Noah’s Arc (2005)
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Noah’s Arc Review
Noah’s Arc is comedy drama series that aired its first season on Logo in 2005 and its second season in 2006. It is a cheesy and flawed, but very entertaining show.
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“This is maddening. We ought to start bashing back“
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It is about the lives and travails of four gay black friends living in Los Angeles. First and foremost, this show was clearly a black L.A. version of ‘Queer as Folk’, but definitely an inferior version. It deals with similar issues regarding sex and love, but it is never as frank about these issues as the former series was.
It’s a short series with each episode only lasting for about twenty minutes, thus the structure made it difficult to get invested in these storylines and characters more as it felt rushed. It’s your typical structure where each episode is thematically linked between all characters, but of course every time one or two of these four characters will get the short end of the stick.
The all-encompassing nature in terms of themes was great, but again these issues were handled with kid gloves. Gay bashing was handled in the best and more urgent manner and so was the HIV issue, but promiscuity and relationships were portrayed in a rather optimistic, overly unrealistic manner as most characters end up in a relationship, which just isn’t realistic for gay men.
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Noah is the effeminate member of the gang and a very well developed, memorable protagonist. He is fun and grounded in reality while Darryl Stephens was pretty good and charismatic in the role. His will they, won’t they with Wade, a more sport-oriented macho man, did get overplayed, but the chemistry between the two was so strong that it made their dynamic more potent.
Alex is by far the most amusing of the four and it’s a shame that the show did not use him more as he was outstanding. I loved the element of drag included within his personality and his relationship with Trey was so well established and pleasingly quirky and playful, but the disruptor included in the second season was very annoying and the entire second season was much more ridiculous than the first one with the finale bordering on soap opera territory.
Ricky is very unrealistic. He is this promiscuous guy who is suddenly thrust into a relationship that seemed improbable in context to his character and his personality. He was much more interesting in the first season. Chance is also a character who did not work. We are supposed to believe that he is married, yet we never see any chemistry or true love between him and his husband, leading to a rather awkward prolonged storyline that didn’t work. He was fine as a character, but he was continually straddled with the dullest of storylines.
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Noah’s Arc is very 2000s for better and for worse. It’s fun and it has that comedic tone that I really like in my shows, but the music is too contemporary and samey while the directing, production design and scripting are all serviceable. The characterization is where the show was at its best for the most part while in the script department it left a lot to be desired.
Noah’s Arc was a solid gay show released in the mid 2000s. It was cancelled abruptly and with a very bad cliffhanger while the second season was soapy and too ridiculous, but the first season was quite enjoyable and the characters are uniformly likable and fun.
Worst Episodes: My One Temptation, Part 2, Don’t Mess with My Man and Nothin’ Goin’ on but the Rent.
Best Episodes: Excuses for Bad Behavior, Give It Up and Say It Loud.
My Rating – 3.6
Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom
Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom is a 2008 romantic comedy film that served as the conclusion of the Noah’s Arc show. It was released theatrically to very low box office numbers and weak reviews.
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“Well, between me and you,
I’ve always wondered what the fuss was about you“
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It’s actually a surprisingly solid movie that is obviously very soapy in its scenarios and again making the mistake of the entire series in making a giant problem for all characters out of minor issues, but the movie still got how scary getting into a marriage means, especially for gay males.
Noah and Wade are getting married, so everybody is invited, but then all couples get a wake-up call as their relationships are suddenly in jeopardy. Again, the many entanglements here were wild and too ridiculous, but they undeniably were hugely entertaining to watch. Baby Gat is much more fun here than ever before and genuinely charming while Alex was just as endearing as always.
Chance and Eddie are still quite boring while the newly introduced Brandon functioned more as a plot device than a real character. The best parts of the movie involved around the Ricky-Noah-Wade triangle. Finally, Ricky gets a meaningful arc where he gets to acknowledge his attraction to Noah while still choosing to be a good man to everybody involved. His arc here was terrific while the chemistry between Noah and Wade was just as electric as it was before, though Noah was again too annoyingly clueless.
