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postguiltypleasures · 1 year ago

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My Peak TV Journey *The Other Two*

While it was on, few shows were as deliriously funny as The Other Two. It was a slow burn of a showbiz satire mixed with family sitcom. I miss it already. But I have to acknowledge that right before the final episode The Hollywood Reporter broke a story on complaints to HR about series creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider. HR investigated and dismissed the claims. Most likely this just means they did not reach their extremely high standard of what would make it a hostile work environment. It doesn’t mean the events did not happen. I’ve seen some posts since then about how this is a sign that Kelly and Schneider are the real life Carey and Brooke Dubek. There is some truth to this. I don’t know how to process how it affects my feelings about the show. And the news brought out a lot of feelings.

While watching the first two seasons, I noticed that the seasons started out more sad than funny then became zanier and funnier in a way that is really grounded in that sad base. The final season went in the opposite direction, starting in screwball, manic comedy and then slowly getting into the dark, sad base. It was pretty dark. The season showed worst of Carey and Brooke, and it was necessary. I loved it, it hurt.��

Brooke’s plot about wanting to switch careers to something that would “do good” was painfully relatable. It was particularly sharp about how people get lazy in their responsibilities when they have the assurance that the project they are working on will “do good.” Of course this was spurred on by Brooke’s combined jealousy of her fiancé, Lance and feeling unworthy of him. And while watching her do a variety of awful things to prove either that she really is good, and/or that he’s not as good as he seems, I often thought that she didn’t deserve him. I admire how much her portrayer, Heléne York, was willing to go for something that ugly. In the end, I cheered their reconciliation because I love their dynamic at their best, not that I think they’re good together. And while they were broken up she dated a couples of billionaires and it was a great encapsulation of why hating billionaires is so fun and necessary now.

In the first two seasons Cary spent so much energy on his career and sexual frustrations, but this season proved that finally getting some success isn’t going to make him better. This was embodied by his new boyfriend Lucas Lamber Moy, an actor who was always in character and for that reason was frequently unable to have sex. Lucas’s roles in everything from a Love, Simon spin-off, to a Hallmark Christmas movie and an incomprehensible and interminable Broadway play that is apparently about AIDS. Lucas alternately frustrated and excited Carey. It leads to revelation about even professional success isn’t going fix what broke in Carey. He over invests in Lucas, a person he can’t really know, while destroying his relationship with his best friend Curtis Paltrow. (I was surprised that there was so much Curtis in this season as his actor, Brandon Scott Jones, is one of the regulars on CBS’s Ghosts. I assumed he’d be available less because of that commitment. As a side note, I did enjoy when Carey’s actor, Drew Tarver, guest stared on Ghosts as a local cult leader.) In the mean time his plot gets the best satire of the show business. His advancing career includes his voice role as Globby, the “gay icon” in a Disney franchise and his reoccurring role in a CBS procedural, Emily Overruled. The latter plot, while funny, made the later allegations against the creators unsurprising to me. It set up something of a false dichotomy, where you can either have a stable, 9-5 set, making a show now one really watched, or making something exciting, that people will really care about, but must make allowances for people behaving in more erratic fashions. Arguably, the end of Lucas’s story tempers this thesis, but not enough. It was a wild ride that at some point involved a chorus of gay men in diapers driving maniacally to get to high school reunions while singing a variation of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”. I laughed a lot.

Brooke and Carey reaching their lows was also rough on their mother Pat, who was experiencing isolation on multiple fronts. It was poignant and often absurd. Pat’s portrayers Molly Shannon a treasure. Pat may not actually be as good a mother as she wants to be seen as. She put Chase in an exploitative situation. She’s bad with boundaries. But her surreal experience of fame, and inability to return to her previous life was a great journey. I’m kind of sad she and Streeter didn’t end up together. I find Ken Marino weirdly endearing, and they were cute together. But she did need better boundaries between her work and personal lives.

The youngest Dubek, Chase, aka ChaseDreams played by Case Walker without any guile, was not in much of the final season. But he was always a peripheral character for a story his viral success kicked off. The first season included some great ridiculous songs and ended with the revelation that he could not really sing. Since then much of his plot has been about his management (including his sister Brooke) gets him non singing jobs while avoiding telling him why he couldn’t sing. There was some humor in this, but as a lover of comedy songs, I wish there were more ChaseDreams songs. (I’d even take more in universe songs not by ChaseDreams like the “Jesus Fucking Slays” one from season two.) Chase has generally been less of a character than a vehicle for jokes about talent management and Hollywood’s current direction. (Or really, their pre-strike direction.) Over the course of the season Chase became more aware of the reality of his situation, but he never really rebelled against it. How could he? All his possible rebellions have been pre-scripted by management.

As ChaseDreams main director, Shuli, played by Wanda Sykes, often did bad, but she always had a point and did it competently. She considered Chase’s music so bad that she created Q. QAnon is awful in the real world, but the idea that QAnon started to distract from a bad album is hilarious. But Shuli’s bigger impact is as Brooke’s reluctant mentor, showing her the ropes and not having time for her bull. She didn’t have much of an arc, but she was always fun to watch.

While wrapping up I just need to say that this show was beautifully shot and staged. In scenes like Carey and Lucas’s first date at an indoor pool and Chase falling in love at first sight in a way that parodied the Baz Lerhman film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, part of me was just bowled over by how good looking it was. The series ended in a way that was appropriate for its characters, and I wouldn’t want what I heard of the behind the scenes situation to continue, but I’m going to miss it.

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