This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat. The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
Each pf the six different episodes running at about 45 minutes each focus on a different decade right fro the 1050s to the 2000s. Some of these devices are more effective than others, as all come from a place of deeply earnest, searching curiosity and tenderness. We see the 50s where apparently being gay or lesbian wasn't as frowned upon as it later began to be. People were lot more tolerant util in the 60 the more conservative states started going up with laws. 1960s relies mostly on archival footage and the 1970s episode is a personal love letter to film-maker Barbara Hammer and poet Audre Lorde. As expected the 80s chronicles the AIDS crisis but with some different perspectives like the joyous, intimate home movies of Nelson Sullivan, who spent most of the 80s wandering around downtown with his camcorder and his dog, Blackout. A lot of emphasis and story focuses on LGBTQ people of color and black trans people and of course gay rights legally and how they evolved in the country. The 2000s is examined as the explosion queer visibility through multiple TV shows, movies and mainstream media.
As you can expect since different episodes are directed by different directors, the documentary series is very disparate, just like the community it tries to represent. But hats off to a very sincere attempt to explore and show us the entire history of LGBTQ community though its lenses and its evolution. A lot of famous movements are acknowledged but it was good to see references to many many such movements that over a period of time got merged with other movements like Women's right and BLM. There’s also a focus in the final episode on the epidemic of violence against trans women and the urgent need to place Black trans women and trans women of colour, the most vulnerable part of our community, at the centre of LGBTQ+ activism. The six episodes are not a very engaging watch and there is too much information. But having said that, it is empowering to see how the LGBTQ community has evolved in so many years that as an individual you feel a sense off gratitude for all the hard work that people before us have put in and a sense of pride for the queer, trans, and gender non-conforming lives that came before us. (6/10)
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