God help me I have even more thoughts about The Ultimatum: Queer Love
On universality and specificity and what it means to make a show about Nothing
[Free post for all today! Previous subscriber-only posts about TU:QL here and here.]
On the eve of the release of the final episodes of the worst show I’ve ever seen, I am struck by a thought: if The Ultimatum: Queer Love, as we now know, was filmed in 2021, it means that a giant chunk of these people’s existing relationships happened during the (ongoing) global catastrophe of COVID, including lockdown. You’ll forgive me for not making this connection earlier; there is such a dearth of detail in these interminable episodes that it’s hard to imagine these people experiencing anything in the real world.
One of my chiefest complaints about this show—aside from the broken narratives around its various cast members and what it reveals about popular psychology and media literacy in general—is the way it feels like nothing. The way the show is stripped, seemingly deliberately, of any identifying details that might shape these people as people, instead of game pieces being shuffled around a board.
Some of it feels purposeful. The fact that we don’t know anyone’s1 jobs, or hobbies or passions. Where they’re from2. Previous relationships. What their star signs are3. Whether they’re tops or bottoms or switches or don’t believe in those categories. Their worst fears or greatest desires or biggest humiliations. Details about their childhoods. I don’t think the cast members themselves never mentioned those things, I think the show chose to omit them. Even details that have practical functions—like the oft-commented-on silver goblets (clearly designed to help editors splice together scenes without continuity issues) and the hilariously bad pop songs that play at key emotional moments (clearly done to save money) create a beige-y sense of sameness.
I don’t even know what these people’s drinks of choice are. We literally turned “what’s your drink of choice?” into a dyke meme that made its way onto menus all over the place less than a year ago, and we don’t know what any of these people are ordering.
And where are they? Where are these bizarre horrible generic Airbnbs where they’re all playacting marriage4? California, probably? Right? Are they in LA? My girlfriend swore she thought she recognized a street in the background of some shot, but then at a party this weekend someone told me they were pretty sure it was San Diego? The point is, it doesn’t actually matter. We can lift off the ground in a literal hot air balloon and see in every direction and it doesn’t matter. It’s just anonymous landscape5. It’s just nothing.
What makes me crazy about all of this is it affects the content of the show pretty dramatically. The conversations they have about relationships are the clearest indicator of this. They’re like a giant game of Relationship MadLibs. Just nonsensical and boring. So boring! It’s gibberish. The conversation that Sam and Aussie and Aussie’s adorable brother have about trauma and family is one of the realest things that happens on the show, but it’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s an example of what can be gained narratively when you don’t take away the most meaningful or telling bits of people’s lives, experiences, and identities.
And like, I do believe in the right for queer people to be anything, including boring and basic. But even boring and basic people hold contradictions and secret desires and telling details.
Which brings me back to COVID. As I’m sure is true for many of you, many people’s relationships struggled during or around COVID. Mine were no different. This unprecedented event put tremendous pressure on relationships and altered them in irrevocable ways. It was a stress test that many failed. And it is, perhaps, the most relevant event in recent history that would have a direct and quite honestly very relatable effect on all of these relationships. All of them. And yet I don’t think we’ve heard the word “COVID” or “lockdown” or “quarantine” once? Even though this was being shot (if I understand the timeline correctly) just as the first round of vaccines was rolling out? When was the last time a current event could have, without fail, affected everyone in a reality show cast, without exception6? I used the word “malpractice” in my previous post about this show, and I think it applies here, too—just a maddening abdication of narrative responsibility.
Look, I get it. What do I know? I’ve never been in charge of (I almost just wrote “written”) a reality show. I’m sure it’s cheaper to do it this way. I’m sure there are a million logistical, practical, focus-group reasons why this show is so bleakly anonymous and these people are so fundamentally unknowable. But I can’t help but wonder if there is, at its root, that common misconception that universality—a quality that, I think, certain populations and corporations value—is achieved through a lack of detail, instead of specificity. It’s considered easier, I guess, to let the narrative weight rest on weird, generic, easy-to-digest reality show constructs like “she’s here for the wrong reasons7” or someone being “fake” or whatever instead of the things that make people who they are—like if their parents’ divorce fucked them up or if they’re anti-vax or grew up in a cult or are in a two-bottom relationship and don’t want to be! And maybe I just want something that doesn’t exist and I have to just come to terms with that. But there is nothing I hate more than a missed opportunity to make something better—especially such obvious ones!—and TU:QL just rolls those out one after another.
I keep saying that this show is so bad it feels homophobic, and that’s a joke. Mostly. But I do believe we deserve more interesting reality TV. I want that for us, darlings. During Pride month, but also, always.
We know that Yoly is a buyer for a department store and Xander is a physical therapist, but these details are released once and almost by accident.
Someone recently said to me that they think that Vanessa and Xander are “small town queers,” which would actually really shape a lot of people’s reading of them individually or together. It’s a great detail! If we could confirm it was a detail. Which we cannot. Not textually, anyway.
Again, someone’s is mentioned briefly—I think Mal?—but it’s mostly an accident.
Honestly, the “apartments” are so bad that even the most well-adjusted couple would have trouble functioning in a space like that.
I would give anything to read Joan Didion on this show’s setting.
I am also thinking about the way that genuinely chilling and upsetting reality show content was milked from the various Big Brother casts who were sequestered because of the show and had to be told about COVID in weird, upsetting bursts, or live on TV, before the tapings were disbanded.
I do not watch enough reality tv to know this, but at the aforementioned party this weekend someone pointed out to me that a cast member being accused of being on a show “for the wrong reasons” is a genre trope/cliché in the same family as “I’m not here to make friends,” which makes that ridiculous plotline make a whole lot more sense.
YES!! THANK YOU for describing the emptiness of this show and the glimmers where it’s interesting (e.g. Mildred and Tiff talking about Mildred’s son living with them, Aussie revealing that Aussie feels weird about the fact that Sam makes significantly 3x more money than Aussie) are just the cast members being human.
We know Vanessa's dad is some kind of "IT guy" from California right? I worked in Silicon Valley tech bros there wouldn't identify as "IT guy"s unless they worked for IBM or something. So chances are he's old school, probably got into the field in the 90s, before the first tech boom. My read of Vanessa and Xander is they're from somewhere in the bay area, but maybe a really middle class neighborhood (those still existed in the 90s and 2000s, I grew up in one), not exactly small town, but suburban and segregated. I grew up in South San Jose in the early 2000s for a bit, and the biggest thing happening was the local mall, and an abandoned coal mine from the 19th century. "But I am a cheerleader" was filmed there....