When I look through my Home screen on Netflix I am sometimes a bit annoyed because it appears as though Netflix has some sort of social justice agenda with a lot of the shows that are consistently recommended to me. This is a sensitive topic I know and trust me when I say that there isn't an ounce of homophobia in the person who is writing this, it just seems like there are a lot of shows with that sort of "angle" constantly being offered to me.
The other day I decided "what the hell" and clicked on Queer Eye anyway and 3 episodes later I had to force myself to stop watching in order to get on with my day. It's really entertaining.
I was already very familiar with what the basic premise is behind this show. It has been out for a while afterall but I guess it kind of fell out of fashion with the original cast. It used to be called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the show focused entirely on doing makeovers for men who have a terrible sense of fashion.
The new show, as the tagline would suggest, is about much more than just makeovers although they always do that as well and actually do a very good job of it. Instead, this series is now about doing a "makeover" on people's lives in a much broader sense in that not only do they refine their look, but also do things like makeover their houses, or teach them how to cook or simply help to overhaul their struggling business of foundation.
The "Fab 5" tend to select people with some sort of hard luck story in their background and of I don't know if this is intentional or not but they also seem to select people who are extremely kind and selfless such as the man who has always been single but also looks after everyone in the community but never spends much time on himself.
They also take people (generally men) who are recently divorced and can't seem to rebound back into realizing that they still can find love and that the end of one relationship doesn't have to mean the end of all of them. That is where the picture above is from and is one of the best episodes that I watched.
They go to see Matt, a farmer whose divorce was finalized just a week prior, no longer lives with his kids, and is forced to sell some of the assets on his farm in an effort to pursue different revenue streams by opening a farm to table restaurant of sorts.
Matt, like many farmers, hasn't had much exposure to gay people in his life, a notion that he points out perhaps a bit too frequently in the episode. He did catch some flak for this in the press but I think anyone with any sort of background in the midwestern farming communities (my own family comes from exactly that) would realize that very few of them are actually anti-gay, they are just stating a fact when they state that they have not had much interaction with gays in their lives.
Anyway, Matt is a very nice person and just like all the other people selected by the show, gets along with the "Fab 5" swimmingly. Matt's situation was particularly tragic because there were literally blank spaces on his walls where pictures or art of some sort had recently been taken down by his now ex-wife.
Matt was having difficulty moving on. They makeover Matt, his home, and also do a great number on his farm-to-table restaurant that Matt was planning on opening.
It's not specific to this episode but the general theme of every one of the episodes is why I enjoy this series so much: They "Fab 5" are genuinely kind people that do wonderful things for the people in the episodes and the individual stories are quite touching. There is a good chance you will get misty-eyed a time or two while watching this.
I started watching this just to see why it was that Netflix was so relentless in recommending it and now I know: It is a really good show and it is about so much more than just makeovers - it's about human kindness and we definitely need a lot more of that in the world.
There are a ton of episodes available on Netflix right now and each one is 40 minutes long and unrelated to previous episodes. You can just jump in at any time and to me, that is a perfect series setup.
