After absolutely loving Ben Baur in Something Like Summer, I decided to look up some of his other projects. This seemed like an interesting concept, so I gave it a try. Now, I'm just confused. Is this supposed to have a real plot? Are we supposed to care at all about the characters? Or, is this just soft core porn with a little story line? I mean, in one episode I thought it might have been actual sex. Maybe it's just trying too hard? I don't get it.
I was a gay 20 something in the big city during 2012-2015 (now in my 30's), and don't get me wrong, I'm all about celebrating sexual freedom. This goes a bit too far. I don't know anyone picking up guys on the subway, or engaging in oral sex in a coffee shop bathroom. Alex is like the guy your friends make fun of for being the 'whore' in the group, and then times that by 100. If he goes to a bar, no matter how many times he's rejected, he's going to make sure some stranger goes home with him. When he meets someone at a bar, no matter how much they seem to be actually connecting, one of his first three questions to the guy is going to be asking him to go home for sex. Within 15 seconds. Seriously, who is actually like that?! By the time I got through the entire series, I was just so turned off (wrong words maybe) that I didn't care anymore. It became too distasteful.
Here's the thing, the entire series Alex is fighting this 'Bad Alex vs. Good Alex' battle. He seems to want to stop thinking with his penis, and get some of his life together. Every single time you want to root for Alex, because maybe he's met someone that they would like you to believe he might actually like, he's on a date and ignoring his date to hook up with someone in the bathroom. Then he casually goes back to the table to his actual date, and by that point all I can think is wanting to tell the other guy at the table to RUN. How do we root for the guy who is so slutty he wants to have sex with someone else when he's on a date? Again, I think I get what they were going for, but they pumped up the sex so much on this guy, he's not anyone you can relate to.
The show isn't helped either with the format. The first season is eight ten minute episodes. Each episode is packed full of story, but too short to develop the story enough properly. Some episodes end somewhat abruptly, and while you may be hoping for the next episode to clear up that story line, no sure luck. The new episode has jumped ahead and left that hanging. At the end of season one, you momentarily think he's going to give the guy you're kind of hoping he'll end up with a real chance, but nope he's going to have a three way instead. When season two starts, they briefly mention that guy as them not speaking anymore, but we have no idea why. Season two changed the format to four half hour episodes, but even though it seemed like it might work, they somehow had the opposite problem now. For a half hour, they don't seem to have enough material. Mix that in with the fact that they seemed to want season two not to be so Alex focused, but rather about all the characters. It seems like that would have worked, but we didn't really get to know them enough in season one to care in season two.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me. With season one for example, maybe eight twenty minute episodes with a little less sex and more plot resolution would have done the trick. Allow the main character to actually start to evolve, rather than staying so one note. O feel like this could have worked, but it really didn't. Instead, the whole thing feels like it has no idea what it wanted to be, and maybe didn't have the resources to continue, so the whole thing just died.
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