Not Dead to Us After All: "Uncoupled" Moving to Showtime After Netflix Cancellation

Good news…we can get closure now. But I’ll have to subscribe to Showtime streaming.

Thats a face I truly never hoped to see again. I am so sick of him .

I can’t stand her.

What could they possibly have to discuss in the next season?

Good move. Happy for NPH and Tisha Campbell.

Fair enough. Good for NPH.

And screw Netflix. They're so greedy. This anti-consumer location lock bullshit is a real turn-off.

NPH and Tisha Campbell have great chemistry. That's the only thing interesting about the show.

I love Emerson Brooks.

Doesn't matter. The straights still won't watch.

The last episode made it sound as if NPH’s character’s husband had a change of heart…maybe it’s about them getting back together. I also wonder if it was about selling their condo too, and NPH misunderstands and now has all of these expectations. Only to get his face broke.

Are they going to explain why the butterface weatherman is the goal of every twink in NYC?

Are they going to acknowledge that moving out of your home of 15? 20? years without even telling your partner its over is sociopathic? The fact that any of the friends still talked to him or acted like it was a normal breakup is just crazy.

Is his Harlem townhouse still on the market?

I thought the show was fine. A pleasant piece of fluff. I don't get showtime though.

Oh good: now no one will watch it on Showtime rather than no one watching it on netflix.

It's merging with Paramount+.

I'll watch!

Ugh...

Absolutely unfabulous show that degrades us homos.

[quote]The fact that any of the friends still talked to him or acted like it was a normal breakup is just crazy.

Didn't Tisha's character really let him have it in the season finale? I think they were dancing together or something.

[quote] What could they possibly have to discuss in the next season?

There were a few storylines that started very late, like the cancer one, that I imagine will be explored. The secondary characters were getting more development just as season 1 ended, I felt.

Suzanne was really enjoyable, and I will like seeing her again. I found it a light, enjoyable, unserious bit of fluff and sometimes that’s just what I need. From the initial description it sounded depressing but it’s not at all.

Plus Marcia Gay Harden has no time for her enby child being an enby which I thought more posters on DL would appreciate, haha.

Smarmy Neil Patrick Harris is worse than dog shit on the sole of a shoe.

Terrible first season. Unlikable characters poorly rendered,

Serious question: We complain that there is little representation of gays in gay stories as the main point of a show, but when there is, nearly every gay hates it? Queer as Folk was lambasted. Looking was a topic of mass derision. And now, Uncoupled was nowhere near as bad as it's been portrayed here and on other gay-centric sites. NPH isn't my favorite actor, but he's successful, talented and capable... but you'd never know that here.

What gives? And if we're so talented, why hasn't anyone made a gay show that is actually popular in the community?

It was lazy and full of vacuous stereotypes for the straight audience.

[quote]Serious question: We complain that there is little representation of gays in gay stories as the main point of a show, but when there is, nearly every gay hates it?

Because again and again we are delivered shit, shit that we are expected to welcome it as if it were 10x better than The Sopranos. We get fourth-rate series written by committee to neither offend not please anyone, brimming over with hysterical be stereotypes and every character stepping all over the rest to display their inclusivity.

There have been decent gay series. The original UK Queer as Folk, for instance, was remarkable for giving no explanations and no apologies: it just presented a random sample of gay men, warts and all, and let the viewer figure them out. No handholding. Tales of the City in its iterations less the last was sometimes very good and never too bad. Looking had much promise coming from Andrew High who wrote and directed what I think is the greatest of gay films, Weekend; but it lost its way with trying again to do too much, to be everything to everybody and instead ended up bring nothing much to anybody. Like so many. It never felt fresh or real or as though every line had not been reviewed by consensus rules by the collective membership of every Pride™️ organization.

Instead we get variations on a blackface style of gay representation with Modern Family and Will & Grace and dour efforts like QAF III and ridiculous fabulous shit about useless gay men rescuing straight men from bad taste or drag race franchises in umpteen countries.

[quote]NPH isn't my favorite actor, but he's successful, talented and capable...

His career is a successful one and he's a fiend for work, but that doesn't make him good so much as he is prolific. I find him dead inside cold and brittle, in everything the same, the Beth Jarrett of gay actors/characters. Only NPH is flip and soulless with no inner dimension, unlike Beth Jarrett who was merely heartless but a pressure cooker inside.

I think gay audiences deserve something better than a dried old piece of beef jerky turning in yet another sardonic performance or another attempt to please the whole alphabet soup of "community" doomed to please nobody at all.

It is a fantastic show.

Looking's main issue was the main character was horribly written. Groff's character was severely autistic, but nobody seemed to notice.

My issues with Uncoupled I pointed out in R11

Both R23 and R25 make excellent points. This is a really interesting discussion.

Am I weird because I liked Looking? It was pretty much not about anything, but it portrayed a more realistic version of gay life, I thought. It's been ages since I've watched it, I should revisit it.

I find myself these days often watching movies and imagining what they'd be like if they were full of gay men. Not a gay show, just gay men being spies or in a comedy, or something like that. It'd be interesting to see a whole lot of gay men being gay men without it being specifically about gay life, if you get me.

Is this a cruel joke, my understanding is Showtime is no longer going to exist, as per another thread here?

Doesn't Showtime run off of subscriptions from people wanting to see The L Word? I thought I heard someone say that that is its flagship (is that the word) show, in the sense of Showtime knowing that will draw a lot of people in, but they aren't that interested in that show compared to others.

R28 I liked Looking DESPITE Patrick.

I get that he was the audience entry point, but he made no sense as a human being. He was 30, lived in SF for a decade, had very slutty friends but he acted like a 16 year old who just got off the bus from Idaho.

"OMG, Douching is INSANE! OMG, What's FORESKIN?"

Haha R31! That made me laugh. You do have a point there!

'Looking' might have been vastly better had the Patrick character not been so witless and wide-eyed a rube, and had he been portrayed by a better actor than 0ne whose only mode is "doe-eyed."

I hated Looking for the same reason, r33. Patrick was such a precious little Pollyanna. He made a big deal about that Latin guy being uncut which I thought was really sheltered and weird behavior for a 30 year old.

R34 yeah if they wanted a wide-eyed virgin character, they needed someone a lot younger.

Even my prude-ish friends aren't that over the top.

r24 = Eric McCormack & Debra Messing

[quote]He made a big deal about that Latin guy being uncut which I thought was really sheltered and weird behavior for a 30 year old.

I admit, I totally forgot this and that IS very weird.

Hunter Doohan would have made a nice Patrick.

I'm looking forward to season 2. I guess I'm in the minority, but I like NPH.

Good! I want to be on it and every gay actor in NYC was already featured on season one.

Move over, Bitches!

Thank you R25 for your thoughtful reply!

I agree, we're shown a lot of shit when it comes to series targeted at gay men; for instance, I was appalled by the latest QAF and couldn't watch it. But I enjoyed Uncoupled despite the television-land dismissal of some basic facts of life, such as that few can afford the lifestyle of a Manhattan realtor and a hedge fund manager; I compare it to the idea that recent college grads can live in a huge apartment overlooking Central Park working as a barista or part-time folk singer. I didn't expect Uncoupled to be a gay Sopranos because that's not possible. You have to accept that The Sopranos was only as good as it was because it portrayed — very well — a life(style?) not accessible to most of us; at least, I'm not going to join the mob so a series about my life would be comparatively boring.

The question is therefor would a series that was on the caliber of Weekend translate to the small screen, and could you develop the story to support an episodic format? I believe that a cable or streaming platform could support such a well-done series, and if it's of sufficient quality, straight people would tune in until the graphic sex scenes exceeded their comfort level which, if we're honest, would be right away if we were to accurately portray our gay lives even if depicting a monogamous gay couple. Perhaps I've answered my own question.

R41: Agreed. The opportunity and hope for quality gay TV programming lies with streaming, particularly short-run series with a beginning and end, a tale told and done.

If the U.S. has turned out a minstrel show of gay characters in its old broadcast networks.(and Showtime, to a large extent), these series ostensibly turn on wacky gay stereotypes orbited by more important straight characters. Everything is wacky hysterical all the time (Modern Family or Will & Grace with its utterly useless gay characters.). Never any depth or nuance

The streaming mini-series with a beginning and end hold out the possibility of quality, either as gay characters significant within a story of mixed gay and straight (Alma, or The Girl in the Mirror is an example where gay characters were important in a series with many key characters, not desexualized, and not mere window dressing (though they were not bad on the eyes.)

That's the format that might support a mini-series of quality that isn't always constructed around a heavy historical moment (It's a Sin, for instance) and could focus on character development more than a message of history and oppression and loss. If a mini-series more on the model and of the quality of the film "Weekend" stands a chance it's in that environment.

It's a Sin really impressed me, but I really like what you say about "isn't always constructed around a heavy historical moment" too, and I would love to see more gay stuff and more wide-ranging stuff.

I've not seen Weekend, but sounds like I need to!

I recently watched THE LONG CALL series on AMC+ starring DL fave Ben Aldridge as a gay detective investigating a murder in the weird religious community that had previously rejected him. It was really good.

I loved The Long Call. Wish they were doing another season.

I’d love a great gay show with interesting and likable characters. Uncoupled wasn’t it.

And I guess it was supposed to be a comedy, but I never laughed.

I just didn’t want to spend any time with those people. That has nothing to do with the orientation of the writers or actors.

[quote]I’d love a great gay show with interesting and likable characters.

Me too. I actually spend a bit of spare time thinking up ideas and scenarios, but I'm a nobody, so it's not like it's going to happen, haha.

Russell T. Davies is going into Dr Who now, so there won't be anything from him out of the UK for a bit, I don't think, and as for the US side of things, I appreciate what Ryan Murphy does in promoting a lot of gayness on television, but I don't really love a lot of his stuff. They seem to be the main gay writers out there at the moment.

R44 Ben Aldridge was great in that. Didn’t realize he was a hot topic on here

And the heartthrob weatherman, who every twink in NYC wanted to bend over for...was not hot.

^I think I remember the date he brought to the wedding being really cute. The one who caught him flirting with another guy and told him off and left.

The disappointing writing surprises me. Darren Star’s stuff tends toward the teenish and trashy yet is often quite compelling. And Jeffrey Richman is a sharp comedy writer.

Maybe they’re a bad fit together?

It was perfectly fine light entertainment. They did "borrow" quite a bit of the gags, and even similar music from Sex And The City.

Looking was so underrated. I’ve met so many young gay men like Patrick. That episode where he fucks his boss without a condom and goes to get an HIV test but is too ashamed to say he went bareback was so real.

^Also the part where the guy he dates later on gobs him off and swallows and you see Patrick freak out about it, like "if he did that to me and we just met, what else does he do with other guys, and my god, does that mean he has something?" was very relatable too.

R53 how many 30 year olds are gobsmacked by douching and foreskins?

Who eats a load and then freaks out about it ??? Am I that out of touch ???

For fucks sake they’ll save this crap show but not the cleverly written REBOOT from Hulu?

It was a boring show, full of unlikeable and (even worse) boring characters doing dull things.

Patrick from 'Looking' was afraid of foreskins, of oral sex, of anal sex, of the idea of sex, of douching, of his mommy, of electrical currents, of his own fucking shadow. It was ridiculous and actor Groff made even the semi-plausible aspects of naivete totally implausible.

[quote]Who eats a load and then freaks out about it

He was freaking out that the guy who did it to him he didn't really know and yet swallowed him, and in his mind that made him feel this guy was probably engaging in more unsafe sex, and his mind spiralled. Not rational, perhaps, but the generation who grew up with only hearing as kids that gay sex will kill you are going to have some worries, I think. I dunno, I found it made him a bit more interesting, though I agree it was probably a bit over the top all up.

[quote]Patrick from 'Looking' was afraid of foreskins

Well, you can hardly blame him. The first time I encountered one, I thought I'd broken the guy's dick. It was in the dark, and why was the shaft so loose? Was it about to fall off?

If you thought the shaft itself was loose, I don't know what to tell you.

I have a feeling after the strike’s finally over that Showtime decides not to go ahead and do a Season 2.