Gay Dystopia Finds a Home in the Christmas Comedy ‘Single All The Way’
Image; ET Online
I love gay trash. I know I have a reputation for being a little too critical, but there is nothing I enjoy more than shutting my brain off for a couple of hours while watching some homoerotic love stories. I was excited to watch Single All the Way (2021) because it had all the ingredients I needed: cute men, Jennifer Coolidge, Schitt's Creek Jennifer Robertson, and cringe-worthy Christmas puns.
Bring on the holiday cheer!
When I started watching this movie, however, I realized that it was not cute at all. While this film has the outward appearance of light-hearted fair, it has a central relationship dynamic that is pretty messed up. The plot started to make me think — a big no-no when it comes to trash — and I was left unhappy with how this movie ends. So let’s talk about the problems undermining Single All the Way, and how this movie not only romanticizes a toxic relationship but also ends up being an ode to the gig economy (yes, you read that right).
Single All the Way is about a will-they-or-won’t they duo named Peter (Michael Lorenzo Urie) and Nick (Philemon Chambers) as they go home to Peter’s family in New Hampshire for Christmas. Peter and Nick are roommates in LA, and they consider themselves to be best friends. Peter’s family is also obsessed with getting him a partner. Half the family wants him to go on a blind date with newcomer James (Luke Macfarlane), while the other half is team Nick. This is a pretty basic plot, and that’s okay. I love Lord of The Rings and Mad Max: Fury Road, and those movies can pretty much be summed up as a group of people moving in one direction for hours and then coming back home. There is nothing wrong with keeping things simple, especially for a trashy Christmas Romcom where most viewers are there to ogle at the leads.
The primary element that made me uneasy was how possessive and selfish Peter is throughout the film. My first hint of this comes early on when his roommate doesn't want to go out to a party, and we learn that Peter's already laid out a suit for him and prepared an Uber. It's not the worst thing, and if it were the only sign in the movie, I wouldn't think twice about it, but it's the first ding in quite a long list. It was supposed to show how in sync the duo is, but to me, it simply read as them being way too co-dependent.
When Peter calls off his relationship with hunk Tim (Steve Lund) because he learned the latter was secretly married to a woman, he tries to convince his roommate Nick to not only come home with him for Christmas but to pretend to be his boyfriend once there. Peter is able to accomplish this by convincing Nick that this action is for his own good, saying: "Nick, I don't want you to be here all by yourself, reminiscing about the great Christmases you had with your mom as a kid. I know she will always be in your heart, but you shouldn't be alone with those feelings on Christmas." The line is supposed to read as Peter looking out for Nick, but it instead seems to be Peter using his intimate knowledge of Nick to push him towards something that's quite selfish. This trip isn't about self-care for Nick. It's about Peter saving face with his family.
And to make matters worse, Peter doesn't offer to pay for the last-minute Christmas ticket to his family but convinces Nick to spend his own money on this pity party. "You have Saving Emmett money….The first book you wrote became a best seller, and now you have all this money that you're saving for a rainy day. And look, it's pouring." Peter says, gesturing to himself. Yet while Nick does seem to have a nest egg, he's not wealthy. Nick spends his days completing jobs for the application TaskRabbit (more on this later), making this whole ordeal very selfish. Peter's already asking his friend to lie on his behalf, and he wants him to pay for it too.
This possessiveness never really ends. Peter refuses to commit to Nick until the movie's very end, telling his niece that he's not willing to confess his feelings to Nick out of fear of loss. It's only when Nick prepares to leave early from the trip— showing the first bit of agency in the entire movie — that Peter decides to commit. In fact, Peter doesn't say the words "I love you" until after Nick reveals he has purchased him a lease on a store, so Peter can live out his dream of selling plants. It's a scene framed as endearing but comes off as quite transactional.
Nick is not the only person Peter treats selfishly. There is a whole subplot where his mom Carole (Kathy Najimy) or Christmas Carol (whomst we stan), is proud of this white plastic tree that she has purchased, and Peter goes behind her back to purchase a real one. He also treats blind date James somewhat terribly as well. Peter never commits to him, refusing to communicate honestly with James about his feelings (see the pageant scene). No one is owed a relationship, but the way Peter strings James along is pretty self-centered. Peter is so bad at communicating his feelings that James is the one who has to tell Peter that the latter doesn't seem interested in him. None of these behaviors are terrible on their own, but taken together, and they form a pattern of behavior where Peter acts very selfishly to most of the major characters in this film.
Returning to Nick for a moment — i.e., the only significant Black character in this very white film. This movie's ending sets off all the red flags. Nick offers up his life savings to Peter — someone who is middle or upper class and appears to have a nice job — so that he can live out his #valid career of selling plants to overprivileged white people. Nick gives this money before Peter confesses his love for him. His alleged virtue is that he is willing to sacrifice everything for love to a man that frankly doesn't treat him that well. Nick only gets his happy ending after Peter gets every he wants, on his terms.
Yet, this problematic framing is not just about Peter's possessiveness but Nick's portrayal as well, and the best way to highlight this is to talk about his view on work. Nick is a writer, but he also loves doing odd jobs for the application TaskRabbit, and the way this movie upsells the app is ridiculous. "I have [my dog] Emmett and an endless stream of TaskRabbit jobs," Nick says, rationalizing why he's comfortable staying at home for Christmas, "which is all about helping people, which brings me joy. And if that isn't the Christmas spirit, I don't know what is." The movie is literally equating working in the gig economy with holiday cheer.
Nick goes on three gigs throughout the film, and they are all portrayed with a surreal coolness. They should call you "Task Elves," one client gabs excitedly. There is nothing wrong with a person liking to do manual labor — I love to garden, and my partner loves to sew — but TaskRabbit is an exploitative company. "Working for TaskRabbit is just a fantastic way to always stay at the poverty level, right?" one Tasker said in a study. "…[it is] "actually really a race to the bottom… .it's almost exploitative the things [you] can get people to do for $10," commented someone who pays for Tasks on the platform. This company has created a climate where workers are underpaid and overworked, and its positive portrayal here during a romantic comedy movie is a type of malicious propaganda.
The way Single All The Way is trying to gloss over a business with very ugly practices and make them seem cool is unsettling. When you have your only Black character take a certain glee in serving the exploitative systems around him, a system that disproportionately hurts people of color, it rings some alarm bells you could even hear in the Sunken Place. Nick isn’t just this way with TaskRabbit and, throughout the movie, does a ton of free labor for Peter’s family — a trip, I remind you, that was initially pitched to him as self-care. This movie’s portrayal of Nick is dystopic. You have a Black man serving as the positive face of a very predatory system, and that’s manipulative.
Drag Queens Trixie Mattel and Katya recently did a reaction video of Single All The Way in their series I Like To Watch, and they called it the "gay Get Out" — a joke that feels very accurate to me. This movie is trying to be a cute romance, but it ends up being a reflection of some frankly toxic values. However, unlike Jordan Peele's masterpiece Get Out, which satirizes the predatory racism within many white liberal circles, Single All The Way isn't a commentary on white gaydom. It's a celebration of it, and that's unnerving.
The movie isn't so bad it's good. It's just bad and horrifyingly so. The thing about trashy TV is that it actually needs to be done well for you to enjoy it, or it comes off as quite offensive. Schlock can often replicate the most toxic elements in our society if its creators do not understand what they are trying to say. Some of the campiest movies out there put a lot of effort into their humor and aesthetic (see But I'm A Cheerleader, Serial Mom, etc.). Single All The Way wanted to be fun and campy, and it had all the right ingredients, but it put them together in a way that reinforced existing systems of oppression — and there's no holiday cheer in that final dish: only pain and lots of cringe.
Like seriously, wtf movie, Merry Christmas, I guess.