The Disappointments

I am a sucker for webseries. Don't get me wrong, I know that some are absolutely trash but some are actually quite good and this one is fun, short and it's surprisingly good. At least IMHO. I came across it because I happened upon one of the protagonists in tighty whities. And of course I had to go watch to see what he was up to. Why, yes, a half naked man showing me the goodies is an incentive, like anything else. Have you met me?

Also the series, about three gay friends trying to find their way in life sounded like fun. After fifty? Yeah, sign me up. It does not go as far as being The Golden Girls, but it is in a neighboring realm. And it's LA instead of Florida. And you don't see that quite often, because when you think about LA you think about twenty year olds with pumped up bodies and six pack abs. Remember that for some gay men, life ends at what? Twenty five? Or is it thirty? I can't remember. In a culture obsessed with youth and physical appearance, finding stories told from other perspectives is always refreshing, not to mention interesting. And that's what I thought while I binged through the episodes.

The men in The Disappointments deal with different things: a sudden illness, planning for the future, a relationship, you name it. And of course, men who are past their forties are going to see these things under a different lens. I found that the webseries explores these issues from a different perspective: there's no coming of age arch, there's no sudden realization that things indeed get better, there's nevertheless, something more universal: life goes on, and not always the way we thought it would go. And that's not a bad thing. I think that looking at life from the vantage position that having survived a plague gives to men over fifty, is as worthy of exploration as the angst that millenials are going through right now.

It's a different world, the one we're living in, when you look at it from the point of view of a man who has been around the block once or five times. And it's not that it is better than the world a nineteen year old is discovering. It's just different, and looking at it may give you a different perspective. Just saying....

XOXO

P.S. Here's the photo that made me stop and gawk. Instagram knows me, apparently:

@HEYRICHRAY