Falling For Angels (Web Series)

When you star watching this 6 part episodic web series from Here TV, you feel like this could easily have been 6 separate short stories, but they eventually all merge in the last episode. The biggest beauty is of the show is that it puts queer me of color at the center-stage. The common thread binding them all is LA and the 6 stories focus on 6 different neighborhoods of LA telling stories of a diverse, politically-active patchwork of gay and queer men as they fall in and out of love. Lasting at about 22-30 minutes each, they do manage to hold your attention.

Ep 1: Boyle Heights
A successful Latino lawyer has forgotten his latin roots until he encounters a fiery and sexy activist who brings about a cultural awakening. The coconut finally peels the layers.
Ep 2: Koreatown
A young Taiwanese-American man begins to have a different understanding of his heritage after meeting a Korean-American adoptee.
Ep 3: Leimert Park
A young African-American poet struggles to define what it means to be a man in Los Angeles. And parallely its a struggle for his lover and his future.
Ep 4: Bel Air
Married ten years, Bentley and Chase seem to have it all--a strong and loving union, as well as all the trappings of the good life. But, sadly, over time, the sizzle has gone out of the relationship and they are both cheating.
Ep 5: Silver Lake
Brendon thinks that his marriage to Jeffrey is losing its sizzle, and suggests they have a threesome with a sexy stranger. But after Star enters his life, Brendon starts regretting it and now there is no going back.
Ep 6: Malibu
Our former "angels" have all gathered in Malibu for Scott and Levi's wedding, which proves to be a lovely affair.

The first three episodes focus on cultural and sexual identity and it showed beautifully some of the conflicts that immigrants face. Despite being a third or fourth generation American, Latin, Asian, Black, Indian, everyone has to struggle with their identity and stay connected to their roots. If you don't , you are called names. Interestingly though, each of the stories had a positive message behind why you should connected to the roots. Stories 5 and 6 focused more on gay issues like monogamy, cheating, threesome and what not. But thank the lord! none of these stories were over-dramatic and were beautifully handled. I have the say that direction and acting in all of these episodes were pretty good. At times, the episodes felt stretched and it would be nice to close the chapters soon, but its alright. The material may not not be very much "in" today but its good to go back to the roots.

The episodes are a bit long but regardless they are real examinations of contemporary queer issues, relationships, and love in todays times. It does right by its audience by staying true to the lives they actually live. (6.5/10)