Euros Lyn | Heartstopper: Friend / 2022

the possibilities of friendship

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Oseman (screenplay), Euros Lyn (director) Heartstopper: Friend / 2022 [Season 1, Episode 5] [27 minutes]

 

Superficially one of the weakest of the first season’s offerings, episode 5 of the popular gay series Heartstopper begins with the endless problem—at least for William Gao’s character Tao Xu—concerning his friend Charlie Spring’s (Joe Locke) infatuation with the rugby jock Nick Nelson (Kit Connor). Celebrating with their close friends, Tao, Elle (Yasmin Finney), and Isaac (Tobie Donovan) can’t seem to even enjoy each other’s company given Tao’s endless worries over Charlie’s current “date.”

     This is all made even more problematic with Charlie’s insistence that Nick be present at his birthday party, an event that is more than a simple representation of his coming of age, but also perhaps signifies the fact that he is gradually moving out of their circle into a different world in which they inhabit.

 

   The episode attempts to sort out those problems, which frankly are far less interesting than Charlie and Nick’s own ever-growing deep love for one another, and diminish the fact, basically, that Elle and Tao are growing closer together as a nearly impossible couple given their own variances.

      The series doesn’t make light of any of the problems, including Nick’s own attempts to finally make it clear to Imogen (Rhea Norwood) that he’s not truly interested in her, made far more difficult given the fact her dog has just died and, so she proclaims, this is the worst week of her life. The empathic Nick is put in a position that makes it difficult to explain his situation. And what’s Nick to do when he also joyfully accepts Charlie’s invitation to celebrate his birthday while at the same time Imogen is announcing to the world that she and Nick are going out together on the same night?

     Yes, these are adolescent dilemmas, but they truly do matter in a burgeoning underground gay relationship, particularly given the inevitable problems facing such relationships in many such still closeted worlds.

     The issue of “Friend” is quite simply whether Nick is going to remain a distant “friend” or someone who now sees Charlie as someone he might truly want to describe, if even only to himself, as a “boyfriend,” the early stage of what in the gay world is defined as a lover. And, of course, Tao is there precisely to keep tabs about that relationship, cynical as he is about its reality.

     These may be false tensions, but in the minds of 16- and 17-year old boys and girls, they are quite substantial. Moreover, what’s worse is that Tao, in support of his friend, interferes even when

Nick himself attempts to calm down Harry Greene’s (Cormac Hyde-Corrin) homophobic comments about both Charlie and Tao. As Charlie attempts to explain to his life-long friend, he’s only making everything worse. When you’re in the closet, as Nick is, it’s even worse when uncloseted boys such as Charlie and Tao interrupt even make the vaguest of supports by the closeted boy to speak out. How does someone come out of the closet when, on one hand he’s being protected by his best friend/lover and, on the other, being suspected of being straight by that friend’s long-time friend? How can that door even be gradually slid open?

     The psychological pull in this film is between Charlie’s old, open outsider friends and his new insider lover Nick. Neither side seems able to break down the prejudices of the others, often with good reasons, leaving Charlie in a tug of war that might finally break him apart. And actually does, as we shall see in later episodes. Coming out, so Oseman’s and Lyn’s challenging series reveals, is a never-ending process, even for the one who has openly declared his sexuality. It’s no longer a process of whom to come out to, but how to help others through the same process, and how to break down the truly tribal warfare that exists even in societies that believe they might accept “the other.” The problem is always who that “other” might include; and in this case that “other” is the high school jock hero. If Charlie is dispensable to the straight world surrounding him, Nick is not. He is one of them, so they believe, and speaks for their own sexual “difference.” The planet of “difference” has suddenly swung into another direction.

    Nick bravely chooses to keep his date with Charlie, but how now to face the outsider world head-on?

    In this series the characters seem to have penchant for overhearing each other in the bathroom and other private spaces, and this time when Charlie meets with Tao in the men’s room, where he finally explains that Nick is his “friend”—a coded word even in this openly gay series that means everything that truly matters—Tao is forced to back off, and Nick, having heard the uttered word, is a bit astounded. He needs obviously, to rethink what friendship truly means.

     And yes, of course, even somewhat thick-headed Nick finally realizes that he finally has to explain to Imogen how things stand. What’s terribly sad, however, in this teen rom-com is that Nick wishes that he had met Charlie when he was younger! What could that possibly mean, a time before puberty, when he and Charlie might have played sexual games without any of the teenage anxieties? We know things might have ended even more complex if that had been the case.

      For anyone who thinks this series might have been simple, I suggest they attend to this quite serious exploration of gay teenage problems and the complex emotions that go along with them. If episode 5 is not particularly profound, it summarizes the concerns that need to be resolved between young boys finally coming to terms with themselves.

      Nick cancels his late date with Imogen, kisses Charlie full on the lips, and the next morning tells his ex-girlfriend “You’re a really nice person, but I don’t like you like that,” a purposely queer sentence construction which explains everything. He adds, “I’m not sure we fit together. I’m not sure I fit with you.”

       If Imogen doesn’t quite get the message, Nick certainly has begun to comprehend the difficult transformation in which he about to engage: “Did you ever feel like you’re only doing things because everyone else is? And you’re scared to change? Or do something that might confuse or surprise people? Your real personality has been buried inside you for a really long time. I guess, um, how I’ve been feeling like recently.”

       I have rarely heard a better definition of what it might feel like to realize that you’re not the person you and others have been imagining, that you, in fact, don’t share the same sexuality expected of you. This should be broadcast as a major “coming out” lesson.

        Even Imogen “gets it,” and tells the bullies that she and Nick have decided that they’re best as friends.

 

Los Angeles, October 25, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).