The Emotional Honesty of "Spoiler Alert"

The Jim Parsons led film is a remarkable examination of the nature of grief, loss, and mortality.

Few media tropes are as long-lasting or as pernicious as “bury your gays.” As its name suggests, this is the narrative convention in which the queer character–gay, lesbian, trans, or anything else in between–is killed off during the course of the story. It’s been present in Hollywood for a very long time, and it has taken various forms; sometimes it’s a side character whose death helps to motivate the hero and, even more perniciously, sometimes it’s the main character themselves, whose life is used to make some larger point (think Brokeback Mountain). And, lest you think that this unfortunate tendency is some relic from a bygone period of entertainment history, it still crops up in contemporary media, most recently (and viscerally in HBO’s House of the Dragon). 

At first glance, it would seem that the new(ish) gay drama Spoiler Alert would fall into this same narrative trap. As the trailer suggests, this is going to be a film whose motivating crisis is, in fact, the death of one of its two main characters. The moment I saw it (right before I watched Bros), I thought: this is going to be the type of movie that’s designed to destroy me. This was followed quickly by: oh great, yet another movie in which a gay character dies. 

Strangely enough, however, leaning into the trope in order to subvert it is precisely what makes Spoiler Alert so refreshing. 

When the story begins, Michael Ausiello (Jim Parsons) is a very nerdy writer making a living writing puff pieces for TV Guide. Once he meets the handsome and dashing Kit (Ben Aldridge), however, his life is changed for the better, and they seem to be the perfect couple. As the years go by, however, rifts appear in the relationship, and it’s not long before they are living separately and going to couple’s counseling, in the frail hope that they can somehow save their floundering relationship. Things go from bad to worse when Kit is diagnosed with cancer and, when his body stops responding to the chemo, it becomes increasingly clear–to Kit if not necessarily Michael–that his time is drawing to a close. Ultimately, they are able to make peace with one another, and Michael passes away.

If you’ve ever had a family member be diagnosed with cancer–particularly terminal cancer–you know how truly devastating such a revelation is. Suddenly, the entire arc of the life that you’d intended to spend together is foreshortened, and you have to contend with what it means for how you look at the person and your relationship with them. As Spoiler Alert makes repeatedly clear, this is something that Michael has had to deal with more than once in his life, for his mother also died of the disease. When, therefore, Kit is diagnosed with cancer, it makes sense that he would do everything in his power to not only help his partner but will also cling to hope even when it’s clear to everyone else that there is no hope. 

Not only does Michael have to grapple with the fact that, once again, he will have to say goodbye to someone in his life long before he’s ready to do so; it also means that Kit will no longer be able to insulate himself with the useful fictions of his own life. Time and again in Spoiler Alert, Michael (with all of his overwrought emotionality) forces Kit to confront those aspects of himself that he would rather not address, whether it’s coming out to his mother and father (played by the divine Sally Field and Bill Irwin) or admitting to his own affair. And, as the cancer ravages his body, both men have to contend with the loss of bodily autonomy and dignity (one particular scene, in which Kit collapses while trying to get in the shower, was almost too much for me). 

In a less sophisticated film than Spoiler Alert, this would all come to feel quite saccharine, and there are some moments when it comes dangerously close to sliding into that territory. Thanks to the grounded performances from Parsons, Aldridge, and Field, we’re never allowed to see these characters as anything other than real people facing what is, in many ways, the unimaginable. Death is, in the final analysis, the one thing none of us really know how to make sense of, let alone make peace with. It waits for everyone, of course, but for people like Michael (and, if I’m being honest, myself), it’s almost impossible to ever really allow yourself to believe that the people you love will one day die.

This all makes Michael’s attempts to grapple with his grief through the medium of television all the more haunting. Throughout the film, we see him reimagine life’s trials through an imaginary sitcom of which he is the star. Beneath the brittle chipperness of the ‘80s sitcom format, however, there’s a world of pain, and it becomes more obvious with each interlude that this means of dealing with his problems is never going to be enough for Michael. Indeed, as Kit lies dying in his hospital bed, Michael imagines the whole thing is just a scenario in a TV show in which Kit’s character is being written off, and he proceeds to interrogate him about his imminent departure. There’s something almost desperate about Michael’s attempts here to really come to grips with what it will mean to say goodbye to the man who is the love of his life, and when Kit dies, he clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself. It’s only when he realizes that Kit’s presence in his life allowed him to find a new adventurous spirit that he is able to move on. 

Ultimately, Spoiler Alert is one of those films which takes a very tired trope and, by turning it on its head, makes it into something truly great. If you’ve ever lost someone in your life–whether a lover or a parent or a friend or someone else–you know how difficult it can be to reconfigure your life without them. There is now this yawning absence in your life that wasn’t there before, and you have to rethink your entire sense of yourself. Kit’s death is undeniably tragic, of course, but it’s not exploitative, and it’s not used simply for Michael’s development as a character. Instead, his passing is a reminder that gay couples, like straight ones, have to contend with the emotional devastation of loss. It’s to the film’s credit that this all feels organic and that it shows us the ways that death is inevitably a part of life, with all of the unsettling comfort such a conclusion offers.