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uncle
Over the last few days I've been binge-watching the British TV series Uncle, which I wanted to watch because Con O'Neill (who plays Izzy in Our Flag Means Death) has a supporting role in it.
It's about a 30-something struggling/failed musician and profoundly immature man-baby who reluctantly finds himself helping his divorced sister look after her adolescent son. (In very basic ways, like taking the kid to football practice--he's not stuck raising the kid, which is a plot that I am allergic to.)
I can report that I almost always liked it a lot, and loved it occasionally. The storytelling is solid, occasionally really inventive, and mostly doesn't go for either unearned pathos or unearned redemption.
Whether you'll like it depends a bit on whether you can stand detesting the protagonist, Andy, about 90% of the time. It's true that most of the time the show doesn't want us to like him. But I'm not sure I was supposed to dislike him quite as much as I did. What saved the show for me was literally every other character. They're all interesting, rounded, and really well-acted, beginning with a consistently excellent performance by Elliot Speller-Gillot as Errol, the nephew, a brilliant, deeply nerdy and weird boy who's probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. (But, to be clear, the character rises far above the stereotype of the autistic genius.)
And Con O'Neill is an absolute delight who steals every scene he's in. (My biggest complaint about the show is that there should have been much more of his character, Val.)
It's three seasons, 20 half-hour episodes total, so not a huge time commitment. I'll note that the storytelling becomes more inventive and less strictly sitcom-y after S1.
And under the cut, some spoilery stuff.
So, I really wonder whether the story the show told about Andy's sexuality was one they meant to tell. And if it wasn't, what the hell did they think they were doing?
Because there is a semi-subtextual but nevertheless very legible storyline about how starting to come to terms with his own bisexuality is an important part of Andy's emotional development.
The story drops some anvils that Andy is bi. There's the fantasy music-video sequence where he gets very very up close and personal with Casper and finally kisses him. There's an otherwise inexplicable moment when Andy insists that he's "not in the closet." There's his caginess about the threesome (which clearly involved a woman and another man, or he wouldn't have been cagey). And, while I'm reluctant to count his enthusiasm for pegging here because plenty of actually straight men like pegging, I think, given the other stuff just mentioned, the show does intend for us to count it.
Then there's the fluid sexuality of several other characters, including Errol (I think we have to read his "I'm a Kinsey 1, well actually if I really think about it probably a Kinsey 2, and a Kinsey 3 if I'm watching men's gymnastics") as amounting to some flavor of bisexuality) and Andy's own father (who basically tells Andy to get with the "sexy is sexy" program), and Melodie, and of course Val, who is definitely canonically bi. And one of the things we know about Andy is that he has a lot to learn from other people about how to be a functional adult.
Which brings me to Andy's accidental declaration of attraction to Val. I should say that, while the show (deliberately?) leaves things a bit vague, I don't think we're supposed to read Val as a trans woman. My own read of him is as a genderqueer man--he's not a cross-dresser because he's not "cross-dressing" occasionally or for fun. He's in women's clothes all the time because that's how he feels most comfortable. But he also seems perfectly comfortable with people seeing him as a man and using male pronouns for him.
So I don't think Andy's attraction to Val is attraction to a woman (although I don't doubt that Andy is genuinely attracted to women). It's attraction to a man who happens to wear stiletto heels and low-cut tops that show off his hairy chest. There's also, as mentioned above, some strong suggestions that Andy is attracted to Casper, who is completely masculine in his presentation. That's part of the reason, though far from the only one, why Andy initially hates Casper so much.
So: guy who has a string of failed relationships with women, who tends to "fall in love" only with unavailable women and run away from women if they actually like him, finishes the show not in a romantic relationship with any woman (yes, there's Melodie, but that is officially on hiatus and it drops out of the narrative a bit at the end). Instead, he announces his interest in a man.
It is, sadly, very much in the pattern of Andy's previous romantic declarations, in that he makes his speech to Val immediately after Val says he's getting serious with Patrick. But I still think that just being able to say it, even accidentally, and to admit that yes he did say it and yes he meant it instead of trying to lie his way out of it, is a HUGE step for Andy. It's part of the same overall arc of his growing up, and shares narrative time in the final minutes of the final episode with the other HUGE step: letting Errol live his own life.
To loop back to how I began this: if the show wasn't intentionally telling the story of a queer man coming to terms with his own queerness, what story did it think it was telling? Obviously Andy's queerness is only one narrative thread among many--his getting sober is incredibly important, as is his finding ways to actually work as a musician/songwriter, his learning to sometimes not be 100% selfish all the time, etc. But it is nevertheless a narrative thread. I'm inclined to think that the writers/showrunners deliberately told a queer story by stealth.
And finally, the most important question: do I ship Andy/Val?
Sort of?
It'd be a great thing for Andy. Val is exactly what he needs, because Andy is an almost incorrigible bullshit artist and Val takes no bullshit from anyone. Val's older than Andy and about 10 million times smarter and wiser, and it would do Andy a world of good to date someone he could and would learn from. Which is not just about Val being awesome, although he is. The other half of the story here is that Andy doesn't respect women at all. Not women he dates, anyway. They're there to be whatever fantasy he needs that day, to cheer him on and console him and provide great sex on demand. And I don't think Andy has changed much in that regard by the end of the show.
He doesn't seem to see other men that way (with some exceptions--he tries to put Errol in a non-sexual version of that role, but Errol isn't quite a man yet, either). In particular, while he does have a fantasy role for Val as the wise dispenser of good advice, he actually listens to Val when Val refuses to tolerate his bullshit. And in the end, Andy shows some desire to take care of Val and look out for him, not just the other way around.
Val would be good for Andy. Andy would not be good for Val. Val needs and deserves a grown-up, and I wish him a very happy ever after with Patrick.
Which would not stop me from reading any Val/Andy fic that anyone happened to write.
It's about a 30-something struggling/failed musician and profoundly immature man-baby who reluctantly finds himself helping his divorced sister look after her adolescent son. (In very basic ways, like taking the kid to football practice--he's not stuck raising the kid, which is a plot that I am allergic to.)
I can report that I almost always liked it a lot, and loved it occasionally. The storytelling is solid, occasionally really inventive, and mostly doesn't go for either unearned pathos or unearned redemption.
Whether you'll like it depends a bit on whether you can stand detesting the protagonist, Andy, about 90% of the time. It's true that most of the time the show doesn't want us to like him. But I'm not sure I was supposed to dislike him quite as much as I did. What saved the show for me was literally every other character. They're all interesting, rounded, and really well-acted, beginning with a consistently excellent performance by Elliot Speller-Gillot as Errol, the nephew, a brilliant, deeply nerdy and weird boy who's probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. (But, to be clear, the character rises far above the stereotype of the autistic genius.)
And Con O'Neill is an absolute delight who steals every scene he's in. (My biggest complaint about the show is that there should have been much more of his character, Val.)
It's three seasons, 20 half-hour episodes total, so not a huge time commitment. I'll note that the storytelling becomes more inventive and less strictly sitcom-y after S1.
And under the cut, some spoilery stuff.
So, I really wonder whether the story the show told about Andy's sexuality was one they meant to tell. And if it wasn't, what the hell did they think they were doing?
Because there is a semi-subtextual but nevertheless very legible storyline about how starting to come to terms with his own bisexuality is an important part of Andy's emotional development.
The story drops some anvils that Andy is bi. There's the fantasy music-video sequence where he gets very very up close and personal with Casper and finally kisses him. There's an otherwise inexplicable moment when Andy insists that he's "not in the closet." There's his caginess about the threesome (which clearly involved a woman and another man, or he wouldn't have been cagey). And, while I'm reluctant to count his enthusiasm for pegging here because plenty of actually straight men like pegging, I think, given the other stuff just mentioned, the show does intend for us to count it.
Then there's the fluid sexuality of several other characters, including Errol (I think we have to read his "I'm a Kinsey 1, well actually if I really think about it probably a Kinsey 2, and a Kinsey 3 if I'm watching men's gymnastics") as amounting to some flavor of bisexuality) and Andy's own father (who basically tells Andy to get with the "sexy is sexy" program), and Melodie, and of course Val, who is definitely canonically bi. And one of the things we know about Andy is that he has a lot to learn from other people about how to be a functional adult.
Which brings me to Andy's accidental declaration of attraction to Val. I should say that, while the show (deliberately?) leaves things a bit vague, I don't think we're supposed to read Val as a trans woman. My own read of him is as a genderqueer man--he's not a cross-dresser because he's not "cross-dressing" occasionally or for fun. He's in women's clothes all the time because that's how he feels most comfortable. But he also seems perfectly comfortable with people seeing him as a man and using male pronouns for him.
So I don't think Andy's attraction to Val is attraction to a woman (although I don't doubt that Andy is genuinely attracted to women). It's attraction to a man who happens to wear stiletto heels and low-cut tops that show off his hairy chest. There's also, as mentioned above, some strong suggestions that Andy is attracted to Casper, who is completely masculine in his presentation. That's part of the reason, though far from the only one, why Andy initially hates Casper so much.
So: guy who has a string of failed relationships with women, who tends to "fall in love" only with unavailable women and run away from women if they actually like him, finishes the show not in a romantic relationship with any woman (yes, there's Melodie, but that is officially on hiatus and it drops out of the narrative a bit at the end). Instead, he announces his interest in a man.
It is, sadly, very much in the pattern of Andy's previous romantic declarations, in that he makes his speech to Val immediately after Val says he's getting serious with Patrick. But I still think that just being able to say it, even accidentally, and to admit that yes he did say it and yes he meant it instead of trying to lie his way out of it, is a HUGE step for Andy. It's part of the same overall arc of his growing up, and shares narrative time in the final minutes of the final episode with the other HUGE step: letting Errol live his own life.
To loop back to how I began this: if the show wasn't intentionally telling the story of a queer man coming to terms with his own queerness, what story did it think it was telling? Obviously Andy's queerness is only one narrative thread among many--his getting sober is incredibly important, as is his finding ways to actually work as a musician/songwriter, his learning to sometimes not be 100% selfish all the time, etc. But it is nevertheless a narrative thread. I'm inclined to think that the writers/showrunners deliberately told a queer story by stealth.
And finally, the most important question: do I ship Andy/Val?
Sort of?
It'd be a great thing for Andy. Val is exactly what he needs, because Andy is an almost incorrigible bullshit artist and Val takes no bullshit from anyone. Val's older than Andy and about 10 million times smarter and wiser, and it would do Andy a world of good to date someone he could and would learn from. Which is not just about Val being awesome, although he is. The other half of the story here is that Andy doesn't respect women at all. Not women he dates, anyway. They're there to be whatever fantasy he needs that day, to cheer him on and console him and provide great sex on demand. And I don't think Andy has changed much in that regard by the end of the show.
He doesn't seem to see other men that way (with some exceptions--he tries to put Errol in a non-sexual version of that role, but Errol isn't quite a man yet, either). In particular, while he does have a fantasy role for Val as the wise dispenser of good advice, he actually listens to Val when Val refuses to tolerate his bullshit. And in the end, Andy shows some desire to take care of Val and look out for him, not just the other way around.
Val would be good for Andy. Andy would not be good for Val. Val needs and deserves a grown-up, and I wish him a very happy ever after with Patrick.
Which would not stop me from reading any Val/Andy fic that anyone happened to write.
no subject
That's really cool. I don't think I have seen a lot of television characters with that presentation.
no subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pugr6PEQa64
(I still haven't watched OFMD but think I may be becoming a Con O'Neill fan via his delightful anti-Tory rageTweeting.)
no subject
I love Con's Twitter, both the political stuff and the enthusiasm he shows for fans' enthusiasm for his OFMD character.
no subject
(*Or, I fear, five years from now. Uncle was made in the sweet spot before the current anti-trans backlash.)