Queer As Folk series finale
 

I'm not really surprised that I never see QAF threads here, but I thought the series finale called for one. It's come to the end of a five year run just like "Six Feet Under" and has been said to have opened doors to other shows (including "The L Word" and "Queer Eye") and displayed an honest portrayal of a group of gay friends and/or lovers in Pittsburgh.

Personally, I'm not sorry to see it go. It's going out on top (as it were) and therefore won't suffer the same fate as other shows that have overstayed their welcome. (I also get to cancel Showtime and save $15.00 a month now too and when 6FU ends, HBO goes too!)

Anyone watched? Liked it? Didn't? Discuss....

I've only seen the first season, which I thougth was amazing (I reviewed it for this site). I'd heard that it got lousy in the second season, but obviously I'm WAY behind on any further developments.

I don't subscribe to Showtime, so have been keeping up with the season sets. I've viewed and own them all through Season 4 and LOVE this show. I'll be anxious to see how it all wraps up. I guess it'll be about 8 months before I can expect the DVD set. :( I'll have to avoid this thread for spoilers, but a big "thumbs up" for the first 4 seasons. (And for Gale Harold, whose Brian Kinney is the most gorgeous, complex and good-hearted man on TV.)

I just finished spending last month watching season 1-4 on dvd. It will be sad to see this show go as I have enjoyed it greatly, I really bonded with alot of characters. I do admit they're use of extremely witty and large vocabulary rebuttals had be laughing alot and looking up some words.

I really enjoyed season 1, but the rest haven't been all that great. This season, I've pretty much watched all the episodes in fast forward. I suppose I should sit through the whole finale, though.

Btw, I mentioned this in another thread, but the first season of Queer as Folk is getting a price drop later this month to MSRP $50. You can find it for around $30 if you search...

I missed the last 2 seasons. Always a quality show in my mind. There's little discussion about the last couple of seasons. Guess the quality hasn't held up.

I know adulttalk could not stand it, they never taked about it much after the doctor( big missing element to show after he was gone) left but I still felt a very strong bond to characters of the show thru rest of the seasons and other community forums seem to agree with this to extent. Most, and I would have to agree, feel that when show went down to only 13 eps everything went in fast forward and storylines were never given a chance to develop properly. No one much offered what they would have done differently and without real clear jump the shark point in this series I think it was great run even if was low on gas at times.

I would nominate when Michael and Ben adopted the "young street hooker with the heart of gold" as the point where QAF jumped the shark. :)

1st Season was great!!! Lost Showtime when Season 2 aired. Just caught the last half of this season.

Looks awesome in HD.

some great moments,season 4 and 5 for me were the best.it will be missed,another guilty pleasure gone.

First two seasons were good because they followed much superior UK version. In US, show just lost its edge and became painfully predictable and preacy, although I guess having show about homosexuals was groundbreaking in its own right.

I have always been a fan of this show. First season is without a doubt one of my favorite seasons of a TV show ever. The rest of the seasons are hit and miss, but I still enjoyed the show immensely. Thoughts on the finale:

Oh, I think you forgot in the 2nd season when Emmett and the old man got together and the old guy died in an airplane washroom mid-fuck! :lol:

Ok, now I'm starting to remember why I didn't like the 2nd season! That and Ted's porn business just seemed way over the top to me (at least compared to what went on during the first season).

Yeah, I agree that seasons 2 and 3 were way over the top-- almost campy. But I thought that the last two seasons have been great. More mature, the storylines were more weighty. I think the show is very underrated. It would have been nice to see Sharon Gless get an Emmy nomination for their final season, but this show usually gets ignored.

I thought the finale was a good wrap-up to the show. I was secretly hoping Brian & Justin would end up marrying, but it is more realisti how they handled it.

I think the show would have been better if they had just killed off Michael in the Babylon explosion. The show was ending, so I don't see what they had to lose. But it was nice how the bookended it.

And I loved how every episode of this show usually ended at Babylon, even the one with the explosion which was very well done. It was nice how they brought it back in the finale, but was that just a "dream"? I didn't think they had really re-opened Babylon but maybe I was wrong.

Xander-- I don't think you need spoiler tags since the finale has aired and this thread is for the episode. (Although most are posting about the series itself.)

I didn't interpret it as a "dream"... I think they really did re-open Babylon. Not to toot my own horn (i wish!) but once I saw them walk into Babylon at the end, I knew they were going to re-open it, right down to predicting how the whole time-lapse thing would work.

One thing that has always bothered me about QAF, even in the first season, was Brian. Everyone kept going on and on about how HOT he was, and how everyone wanted to have sex with him, but I just don't see it. I find him kind of ugly, his personality is pretty dispicable, and I can't for the life of me figure out why these people all hang out with him.

I thought Michael's attitude change to Brian was strange given the fact that he was extremely abusive to him all season. Nevertheless, the only characters I will miss watching will be Brian and Debbie, because I thought they were the best written characters.

This straight female found Brian to be HOT. In fact, I always thought that the Brian-Justin storyline was one reason why the show was popular with straight females. I think most women can identify with the Justin character, being in love with someone emotionally distant/unattainable. Seeing their relationship evolve was a highlight of the show for me. I think most women have dated a "Brian" at one point or another.

Does anyone know if Gale Harrold is gay or straight in real life? I have never read much about him. I know Hal Sparks is straight, Peter Paige is gay and also the actor who plays Justin is gay. What about the actor who plays Ted? When I was watching the pre-series finale show, I was surprised in an interview that the actress who plays Melanie mentioned she was straight. She played a very good "bull-dyke" (as Brian used to call her.) :lol: In the interview segment show, Robert Gant (Ben) mentioned he came out while on the show. I noticed he recently played another gay character on The Closer last week. That would suck if he is getting typecast now because he is out.

I always had a lot of respect for Hal Sparks as a straight man to play his role. So many actors would be afraid to be typecast and I think the gay sex scenes would make most hetero guys squeamish. And Hal Sparks always brings the funny on VH1, so I hope he gets another series soon. So I was wondering about Gale Harrold, since he had the most sex scenes on the show. I'd love to see more of him in the future, but it will be hard to see him as anyone but Brian.

Gale Harold has a girlfriend and I heard Scott Lowell (Ted) is married with kids. I read this info from Jump the Shark, so sources may or may not be relaible.

Straight.

All correctly ID'ed.

Straight.

Yes - but I think that is an exaggeration. I knew about him LONG before he joined the show... I doubt he's being typecast. But it would suck. He's IMO was the hottest guy on QAF.

Overall I don't know how I really felt about this finale. I mean I know the "life goes on" motif is how it should be, but I wanted things to wrap up a little better. The only stories that ended nicely to me were Blake and Ted and Ben and Michael. I mean what was the point of the Prop 14 story without some sort of resolution? If was nice to get Daphne in there, but what about Det. Carl or Jenny Taylor? Are they leaving it open for a reunion at some point (I remember the original QAF was left open ended and Davies had to write a second, shorter series to write them off into the sunset). It just seemed like very little was resolved to me. Sigh. Oh well.

I thought Brian was hot.

Gale Harold won't ever talk about his sexuality, so I don't know about him. The only gay actors on the show are Peter Paige (Emmett), Robert Gant (Ben), and Randy Harrison (Justin). Everyone else is straight.

rfduncan, I know what you mean about wanting everything wrapped up in a nice little bow. That's kind of what I wanted at first too, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that that's not really what this show was about, and I like the ending more now than I did at first. I do wish they had wrapped up the prop-14 thing, but they've already done the big "we won" celebration on Liberty Avenue, so what would be the point? Plus, we're still fighting that battle in real life, which is what the show was mirroring.

I don't think it was a dream at the end. I'm glad they didn't kill Michael. It felt very appropriate to have the show ending focusing on those two, since they were pretty much the main characters of the show. I was just really impressed with how well the last episode tied into the first episode and the show kind of came full circle.

My wife has also said that she would jump Brian if she ever met him. You must be in the minority. I think it's something to do with the complexity of his character, I guess...

-jason

Brian kinda reminded me of how Archie Bunkers character evolved from the first season to the last season,a pretty vicious character who became really human by the final season.as for Brian likeability by female fans,most of my female friends said some of the reasons why they liked him because of the power he showed and it didn`t hurt to be one of the richest gay men in pittsburgh.

It's all about the confidence. Confidence can make even an ugly man sexy (see: Michael Chiklis in The Shield).

If Gale Harold had played Michael or Ted, he would not have seemed as sexy. But the Brian character had that confidence in droves.