"The Other Two" and the Pursuit of Queer Happiness
The comedy series shows just how difficult it is for many gay men to find joy in the (post)modern world.
I first heard about the comedy series The Other Two when I saw a photo of two of its characters floating through Twitter. At first, I didn’t give it too much thought. After all, I had plenty of other things to watch, and I didn’t think that I needed a new series to watch. Something about it called to me, though, and I finally sat down with my partner and started to watch it. Soon enough, we were both laughing our asses off, enjoying every minute of it.
Make no mistake: The Other Two is a fiercely witty show, with a humor that’s as sharp as a razor but which never slides into cynicism or cruelty. Given that it focuses on two siblings, Brooke and Cary Dubek (played by Helene York and Drew Tarver) who find themselves in a quandary after their younger brother, Chase (Case Walker), becomes an overnight music sensation thanks to a viral video, it would have been very easy to paint these two siblings as a pair of sad sacks. Instead, we watch as each of them tries to find their own form of happiness in the shadow of their brother’s success (and, later, that of their mother Pat, played by Molly Shannon, who becomes the star of a smash daytime talkshow).
For Cary, this pursuit runs along two narrative lines. First, there are his struggles as an actor. When the series begins, he’s both working in retail and taking bit parts but, after Chase’s success his own star begins to rise. Soon, he’s hosting a variety of shows, though the big part he yearns for continues to elude him.
Second, there’s his constant struggles with his sexuality. For the first half of the first season, his romantic life revolves around his “straight” roommate, Matt. It’s clear that Cary has feelings for the other man, and while Matt flirts with Cary and even fools around with him, it’s clear that feelings and emotions aren’t really part of the equation. In one of the season’s best moments, Cary does what’s best for himself and declares that the two of them can only be roommates. Anything else would be bad for his mental and emotional health.
It isn’t until the second season that Cary actually gets a boyfriend, but it quickly becomes clear that Jess, in an inversion of the first season dynamic, is the one more invested in their relationship. When the two go on a mini-vacation to upstate New York, Cary starts to feel smothered and, realizing that he’s not yet ready to settle down, he breaks it off. Shortly thereafter, he has a one-night stand with a stranger, and to his own surprise he finds it oddly satisfying. It’s one of the few moments when Cary really embraces the joy that comes with living a gay life (and having gay sex).
Time and again, we see Cary struggling to really find peace with his sexuality. It isn’t that he’s a self-hating gay. True, he does carry around some residual guilt from his midwestern religious upbringing, and he’s clearly bothered (who wouldn’t be?) by the fact that his father’s alcoholism was in part a result of his coming out. For the most part, however, The Other Two doesn’t beat its audience over the head with the idea that his issues stem from childhood trauma (an all-too-frequent narrative trope with TV’s gay characters). In fact, the series goes out of its way to show that his remaining family embraces him for who he is, with Chase even going so far as to denounce a very powerful church because of its homophobic policies and his mother frequently talking about how much she loves him on her talk show.
Rather,, his queer angst stems more from the fact that he can’t quite decide what his gay life should look like. For example, his brief adventure with a group of “Instagram gays”--in which he attaches himself to a group of influencers in an effort to really launch his career--ends in failure. It’s clear from the beginning that they are not the type of crowd in which he feels comfortable but, just as importantly, it’s also revealed that they’re not nearly as happy and prosperous as they would like to appear. Each of them confides their insecurities to him, revealing the fundamental lie at the heart of their outwardly joyful public lives.
Even Cary’s brush with a high-profile romance--with the sexy and popular actor Dean Brannon--is ultimately revealed to be an empty facade when Brannon reveals that he is, in fact, straight and trying to gain credibility and fame by keeping the public guessing about his sexuality. However, he pointedly tells Cary that he has only himself to blame, for the whole reason that he chose to go out with Dean in the first place was because he was the straightest of his many suitors. The look of devastation that flickers across Cary’s face shows that Dean’s arrow has hit home and that, beneath his outwardly queer persona, he has far more issues with his identity as a gay man, and a public one at that, than he thought.
If there’s one queer relationship that seems to bring Cary any joy at all, it’s his bond with his fellow struggling queer actor Curtis. Their bond has been forged in the cauldron of adversity and their struggles to attain fame as actors, and Curtis is the one person (other than Brooke) who genuinely understands him, so much so that he’s willing to point out when he’s being something of an ungrateful jerk.
Cary’s struggles with his queer identity and with how to live a happy queer life resonate particularly acutely in the age of COVID-19, when so many queer spaces--including and especially gay bars--have closed their doors forever. This is an era in which so many of us are forced to live our lives online, and the question of what constitutes a happy gay life has become ever more urgent. Does it mean having thousands of Instagram followers or finding a partner to settle down with and build a media empire? Is it attainable at all, if we don't reckon with our own conflicts about our queerness?
So far, the series has yet to definitely answer these questions shows how just how intractable, and perhaps unanswerable, they remain.