We Need to Talk About "We Are Who We Are"

I have a new favorite television show.

Upon beginning to watch it, I was convinced I would hate it.

What a fool I was.

It is HBO's We Are Who We Are brought to you by Luca "I Can't Believe You Had the Audacity to Make Your Suspiria Remake Eight Hours Long" Guadagnino, a man who loves watching men fall in love in Italy the way I love watching a pug lick up ice cream off the ground.

Much like Call Me By Your Name, this television show asks the question--

Will you watch the most pretentious bullshit ever created as long as every character on the show is the horniest person you have ever met in your life?

And the answer is--

Is the Pope's kink pissing off Conservatives?

We Are Who We Are, which I think was meant to be called Right Here Right Now since every episode is titled Right Here Right Now (Any idea why? No? Does it matter? Probably not.) takes place on an army base in Italy where Chloe Sevigny is at peak Chloe Sevigny playing a butch lesbian who is taking over control of the base, bringing along her wife who is also an officer, and her quirky lesbian son, played by It's Jack Dylan Grazer, who is turning in one of those performances you used to see in high school when a straight guy trying to make out with an emo girl would claim to be bi.

Now, if you, like me, are thinking--

Wow, they would let a lesbian run an army base in Italy? Is the army PROGESSIVE?

Yeah, I don't know if we're meant to believe that any of this is reality, even though, because this show has absolutely ZERO chill, they set the whole thing on the precipice of the 2016 election.

Ten minutes into the first episode, I could tell this entire season was going to amble along with the pacing of The Vow and the "Oh, am I being thirsty?" thirstiness of people on TikTok who say they don't want to be on SNL when all they're really doing is auditioning for SNL.

I was confident that I would never get into it, but oh, reader, how I underestimated Luca "Where's My Peach?" Guadagnino.

It took that man all of half an hour before Grazer's Fraser (Rhyming coincidence? Who cares?) wanders into a shower and sees about two dozen naked men, flapping their genitalia around, and showcasing bodies that were shaved with a razor's edge so fine Sweeney Todd would weep looking at it.

Pretty soon, we're at a beach where there are more naked teenagers (How does HBO get away with this? Between this show and Euphoria, I'm starting to think Drake is running programming over there) and we meet Caitlin, who, it turns out, would like to be known as Harper. I'm going to keep calling Caitlin Caitlin for now, because it's not clear whether or not they're actually interested in being Harper full-time, because nobody on this show has any idea what they want or who they want to be, which is...interesting (?), considering the show is called We Are Who We Are.

Spoiler Alerts Ahead

Caitlin's father is a MAGA-hat wearer played by Kid Cudi (I know, this entire show is a rabbit hole. I wouldn't be surprised if Chloe Sevigny is actually June Squibb in a body suit) and her mother is having an affair with Fraser's other mom in an empty apartment while Fraser's Mom seems interested in Jonathan, her assistant, who Fraser is in love with, and Caitlin's brother seems to be on the verge of being radicalized by YouTube, while her ex-boyfriend's brother has recently married his Italian girlfriend right before their entire group of friends breaks into an abandoned house, engages in bacchanalian debauchery, and then he ships out after being nude for a little bit more, and of course, everybody is the most beautiful person you've ever seen in your life.

Oh, and David Bowie plays a few times, because HBO is very rich, honey. Do not forget it. We are still FLUSH with Game of Thrones cash. We will play thirty seconds of The Beatles just because we can. Try us and see what happens.

The whole show is like if Peyton Place was written by Aaron Spelling and directed by Antonioni. I have never seen such a gorgeous show in my entire life. More than a dozen shots an episode are mind-bogglingly good and meanwhile, the dialogue sounds like if an AI was asked to put together a romance novel using only language from an army recruiting pamphlet.

Normally, I loathe shows that don't have a sense of humor and revels in its own importance, but this show revels in so much non-existence importance that the revelry itself becomes joyous. Gleeful. The level of illogic rises to that of Twin Peaks. At one point, Chloe Sevigny cuts her finger and her son sucks on the blood. Not since The Seagull have I been so confused by a mother/son relationship, and, in fact, I'm not entirely show the show isn't riffing on The Seagull while it also tries to riff on Othello, Full Metal Jacket, and the fanfic I used to write about falling in love with a servicemember at a karaoke bar while singing "I Want It That Way." (A real thing that happens.)

I would love to tell you the show is all escapism, but as I said, it seems insistent on reminding us about POLITICS and RELEVANT THINGS whenever it feels itself (and us) getting too horny. It would be like if exotic dancers were allowed to throw cold buckets of water on their customers midway through a pole dance to "WAP." One minute, we're trying to figure out if the kids eating spaghetti out of a pot by a pool using only their hands is supposed to be symbolic and the next we're watching Kid Cudi hug his gender-fluid child with a look on his face that tells us bad, bad shit is going down in the season finale.

As someone who regrets every day that he wasn't alive when Dynasty was going full force, I am so glad I finally have a show that is equally as wild, unapologetically decadent, and sees nothing wrong with spending just following cars driving down Italian roads while Lauryn Hill plays.

It's enough to make me want to enlist.