It’s what eventually makes that deadnaming at Mardi Gras all the more unforgivable, if in keeping with the devil-may-care attitude Brodie has been sporting since he got back (the charm of his knowing smirk is starting to wear off). They loved each other (as only those who shout-sing Paramore in their rooms can) even as it was clear Bleep was grappling with things they couldn’t bring themselves to talk with Brodie about. Watching the bond that young Brodie and Bleep had at school illuminates so much of who they’ve become and maybe why they’re struggling to stitch their lives back together as adults. The flashbacks play backdrop to the growing rift between the two longtime BFFs, what with Ruthie’s job being on the line after those images of her partying with her students (ah, yes, the new generation just can’t go anywhere without documenting their every move!). And yes, the hair/wigs on both Devin Way and Jesse James Keitel do need to be seen to be believed. So it’s nice to have a change of scenery, in both place and time: Not only do we find ourselves out in the streets, where Brodie has conjured up a float (in conjunction with - shudder - our favorite slay-tivist), but the episode flashes us back, with a washed-out, rather jaundiced look, to when Brodie and Ruthie ( bleep) were classmates at an all-boys school. But it’s also that we’re spending a lot of time outdoors! I hadn’t noticed just how cloistered I’d felt, but for so much of the show, we’ve been in interiors, be it at Ghost Fag or at Ruthie and Shar’s. Part of that is because it’s Mardi Gras, so we’re anchored in the city’s most famous happening. For starters, just as we had in the pilot episode, I finally again feel as if we’re in New Orleans. Here is an example of how form and content can work together to tell stories with empathy and responsibility.īut let’s talk about the episode in general. Here’s where having folks like executive producer Jaclyn Moore working behind the scenes feels particularly apt. They can be upended, or they can be revamped. They can be made, or they can be ignored. The decision to refuse even to give us Ruthie’s deadname is a powerful reminder that choices about what we show, what we label, and how we shoot certain story lines are just that: choices. In layman’s terms, those bleeps we hear all throughout the episode (including the pivotal one that doesn’t take place in a flashback) are moments when Ruthie would have been deadnamed. In this case, bleep becomes not a push for censorship or a way to police language instead, it’s a way to honor Ruthie.

There’s the title, of course, which is in itself a perfect distillation of the care Queer As Folk takes in telling its characters’ stories. “Bleep” is the best Queer As Folk episode so far.

Bleep censor