Love, Victor (2020–2022)

This is better than the movie Love, Simon but not by much. It could take the place of any generically wholesome and wholesomely generic teenage TV series, except the gimmick of this show is that the lead character is gay. From a cultural / sociopolitical perspective, there's value in having such a mainstream depiction of homosexuality; but that is the only sense in which Love, Victor makes progress. From an artistic perspective, Love, Victor is staid, timid, and, thus, boring.

This is an indirect sequel to the Love, Simon movie so I decided to give this a shot and it really captured the feel of the movie. Also, some of the cast from the movie made guest appearances, so you get a glimpse of their lives a year later. I won't reveal much of the story, but it starts with a family moving into the same school district that the above-mentioned Simon was in (but who is now in college). The son in this family, Victor, is on the path to accepting that he is gay, but no one knows that yet. What on folds throughout the series is his acceptance of who he is and how that impacts his family and friends. There is so much that I could write about this, but it would give away spoilers and I don't want to do that. It is a very moving series with a mixture of humor, seriousness and personal growth not only on Victor's part, but on several other characters as well. Victor's relationship with his best friend, Felix, brings a lot of humor to the mix and even though Felix is straight, their friendship just works on many levels. The only downside that I felt is that sometimes the story got a little to sidetracked by delving deeply into some of the supporting character's lives; it was never bad or badly acted, but sometimes it just felt like it took too much away from the main story and at times broke the cadence of the main story. Very moving and very much worth watching.