S01.E05: Robyn's Story

[statsgirl]

Quote

When drag performer Kevin falls for a closeted guy secretly living a double life, their whirlwind affair leads to devastating consequences.

Airdate February 21, 2023.

[Snazzy Daisy]

 

[Snazzy Daisy]

 

[AnimeMania]

J. Harrison Ghee as Kevin Milstead/Robyn
Chris Coy as Jamie Barnes
Kristen Connolly as Natalie Barnes
Willam Beli as Layla
Eva Reign as Megan
Kiril Mitev as Trixie
Nadine Whiteman Roden as Sylvia
Connor Michael McMahon as Mark
Brandon McGibbon as Matty
Billy Porter directs.

[Spartan Girl]

Finally, an episode with a happy ending. Or at least one where the main character doesn’t get screwed over. Thanks, Billy Porter!

[Chicago Redshirt]

So I was dreading that this would be heinous, given the politics of Fox's corporate parent. But for what it was, not bad.

They really should just cut the courtroom stuff because it doesn't make much sense  given what we see in flashbacks.

I don't see how you spin Robyn running into traffic desperate to get help and report that Jamie is a murderer after Jamie has thrown her phone in the lake into the notion that Robyn's a likely accomplice. 

Once again, another useless defense attorney. This one let his client get assaulted in the friggin' courthouse and was either too stupid or indifferent to do something about it. She doesn't even come up with the good point of "Why would a drag queen come to bury a body in full drag in broad daylight?" Although I think that a real life jury could come up with some reasons. And of course, it could still be that Robyn conspired to kill Natalie but then got cold feet. In fact, it might be the fact that she didn't want to get blood on her expensive drag clothes that made her pull out of a murder plot.

The getting rid of the body in broad daylight was some dumb shit, no doubt.

I assume the songs that were in the episode were just made up as opposed to covers to songs actually used at drag shows.

It takes some suspension of belief to think that someone who has much going on as Kevin/Robyn would waste time with a loser like Jamie. Even without the benefit of hindsight, she could have done better. And using the love word is a little much. 

As generally positive as this episode might have been to the LGBTQ community overall, I have to give it a big middle finger for even raising the suggestion that Jamie was "turned" queer by being molested. Yes, I know that Robyn debunked that notion, but the people who want to believe that qays are psychologically messed up are going to overlook that.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Chicago Redshirt

[Kleav]

18 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

would waste time with a loser like Kevin

You mean Jamie?

J. Harrison Ghee is wonderful in Some Like It Hot on Broadway. 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Kleav

[Snazzy Daisy]

This is by far my favorite episode! 😍

J Harrison Ghee is amazing as dull Kevin & vivacious Robyn.👏🏻

Billy Porter’s signatures and DNA are all over the drag club’s scenes. The costumes and makeup, the music and performances - so bold and theatrical.💥

 

Quote

”We all wear masks at certain times in our lives, sometimes everyday. When you take the mask off, and sit inside your full authenticity is when actual life really begins.”

- Billy Porter

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by SnazzyDaisy

[Chicago Redshirt]

6 hours ago, Kleav said:

You mean Jamie?

Oops, yes, fixed.

[Spartan Girl]

7 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

It takes some suspension of belief to think that someone who has much going on as Kevin/Robyn would waste time with a loser like Jamie. Even without the benefit of hindsight, she could have done better. And using the love word is a little much. 

I didn’t get why she was willing to leave with him after he called her up and told her he left his wife, especially after he’d been lying to her about being married after all that time. Especially after meeting the wife and listening to all she’d been through with the miscarriage and all. My best guess is that Jamie sounded so emotional on the phone that she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him and thought she owed it to him to support him.

7 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

As generally positive as this episode might have been to the LGBTQ community overall, I have to give it a big middle finger for even raising the suggestion that Jamie was "turned" queer by being molested. Yes, I know that Robyn debunked that notion, but the people who want to believe that qays are psychologically messed up are going to overlook that.

Ugh yup. But Jamie had all the red flags of being an abuser where Natalie was concerned. If she hadn’t found out about his double life, he probably would have killed her for some other reasons.

[Whimsy]

I really liked this one. I like this show for the fact that there are no returning characters episode to episode. I like seeing different stories, different parts of the country, etc. 
 

I live in Massachusetts. Some of the accents were terrible (Natalie), some were ok (Jamie) but even he pulled me out the story a little when he said he lived in Quincy and pronounced it Quinn-sea when it’s pronounced Quinn-Zee. My daughter lives in Quincy, so it was very noticeable to me. 
 

 

 

[gesundheit]

Definitely the most interesting episode since the premiere. I'm okay with this show being hit-or-miss as long as it's sometimes hitting! Unlike a lot of the others, I didn't immediately figure out exactly how the flashback story was going to play out, so it really had me guessing about what had happened and what the trial charges were. Great performances, too. And of course Billy Porter knows how to put on a show!

[Chicago Redshirt]

46 minutes ago, gesundheit said:

Definitely the most interesting episode since the premiere. I'm okay with this show being hit-or-miss as long as it's sometimes hitting! Unlike a lot of the others, I didn't immediately figure out exactly how the flashback story was going to play out, so it really had me guessing about what had happened and what the trial charges were. Great performances, too. And of course Billy Porter knows how to put on a show!

My prediction was that Robyn would get attacked by Jamie and have to kill him in self-defense, or that Jamie was going to take a beating/bullet meant for her from the brother.

Speaking of, brother's gaybashing of Robyn (along with the guard being willing to look the other way while he facilitated it) makes less sense. Even if Robyn was truly the cause of Jamie murdering his wife, it was still Jamie who did it. .

[Kiss my mutt]

I thought this was an excellent episode unlike last week, where I could hardly pay attention. When I saw the guys approaching Robyn, I thought this was going an episode about hate crime so I was pleasantly surprised that it was more nuanced and both actors did a good job portraying the yearning for self acceptance and their different paths they took. I loved when Robyn took the stage with her own voice. I actually had a big goofy smile on my face watching that. 
 

[nichelle]

My goodness J Harrison Ghee is all kinds of fabulous. That was a fantastic performance. 

[possibilities]

5 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Speaking of, brother's gaybashing of Robyn (along with the guard being willing to look the other way while he facilitated it) makes less sense. Even if Robyn was truly the cause of Jamie murdering his wife, it was still Jamie who did it. .

The whole hateful conceit justifying the beating in the courthouse bathroom was that Robyn "made him [Jamie] do it" just by tempting him or some bullshit. Sadly, that seems to be a very common illogic IRL. Robyn "ruined his life" or "corrupted him" or "messed with his mind" or "he wasn't like that until he met you". It comes from the whole lie about how we "recruit" or are agents of Satan and so on and so on. There doesn't have to be any kind of logic. It's just manic hatred.

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 hours ago, possibilities said:

The whole hateful conceit justifying the beating in the courthouse bathroom was that Robyn "made him [Jamie] do it" just by tempting him or some bullshit. Sadly, that seems to be a very common illogic IRL. Robyn "ruined his life" or "corrupted him" or "messed with his mind" or "he wasn't like that until he met you". It comes from the whole lie about how we "recruit" or are agents of Satan and so on and so on. There doesn't have to be any kind of logic. It's just manic hatred.

I get the underlying manic hatred and illogic, but it still strikes me as contrived that a) Brother would be mad enough in these circumstances to orchestrate the gaybashing (as opposed to if Robyn had killed Jamie) and b) guard would have been cool enough to allow Brother to go forward with the gaybashing in a public place where if Robyn had been her usual fierce self and/or Useless Defense Attorney had used a lick of common sense, the attack would be traced back to him and he could be charged with a crime/lose his job. 

Maybe I'm contradicting myself by expecting people full of manic hatred to be acting  more logically than they did here.

On another front, the show portrayed the different races of the characters as completely irrelevant, when I'm fairly sure if a scenario like this played out IRL it would have played a role. 

[Starchild]

6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

b) guard would have been cool enough to allow Brother to go forward with the gaybashing in a public place where ... the attack would be traced back to him and he could be charged with a crime/lose his job. 

In my headcanon, Robyn's refusal to implicate him made him grateful enough to allow her to walk down the centre aisle of the courtroom on his arm.

[DanaK]

This was an outstanding episode on a character level. All the court stuff was perfunctory as usual, except for Kevin’s testimony on the stand dressed up as Robyn, which was mesmerizing. Kevin made it clear to the jury that him dressed as Robyn helping Jamie get rid of his wife’s body was ridiculous. The real sad thing, among a bunch of sad things in this story, was that the wife was completely comfortable helping and advising Kevin on what dress to buy, but said some really homophobic things to her husband when she confronted him after she saw he was having an affair with Kevin (at least according to Jamie). And Kevin was not doing himself any favors having an affair with a closeted man with a huge amount of internal homophobia 

Really great episode. I hope this gets some nominations come Emmy time

Edited February 24, 2023 by DanaK

[Simba122504]

I also enjoyed this one. The first one that's actually made my eyes watery.  Billy Porter did the damn thing. 

[Spartan Girl]

15 hours ago, DanaK said:

The real sad thing, among a bunch of sad things in this story, was that the wife was completely comfortable helping and advising Kevin on what dress to buy, but said some really homophobic things to her husband when she confronted him after she saw he was having an affair with Kevin (at least according to Jamie).

That was Jamie’s version of events and the killer isn’t exactly a reliable source. Finding out you’re being cheated on doesn’t bring out the best in us, but that in no way means she deserved to be killed.

[MicheleinPhilly]

The first 45 minutes of this episode made me 🤬. From Jamie's internalized homophobia to his asshat brother's blatant bigotry to the court officer allowing the brother to kick Kevin's ass in the bathroom, everything was raising my blood pressure. And I absolutely HATED that they used the framing of "Oh, well Jamie was molested as a child so now he's gay." Cue my old ladies in the insurance commercial: "That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works."

Having said that, J. Harrison Ghee is an absolute star. What a dynamic and charismatic young man. 

 

[circumvent]

I have a hard time watching this show. On one hand, there are goo takes, important issues being discussed. On the other hand, they make it too soapy, too incomplete because the themes would require more episodes to satisfy me. 

In this episode the story was interesting but the courtroom parts were ridiculous. It was satisfying to see Kevin/Robyn on the stand but the attorney, prosecutor and judge were pathetic.

The verdicts are sometimes too optimistic. For one, those cases would likely end up in deals (and in this episode, likely be dismissed altogether, unless it was established that the judge was a bigot). But ok, they need a story to have the show, so I can ignore that. But it would have been much better, imo, to tell us the stories and leave the verdict to be guessed. The courtroom parts are so poorly written, the verdict are not the most important part of the episodes. The stories are. It would also make for good discussion.

[DanaK]

31 minutes ago, circumvent said:

I have a hard time watching this show. On one hand, there are goo takes, important issues being discussed. On the other hand, they make it too soapy, too incomplete because the themes would require more episodes to satisfy me. 

In this episode the story was interesting but the courtroom parts were ridiculous. It was satisfying to see Kevin/Robyn on the stand but the attorney, prosecutor and judge were pathetic.

The verdicts are sometimes too optimistic. For one, those cases would likely end up in deals (and in this episode, likely be dismissed altogether, unless it was established that the judge was a bigot). But ok, they need a story to have the show, so I can ignore that. But it would have been much better, imo, to tell us the stories and leave the verdict to be guessed. The courtroom parts are so poorly written, the verdict are not the most important part of the episodes. The stories are. It would also make for good discussion.

The show focuses so much on the defendant and their life that the court stuff is virtually non-existent and what is there has a lot of holes in it to tell the story. Whether they leave out the verdict altogether or tell us the verdict first then tell the story, I have a feeling it wouldn't make it any better. The show is a pretty good, sometimes very good, character piece, weighed down by very bad writing for the legal side that frustrates because of so much that the legal types on the show, especially the defense lawyers, don't seem to bother with. It might work better if they have short episode arcs for the season, like 2 or 3 episodes on the same story and 3 or so arcs for the season to better allow a particularly story to be told. As it is, it's very uneven. The ratings are low, but possibly decent enough for Fox to renew

[Simba122504]

4 hours ago, circumvent said:

I have a hard time watching this show. On one hand, there are goo takes, important issues being discussed. On the other hand, they make it too soapy, too incomplete because the themes would require more episodes to satisfy me. 

In this episode the story was interesting but the courtroom parts were ridiculous. It was satisfying to see Kevin/Robyn on the stand but the attorney, prosecutor and judge were pathetic.

The verdicts are sometimes too optimistic. For one, those cases would likely end up in deals (and in this episode, likely be dismissed altogether, unless it was established that the judge was a bigot). But ok, they need a story to have the show, so I can ignore that. But it would have been much better, imo, to tell us the stories and leave the verdict to be guessed. The courtroom parts are so poorly written, the verdict are not the most important part of the episodes. The stories are. It would also make for good discussion.

I don't know how they can change without it be coming a Great Value Law & Order.