My Heart Belongs To Gaddy (Television Thoughts: Seven Spotted Ladybug, Everything’s Gonna Be Okay S01 E01, Freeform)

evMV5BNjAwMDc5ZWItYTg4MI watched and finished watching Josh Thomas earlier series, ‘Please Like Me,’ and I was very much into it, so when I found out that he had another one that just started (on Freeform and Hulu) I knew I wanted to check it out right away. And after watching the first episode, ‘Seven Spotted Labybug,” I am once again smitten. I admit it took me a while to really ‘get’ Thomas. He could be a tad annoying as an actor, and maybe the bitter in me is always jealous that he gets so many cute leading men, but I have to say his characters, almost always gay, are always interesting in a humane way. They can grate at time, but more often than not, they are relatable, even for someone like me who is years older than these characters. In this new show, he plays Nicholas, who is visiting hos father (and his two stepsisters) in America when, on the eve of his departure back to Australia, his father confesses that he has pancreatic cancer. All of a sudden, Nicholas’ life is upended, and he is thrust into taking care of his two step-siblings. (His father dies by the episode’s end) Nicholas, like Thomas, has a wry dry voice and everything doesn’t come off smoothly, but we see him try to do the right thing, and by the end of the first episode, we are all in on the new set up. Sure, this set up is a little too comfy (they are wealthy, so…) but the rough road ahead is inviting, and I am more than enthusiastic to find out what happens next. The two siblings are your typical precocious kids, but also flawed – one is socially awkward and the other is in the spectrum – which makes the characterizations very interesting. I’ll explore life with them…

I Like To Like (Television Thoughts: Please Like Me, Season 4, Thursdays at 9:30, Australian Broadcasting Network ABC)

please-like-me-s4It’s already the fourth season of ‘Please Like Me,’  and that is a great thing. It is a show that I always catches my attention – for better or worse it always gets a reaction for me, whether positive or negative, and at most times, both. It started off as a gay Australian version of HBO’s Girls, but for me better than that, because for me, the writing here is more interesting. Or maybe I can identify with it more.

So when Season 4 starts, Josh (creator, actor, and director Josh Thomas) is still together with Arnold (Keegan Joyce) and I liked that set-up because maybe I think Joyce is a fantastic actor, and he settles Josh down, a neurotic foil for Josh’s neurosis. On the first episode of the season, they even explore getting a threesome, and it became more interesting the guy they chose was more into Arnold than Josh. As we go into the second episode, we see both Josh and Arnold breaking up. That threw me off – I was convinced a bulk of this season was going to explore their relationship. By the third episode, we see Josh already dating, and I did not like that direction at all, thinking it will be just reasons for Josh to be kissing and dating numerous guys, and yeah isn’t where we first started? A twist at the end of the episode gave me hope – maybe I am not that wring about having Josh and Arnold’s relationship explored.  Thoas said in an interview that part of his goals is that he wants to go against what people are expecting, so that seems to be the case, for me anyway.

So I will keep on watching.