shtik is, to the surprise of nobody, a fireman-themed strip dance. Yay.
Brian and Justin wander off to a semi-private corner for Iteration 237 of their ongoing argument about whether or not they’re a couple. Their positions really haven’t changed, and it’s the sort of argument that they really should just tape record and save themselves the trouble of having:
JUSTIN: Brian, why won’t you do this thing with me that long-established couples fifteen years older than myself find romantic but in which you have never shown the faintest whiff of interest?
BRIAN: Because, despite my constant braying about subverting heteronormativity, I am, in fact, deeply enslaved to heteronormative concepts of what constitutes “a couple,” and therefore refuse to consider any suggestions for activities that might be pleasing to you, a person I voluntarily associate with.
JUSTIN: [Wounded-Gazelle Gaze of Once-Again-Shattered Idealism.]
Enough of that. Is there a B plot in this episode? Why, yes there is! Vic is out shopping . . . at a mall . . . at what has to be at least 11:30ish at night . . . just run with it, Earth Logic clearly does not apply . . . and he stops by the Gents to answer nature’s call. Up walks this guy who immediately violates Male Urinal Etiquette by sidling up to the urinal right next to Vic’s and starting a conversation. The guy segues not at all smoothly into a blatant come-on. Vic looks uncomfortable, but - damn those large, capacious male bladders! - is kind of trapped in place for the duration.
Back at Babylon, we see that Emmett has once again been handed the Comic Relief Ball. He goes right off into Inner Monologue Land, expositing about his ennui at once again being single and looking at Babylon. Cue the Pas de Deux from West Side Story as Emmett spots a tall, handsome stranger across the crowded room. This is going to set off a subplot that has absolutely nothing going for it - it’s cheesy, silly, undignified, pointless - that succeeds far beyond its goals on the merits of the combined performances of Peter Paige and Dave Tomlinson. They play it not so much as part of the episode’s storyline - which it totally isn’t - but as sort of a series of stylized ballet interludes that come off as sweet and charming precisely because they are so stylized and theatrical. Hats off, guys!
Back in what passes for the real world, Mike is oh-so-symbolically caught between Brian and David as they compete for the dubious prize of his soul. David pontificates, and Brian neatly punctures each Bullshit Balloon as it appears. David challenges Brian to sign up to compete in the strip contest, and Brian walks away.
Holy Bazolie! Not only has Sheba changed elaborate costumes faster than any drag queen I’ve ever met, she managed to get herself up onto a flower-bedecked swing. Okay, I am totally calling it. Babylon is a front for a drug money laundering operation. Muscular men with silly themes continue to parade, strut, bump, and grind their way across the stage, and Sheba takes a smoke break. On the way, she runs into Justin, who’s sulking over Brian being Brian. Sheba dares Justin to sign up to strip, on the theory that, if Brian is in fact taking Justin for granted, as Justin claims, then perhaps he should be shown a thing or two.
At the diner, Deb takes a call from Vic (said call is answered by Kiki, a diner server who works in full drag, which is both bizarre and kind of cute). Vic has been arrested on a charge of Indecent Exposure, and he needs Deb to come down to the station, bail him out, and bring him the HIV medication that he should have taken an hour ago.
Pause for a quick, Tchaikovsky-scored Ballet Interlude between Emmett and Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Their plot, such as it is, is that they act out an entire twenty-year romance-marriage-bitter divorce plot a la a Bette Davis movie in the span of about two hours. This is Act I, The Lovers Meet (And Exchange Astonishing Blowjobs).
This blends smoothly into a little bit of posturing and hypocrisy regarding Our Gang’s relative trust of Blake (not at all) and Brent (anyone who’s special to Emmett is special to us!). While Ted looks rightly disgusted at the shade that his friends have been throwing on Blake all evening, he would do well to remember that their dislike of Blake isn’t exactly groundless. As well-meaning as Blake’s current cleanup attempts are, he was the guy who gave Ted the drugs that put him into a coma way back at the beginning of the show. Ted was out of it, but his friends weren’t, and they had far more of a scare than any of them would be willing to admit. So, no, as much as they’re being gratuitously rude to Blake right now, it really isn’t as though they should be placing full faith and credit in him.
Debbie has run straight over to Mel and Lindsay’s house to sob out the story of Vic’s arrest. She’s decided that Vic needs a lawyer, and . . . hey, is it now time for another round of What Kind Of Lawyer Is Melanie? Yes it is! So far, our current choices are a) Probate Attorney, and b) Civil Rights Attorney. Debbie wants her to add a third option, c) Criminal Defense Attorney. She also spits a bit of unwarranted bile at Lindsay for a less-than-exquisitely phrased question that Lindsay asked while still trying to wake up, but since it’s Lindsay she’s spitting at, I’ll let it slide.
Back at Babylon, Justin sidles up to Brian and attempts to insert himself where he is clearly not yet wanted, in the hopes that . . . well, that Brian will deign to insert himself where he clearly is very much wanted. Meanwhile, in another area of the Land of Blond Boys In Uncomfortable Relationships, Blake runs into his dealer and Just Says No. Speaking of blond(e)s, Sheba is now dressed as Marilyn Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch.
Ballet Interlude, Act II. To Tchaikovsky’s “Mirlitons,” Emmett and Brent have reached the Idyllic Marriage part of their plot.
Sheba introduces the next contestant, a manipulative guy who likes younger men, and who turns out to be . . . David! Yes! Brian actually went and signed David up to dance, not-so-subtly underscoring their similarities. Remind me again why Brian and David aren’t shtupping each other silly right now? They’d be perfect for one night, and then they’d never speak to each other again.
After a little goading from Brian, an inadvertent challenge from Mike, and a whole lot of goading from the crowd, David takes up Brian’s challenge. His dance is less stripperriffic than the extras we’ve seen so far, but more charismatic. Mike finds that his sense of humor, never strong to begin with, has wilted and died completely under the withering humiliation of seeing someone he knows in the position of the anonymous sex objects he was ogling thirty seconds ago.
Over at the precinct, Melanie is trying to get to Vic as his constitutionally protected attorney, but is finding her way strewn with roadblocks. The biggest roadblock, of course, is Debbie, Queen of Things Do Not Work That Way. Vic seems to have been arraigned without a lawyer present, because he’s got bail set already, at $5000, which is steep. I think Mel is about to start raising a combined Fifth and Sixth Amendment Fuss, when Deb shamefacedly reveals that Vic has a prior arrest record for possession (of marijuana). The next roadblock is that Debbie is the one to try to give the desk sergeant the bag with Vic’s HIV medication. The officer refuses (for which, I believe, he can be sued from here to Timbuktu), and Melanie leads Deb away, instead of getting in the sergeant’s face, as someone who is a real criminal defense lawyer and not a probate attorney punching above her weight class would be doing.
David finishes his dance, and makes his way through crowds of mindlessly adoring admirers to the less-than-welcoming arms of the shrieking scold he’s currently seeing.
Justin spots Brian taking off with a hunky extra. Full of wounded eighteen-year-old pride, he hurries over to Sheba (now gorgeously costumed as Queen Elizabeth I) and asks to sign up to dance. The contest must be down to its dregs, because he’s up to perform right away, where by “right away,” I of course mean “with just enough time to organize music and acquire a stripper costume from stuff he found lying around the club.”
Justin dances to Carole Pope’s “High School Confidential.” Our Gang hoots and whistles, and I note that, while Mike was utterly mortified at the thought of David bumping and grinding in front of a crowd, he’s totally on board with Justin doing the exact same thing. Mike doesn’t really see Justin as a person, certainly not at this point in the series, and this is the moment that really drives that home.
Justin’s dance is a testament to the producers’ love of Randy Harrison. Harrison is an excellent dancer, cool, smooth, controlled, graceful, sensuous, and sexy. It’s a lovely dance, and completely out of character for Justin Taylor.
Harrison was about 24 when this was filmed, although Justin is only 18. That’s not an insignificant difference. I’ve spent the past decade on university campuses, surrounded by young men ranging from late teens to mid-twenties and beyond, and it’s astonishing, the physical transformation that boys undergo in that time span. 18-year-olds have the bone structure of adults, but they don’t quite have the musculature yet, and they’re usually still learning how to work their new post-puberty bodies. Basically, unless they’ve had serious training (and I have a hard time believing that Justin Taylor ever took hootchie-kootchie lessons), 18-year-old boys just don’t dance that well. 24-year-old stage-trained actors certainly can dance like that, but not the teenage boys storming up to act out their wounded pride and desperation.
But, whatever, it’s a fun scene to watch, and Justin has the undivided attention of every man in Babylon as he executes a fairly sophisticated pole dance routine.
We segue to a Ballet Interlude, where Things Start To Go Wrong. Brent has found someone new. He and Emmett split up in a storm of 1930s silver screen diva tears and over-emoting.
Over at the precinct house, Debbie is now apparently trying to guilt-trip the desk sergeant into giving Vic his HIV meds. Melanie is being no help at all, and neither she nor Debbie has any idea how they’re going to lay their hands on five grand for Vic’s bail. Now, I’m a bit confused here, because I always understood that, in most places, you can spring someone from jail by basically paying a down payment of ten percent of the bail and then paying the rest in full at a later date. In that situation, Deb and Mel would only need $500, a much more reasonable sum to find in the middle of the night. And anyway, isn’t that what bail bondsmen are for?
Pay no attention to the real world. We have a winner of the King of Babylon contest! To the surprise of nobody in the viewing audience, that winner is Justin. He looks absurdly happy to win what is, in the end, a meaningless popularity contest. But there’s a lovely little moment between him and Sheba, in which Sheba reminds him of why he did it - to boost his self-esteem just enough to go and grab Brian’s attention - and gives him the external affirmation that Justin’s insecure teenaged self so desperately needs. I want more Sheba in this show!
And then Justin goes and does something that really only works in fiction, but which is a fantastic narrative device anyway. He uses all of his newfound mojo and self-esteem to walk right up to . . . Brian’s potential trick, and seduce him right the hell away from Brian. The writing is too perfect, the delivery is too over-the-top, and who cares? It’s the great revenge fantasy for everyone who wasn’t beautiful and well put-together as a teenager.
Mike scolds David some more. David has run out of fucks to give on that particular subject.
Blake, who is not stupid, tries to confront Ted about the problem that Ted’s friends have with him. He wants to offer Ted a way out, but Ted drowns him out in a storm of platitudes.
Brian locates the Back Room, which has moved to the basement for this episode, and stares dazedly as Justin shtups his erstwhile trick.
Just as Mike is leaving, he collides with the B plot. Deb and Mel rush up to him in search of Brian, who is the only person they can think of who might be dumb enough to walk around carrying $5000 in cash, because they themselves are not bright enough to think of just calling a professional bail bondsman, who can generally be found by calling agencies that tend to be open twenty-four hours a day precisely because of situations like this one. Anyway, Brian does not, in fact, have five grand in his pockets, and can only withdraw five hundred at an ATM. Now, in a lot of jurisdictions, this would be exactly enough to spring Vic for the night. I guess I’m not sure what the law is in Pittsburgh, but, really, even if Pittsburgh wants the full amount, isn’t it a big enough city that it would have at least one frickin’ bail bond company?
Hey, Melanie has finally caught up to the story, and suggests doing exactly that! Good for her. Looks like those three years of law school weren’t a total wash. So where are they going to find said bondsman? The Yellow Pages, perhaps? Surely, they won’t . . . no . . . oh, God.
Really, show? Blake scurries over to his old dealer and gets a name and a number, which he hands over, all proud of himself. Who is the guy at the other end of the number? Is he legit? Does he have the money? What will he demand in return? Who the hell cares? Blake Has Redeemed Himself.
Facepalm.
Deb, Mike, and Mel hurry back to the precinct to collect Vic, who reveals that the desk sergeant did end up giving him his HIV meds. Probably more from fear of a lawsuit than Debbie’s Touching Stories, but whatever, meds were passed along, and that’s what counts.
That problem solved, Mike and David meet up at The Architectural House for some end-of-episode moralizing and a striptease.
The next morning, Our Gang, minus Justin but plus Blake, meet to breakfast at the diner, rag on Brian, and have one last glimpse at Brent, who enters with his new Twoo Luv. It’s Ballet Interlude: The Coda. Brent offers to get together that evening, but Emmett would prefer to remember The Way We Were.
Justin shows up for his pre-credits riff on the previous evening’s events. He and Brian’s Trick had a happy night, although Justin betrays his age and relative lack of sophistication by describing Brian’s Trick’s request that Justin wear his crown during sex as “kinky.” He then tries to pull off Brian’s coldhearted dismissal in front of the master, whose glare tells all in range that Justin really is nothing more than a punk kid trying on Daddy’s suit jacket. And Emmett drives home the ultimate meaninglessness of this whole little romp by asking who’s in the mood for the next Big Contest.
Queer as Folk 1.20
A hot beat ushers us into the cheesiest porn shoot you ever did see. There’s this random hunky actor who can barely keep his giggles controlled as he parades around in a crown, a faux ermine-trimmed cape, and an orb and scepter to shield his . . . orbs and scepter. He’s being photographed by a guy who is rolling around on the ground and actually exhorting him to make love to the camera. The photographer doesn’t actually get “love,” but does get “slinky, mostly naked guy wearing royal signifiers,” which I suppose is good enough for government work.
It turns out that this was the photography session for a poster advertising the “King of Babylon” contest, which is tonight, as Debbie makes sure to plaster all over the diner’s copy of the poster. Our Gang spouts some formulaic exposition of same. Basically, it’s an amateur strip contest at Babylon. Like pretty much every single event that Babylon hosts, it’s amazingly over-hyped and then quickly forgotten. Today, Our Gang includes Blake, much to the discomfort of Mike and the outright nose-wrinkling disgust of Emmett. Emmett manages to work a snide comment about drugs into the conversation, and I have to wonder if he doesn’t have some interesting issues with meth users in his own past, since he seems so amazingly, aggressively hostile towards Blake, who seems to be doing everything in his power to kick what I’m told is a very sticky addiction indeed.
Hostilities continue until it’s time to make actual plans for Babylon. Mike isn’t sure that David will want to go, and cue the expected round of old-age jokes and Brian making sure that the lone audience member who hasn’t picked up the Clue Ball knows that he (Brian) loves to have lots of athletic sex. Incidentally, he’s also the only one of Our Gang who thinks that Blake should be allowed a bit of autonomy in deciding where he’d like to spend his free time.
Over at The Architectural House, Mike catcalls David and his worn-out laundry day jeans. He then actually manages to manipulate David into agreeing to come to the King of Babylon contest. His technique is more transparent than my worn-out workout t-shirt, but David totally falls for it. Must be an off day in the Land of Chiropractica.
Pre-King, Babylon is nautically themed and hopping. Ted offers to buy everyone a round of drinks, but nobody’s taking, opting for the dance floor instead. Ted and Blake are a bit put off by this, but decide to go along. Blake is briefly stopped and greeted by the most obvious drug dealer ever to obvious his way across the obvious landscape, but he resists temptation for the nonce.
An announcer introduces us to our MC of the evening, a deliciously over-the-top drag queen named Sheba, who - I am not making this up - enters on a palanquin borne by muscular young men to the dulcet tones of an electronic version of the hootchie-kootchie song. I gotta say, for the money that this one event has already cost in just these first ten seconds, I can only imagine that Babylon has secret ties to Mexican drug cartels that really finance all of its events.
Well, whatever the legality of Babylon’s deep pockets, Sheba is totally worth it. She’s a fabulous MC, in the great style of some of the best drag queens it has been my pleasure to be acquainted with. She gets the show rolling by announcing a guy whose nom de strip is “Four-Alarm Fred,” and whose shtik is, to the surprise of nobody, a fireman-themed strip dance. Yay.
Brian and Justin wander off to a semi-private corner for Iteration 237 of their ongoing argument about whether or not they’re a couple. Their positions really haven’t changed, and it’s the sort of argument that they really should just tape record and save themselves the trouble of having:
JUSTIN: Brian, why won’t you do this thing with me that long-established couples fifteen years older than myself find romantic but in which you have never shown the faintest whiff of interest?
BRIAN: Because, despite my constant braying about subverting heteronormativity, I am, in fact, deeply enslaved to heteronormative concepts of what constitutes “a couple,” and therefore refuse to consider any suggestions for activities that might be pleasing to you, a person I voluntarily associate with.
JUSTIN: [Wounded-Gazelle Gaze of Once-Again-Shattered Idealism.]
Enough of that. Is there a B plot in this episode? Why, yes there is! Vic is out shopping . . . at a mall . . . at what has to be at least 11:30ish at night . . . just run with it, Earth Logic clearly does not apply . . . and he stops by the Gents to answer nature’s call. Up walks this guy who immediately violates Male Urinal Etiquette by sidling up to the urinal right next to Vic’s and starting a conversation. The guy segues not at all smoothly into a blatant come-on. Vic looks uncomfortable, but - damn those large, capacious male bladders! - is kind of trapped in place for the duration.
Back at Babylon, we see that Emmett has once again been handed the Comic Relief Ball. He goes right off into Inner Monologue Land, expositing about his ennui at once again being single and looking at Babylon. Cue the Pas de Deux from West Side Story as Emmett spots a tall, handsome stranger across the crowded room. This is going to set off a subplot that has absolutely nothing going for it - it’s cheesy, silly, undignified, pointless - that succeeds far beyond its goals on the merits of the combined performances of Peter Paige and Dave Tomlinson. They play it not so much as part of the episode’s storyline - which it totally isn’t - but as sort of a series of stylized ballet interludes that come off as sweet and charming precisely because they are so stylized and theatrical. Hats off, guys!
Back in what passes for the real world, Mike is oh-so-symbolically caught between Brian and David as they compete for the dubious prize of his soul. David pontificates, and Brian neatly punctures each Bullshit Balloon as it appears. David challenges Brian to sign up to compete in the strip contest, and Brian walks away.
Holy Bazolie! Not only has Sheba changed elaborate costumes faster than any drag queen I’ve ever met, she managed to get herself up onto a flower-bedecked swing. Okay, I am totally calling it. Babylon is a front for a drug money laundering operation. Muscular men with silly themes continue to parade, strut, bump, and grind their way across the stage, and Sheba takes a smoke break. On the way, she runs into Justin, who’s sulking over Brian being Brian. Sheba dares Justin to sign up to strip, on the theory that, if Brian is in fact taking Justin for granted, as Justin claims, then perhaps he should be shown a thing or two.
At the diner, Deb takes a call from Vic (said call is answered by Kiki, a diner server who works in full drag, which is both bizarre and kind of cute). Vic has been arrested on a charge of Indecent Exposure, and he needs Deb to come down to the station, bail him out, and bring him the HIV medication that he should have taken an hour ago.
Pause for a quick, Tchaikovsky-scored Ballet Interlude between Emmett and Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Their plot, such as it is, is that they act out an entire twenty-year romance-marriage-bitter divorce plot a la a Bette Davis movie in the span of about two hours. This is Act I, The Lovers Meet (And Exchange Astonishing Blowjobs).
This blends smoothly into a little bit of posturing and hypocrisy regarding Our Gang’s relative trust of Blake (not at all) and Brent (anyone who’s special to Emmett is special to us!). While Ted looks rightly disgusted at the shade that his friends have been throwing on Blake all evening, he would do well to remember that their dislike of Blake isn’t exactly groundless. As well-meaning as Blake’s current cleanup attempts are, he was the guy who gave Ted the drugs that put him into a coma way back at the beginning of the show. Ted was out of it, but his friends weren’t, and they had far more of a scare than any of them would be willing to admit. So, no, as much as they’re being gratuitously rude to Blake right now, it really isn’t as though they should be placing full faith and credit in him.
Debbie has run straight over to Mel and Lindsay’s house to sob out the story of Vic’s arrest. She’s decided that Vic needs a lawyer, and . . . hey, is it now time for another round of What Kind Of Lawyer Is Melanie? Yes it is! So far, our current choices are a) Probate Attorney, and b) Civil Rights Attorney. Debbie wants her to add a third option, c) Criminal Defense Attorney. She also spits a bit of unwarranted bile at Lindsay for a less-than-exquisitely phrased question that Lindsay asked while still trying to wake up, but since it’s Lindsay she’s spitting at, I’ll let it slide.
Back at Babylon, Justin sidles up to Brian and attempts to insert himself where he is clearly not yet wanted, in the hopes that . . . well, that Brian will deign to insert himself where he clearly is very much wanted. Meanwhile, in another area of the Land of Blond Boys In Uncomfortable Relationships, Blake runs into his dealer and Just Says No. Speaking of blond(e)s, Sheba is now dressed as Marilyn Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch.
Ballet Interlude, Act II. To Tchaikovsky’s “Mirlitons,” Emmett and Brent have reached the Idyllic Marriage part of their plot.
Sheba introduces the next contestant, a manipulative guy who likes younger men, and who turns out to be . . . David! Yes! Brian actually went and signed David up to dance, not-so-subtly underscoring their similarities. Remind me again why Brian and David aren’t shtupping each other silly right now? They’d be perfect for one night, and then they’d never speak to each other again.
After a little goading from Brian, an inadvertent challenge from Mike, and a whole lot of goading from the crowd, David takes up Brian’s challenge. His dance is less stripperriffic than the extras we’ve seen so far, but more charismatic. Mike finds that his sense of humor, never strong to begin with, has wilted and died completely under the withering humiliation of seeing someone he knows in the position of the anonymous sex objects he was ogling thirty seconds ago.
Over at the precinct, Melanie is trying to get to Vic as his constitutionally protected attorney, but is finding her way strewn with roadblocks. The biggest roadblock, of course, is Debbie, Queen of Things Do Not Work That Way. Vic seems to have been arraigned without a lawyer present, because he’s got bail set already, at $5000, which is steep. I think Mel is about to start raising a combined Fifth and Sixth Amendment Fuss, when Deb shamefacedly reveals that Vic has a prior arrest record for possession (of marijuana). The next roadblock is that Debbie is the one to try to give the desk sergeant the bag with Vic’s HIV medication. The officer refuses (for which, I believe, he can be sued from here to Timbuktu), and Melanie leads Deb away, instead of getting in the sergeant’s face, as someone who is a real criminal defense lawyer and not a probate attorney punching above her weight class would be doing.
David finishes his dance, and makes his way through crowds of mindlessly adoring admirers to the less-than-welcoming arms of the shrieking scold he’s currently seeing.
Justin spots Brian taking off with a hunky extra. Full of wounded eighteen-year-old pride, he hurries over to Sheba (now gorgeously costumed as Queen Elizabeth I) and asks to sign up to dance. The contest must be down to its dregs, because he’s up to perform right away, where by “right away,” I of course mean “with just enough time to organize music and acquire a stripper costume from stuff he found lying around the club.”
Justin dances to Carole Pope’s “High School Confidential.” Our Gang hoots and whistles, and I note that, while Mike was utterly mortified at the thought of David bumping and grinding in front of a crowd, he’s totally on board with Justin doing the exact same thing. Mike doesn’t really see Justin as a person, certainly not at this point in the series, and this is the moment that really drives that home.
Justin’s dance is a testament to the producers’ love of Randy Harrison. Harrison is an excellent dancer, cool, smooth, controlled, graceful, sensuous, and sexy. It’s a lovely dance, and completely out of character for Justin Taylor.
Harrison was about 24 when this was filmed, although Justin is only 18. That’s not an insignificant difference. I’ve spent the past decade on university campuses, surrounded by young men ranging from late teens to mid-twenties and beyond, and it’s astonishing, the physical transformation that boys undergo in that time span. 18-year-olds have the bone structure of adults, but they don’t quite have the musculature yet, and they’re usually still learning how to work their new post-puberty bodies. Basically, unless they’ve had serious training (and I have a hard time believing that Justin Taylor ever took hootchie-kootchie lessons), 18-year-old boys just don’t dance that well. 24-year-old stage-trained actors certainly can dance like that, but not the teenage boys storming up to act out their wounded pride and desperation.
But, whatever, it’s a fun scene to watch, and Justin has the undivided attention of every man in Babylon as he executes a fairly sophisticated pole dance routine.
We segue to a Ballet Interlude, where Things Start To Go Wrong. Brent has found someone new. He and Emmett split up in a storm of 1930s silver screen diva tears and over-emoting.
Over at the precinct house, Debbie is now apparently trying to guilt-trip the desk sergeant into giving Vic his HIV meds. Melanie is being no help at all, and neither she nor Debbie has any idea how they’re going to lay their hands on five grand for Vic’s bail. Now, I’m a bit confused here, because I always understood that, in most places, you can spring someone from jail by basically paying a down payment of ten percent of the bail and then paying the rest in full at a later date. In that situation, Deb and Mel would only need $500, a much more reasonable sum to find in the middle of the night. And anyway, isn’t that what bail bondsmen are for?
Pay no attention to the real world. We have a winner of the King of Babylon contest! To the surprise of nobody in the viewing audience, that winner is Justin. He looks absurdly happy to win what is, in the end, a meaningless popularity contest. But there’s a lovely little moment between him and Sheba, in which Sheba reminds him of why he did it - to boost his self-esteem just enough to go and grab Brian’s attention - and gives him the external affirmation that Justin’s insecure teenaged self so desperately needs. I want more Sheba in this show!
And then Justin goes and does something that really only works in fiction, but which is a fantastic narrative device anyway. He uses all of his newfound mojo and self-esteem to walk right up to . . . Brian’s potential trick, and seduce him right the hell away from Brian. The writing is too perfect, the delivery is too over-the-top, and who cares? It’s the great revenge fantasy for everyone who wasn’t beautiful and well put-together as a teenager.
Mike scolds David some more. David has run out of fucks to give on that particular subject.
Blake, who is not stupid, tries to confront Ted about the problem that Ted’s friends have with him. He wants to offer Ted a way out, but Ted drowns him out in a storm of platitudes.
Brian locates the Back Room, which has moved to the basement for this episode, and stares dazedly as Justin shtups his erstwhile trick.
Just as Mike is leaving, he collides with the B plot. Deb and Mel rush up to him in search of Brian, who is the only person they can think of who might be dumb enough to walk around carrying $5000 in cash, because they themselves are not bright enough to think of just calling a professional bail bondsman, who can generally be found by calling agencies that tend to be open twenty-four hours a day precisely because of situations like this one. Anyway, Brian does not, in fact, have five grand in his pockets, and can only withdraw five hundred at an ATM. Now, in a lot of jurisdictions, this would be exactly enough to spring Vic for the night. I guess I’m not sure what the law is in Pittsburgh, but, really, even if Pittsburgh wants the full amount, isn’t it a big enough city that it would have at least one frickin’ bail bond company?
Hey, Melanie has finally caught up to the story, and suggests doing exactly that! Good for her. Looks like those three years of law school weren’t a total wash. So where are they going to find said bondsman? The Yellow Pages, perhaps? Surely, they won’t . . . no . . . oh, God.
Really, show? Blake scurries over to his old dealer and gets a name and a number, which he hands over, all proud of himself. Who is the guy at the other end of the number? Is he legit? Does he have the money? What will he demand in return? Who the hell cares? Blake Has Redeemed Himself.
Facepalm.
Deb, Mike, and Mel hurry back to the precinct to collect Vic, who reveals that the desk sergeant did end up giving him his HIV meds. Probably more from fear of a lawsuit than Debbie’s Touching Stories, but whatever, meds were passed along, and that’s what counts.
That problem solved, Mike and David meet up at The Architectural House for some end-of-episode moralizing and a striptease.
The next morning, Our Gang, minus Justin but plus Blake, meet to breakfast at the diner, rag on Brian, and have one last glimpse at Brent, who enters with his new Twoo Luv. It’s Ballet Interlude: The Coda. Brent offers to get together that evening, but Emmett would prefer to remember The Way We Were.
Justin shows up for his pre-credits riff on the previous evening’s events. He and Brian’s Trick had a happy night, although Justin betrays his age and relative lack of sophistication by describing Brian’s Trick’s request that Justin wear his crown during sex as “kinky.” He then tries to pull off Brian’s coldhearted dismissal in front of the master, whose glare tells all in range that Justin really is nothing more than a punk kid trying on Daddy’s suit jacket. And Emmett drives home the ultimate meaninglessness of this whole little romp by asking who’s in the mood for the next Big Contest.