Showtime's 'Queer as Folk': True To the End

"He's afraid -- the time, the political climate," Justin is told by one of the filmmakers. The mogul has decided to fund "The Passion of Moses" instead. Of course "Queer" needed an excuse to get Justin back to Pittsburgh anyway, so it's not the end of the world.

The other characters continue with their own foibles, failings and, of course, feuds; that's what friends are for. Michael (Hal Sparks) and Ben (Robert Gant) are still together, still supposedly a model of domestic tranquillity, but the compulsively promiscuous Brian (Gale Harold, essentially the series's leading man) scoffs at their variation on heterosexual bliss and calls them "Stepford Fags." That's awfully harsh. On the other hand, they sometimes seem as excessively cuddly as the little old ladies in "Arsenic and Old Lace" but without the compensating dark humor.

"When," Brian asks his old friend Michael, "did you become this pious, sanctimonious, sentimental twit?"

But Brian's dedication to whoopee and a life of sex-on-demand has already begun to take on its own kind of pathos, and in the final season his philosophy will face major challenges, one of them the New Boy in Town. The Nordic hunk shows up one night at Babylon after Brian has bought it and not only rejects a sexual advance from Brian, unthinkable in these parts, but also sets his sights on becoming the new reigning rooster. And the beat, inevitably, goes on.

Lesbians Melanie and Lindsay (Michelle Clunie and Thea Gill) continue to bicker over custody of a baby fathered, via artificial insemination, by Michael, who takes to fatherhood in a big, big way. The trio end up playing their own version of "Yes Sir, That's My Baby." Meanwhile Ted (Scott Lowell) suffers encroaching middle-age panic and tries to remake as well as reinvent himself, and effeminate Emmett (lovably played by Peter Paige) gets an on-air job on a local TV station as the house homosexual -- a development that gives the writers a chance to lampoon "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and the genre it threatens to become.

Swishy though he is, Emmett risks losing his new job immediately when, of all things, the station manager accuses him of not acting "gay enough."

Sharon Gless, triumphant in the role of Debbie, Michael's more-than-tolerant mother, will have a great year, if a look at the first seven episodes is any indication. Her portrayal seemed aggravatingly cute and twinkly at first sight, but she and Debbie have matured, and she's clearly responsible for some of the most affecting dramatic moments on the show.

Guest star Rosie O'Donnell will appear in three episodes starting next week as Loretta Pye, a woman who's run away from an abusive husband and applies for a waitress job at the diner where Debbie has long held court. Another guest star, Cyndi Lauper, will pop up later in the season.

All the episodes for the season have been finished, and your obedient critic made it through more than half before the demands of deadline brought down the curtain. It wasn't hard to keep watching, because even if the story line is simplistic at times, the characters have the credibility to keep one hooked, and the show continues to deal with relevant issues in ways that make good drama. That isn't easy, and there are times when the scripts drift -- or leap -- into a pat preachiness. But those are rare.

Describing for Michael what makes something "tiring," Brian in his dissipated way offers as synonyms "predictable, unsatisfying, boring." These are things that, for the most part, "Queer as Folk" has managed to avoid. It has been, in its way, a great leap into the unknown, and its longevity strongly suggests that it attracted heterosexual as well as homosexual viewers. You don't have to be embroiled in any of the issues to be concerned for the characters and what will become of them -- and to be quite sad that their richly lived lives will soon be over.