Pose :: Acting up

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After a harrowing episode last week that saw Pray Tell fall ill and Blanca lose her nail salon … all is right with the world this week, sort of. Of course in Pose time, more than a week has passed, so Pray is his old self again but Blanca is still fighting Frederica over the salon. On top of that, Damon and Ricky are hanging out around the House just a bit too much and doing a bit less than nothing to help out. ‘Vogue’ is no longer Number 1 so the white folks don’t need to learn how to strike a pose, putting Damon in a tricky financial situation. Solid Gold 90 never went past the pilot stage either, and Ricky’s not getting hired for tours from his callbacks. Lulu, meanwhile, is still a mess after Candy’s death and desperately needs some help.

So Pray and Blanca gather the three of them together to get some lessons in life from ‘The Elders’ (a term Blanca is not fond of using at this juncture of her life). They see that the children need some guidance, a mission in life to get their asses in gear so they come up with a caper for them, one that is a bit two-fold: ACT UP is trying to raise awareness of the AIDS crisis and Blanca wants to humiliate Frederica so much she has no choice but to give her the salon back. So the mission is to figure out a way to make her home in upstate New York an unwanted focal point that will also fulfill ACT UP’s agenda.

It took a while but they finally came up with an idea — wrap Frederica’s house in a giant condom. Lulu remembered a big bouncy house at a Pride event so they contacted the company, snuck up to the house and got the measurements and hatched a plan. But they’d need money and Lulu knew the one person who had it — Elektra (yep, she’s still working at the Hellfire Club). Of course Mother Elektra is not prone to doing anything out of the goodness of her heart, and Lulu knows that so she appeals to her ego, telling her that her contribution to this mission would almost certainly put her at the head of the list for this year’s Mother of the Year. That was all she needed to hear and promptly gave Lulu $1000 of the $2500 she needed. Lulu would have to earn the rest working as Elektra’s protegé … and she seemed to really enjoy it too.

Peter Staley

The long and short of the episode is that Pray, Blanca, Elektra, Judy, Lulu, Damon and Ricky did pull off the stunt of draping the house in a huge condom and inflating it with local news coverage there to capture it all. Of course it seems like a completely ridiculous moment in an otherwise serious show but … this is something that happened in real life. In 1991, members of ACT UP unfurled a similar giant condom over the home of racist, homophobic senator Jesse Helms. Helms was strongly opposed to federal spending for HIV research, treatment and prevention, saying the disease was just to punish homosexuals who deserved no support. Many of the laws he helped pass are still on the books. Of course, Frederica Norman may be an evil, homophobic landlord who deserves to be pranked, but she’s no Jesse Helms.

So Blanca killed two birds with one stone, helping ACT UP get their message out and beating Frederica at her own game, getting the salon back in the process. Frederica even popped by to almost congratulate Blanca for beating her, but she also wanted to let her know how that little stunt completely humiliated her in the eyes of the male real estate moguls in New York. Blanca informed Frederica that it wasn’t a good idea to get on her and Frederica told her the same. Should we fear that something bad is going to happen to Blanca before the end of the season?

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With all that being the bulk of the episode, we got a very little bit of time with Angel and Papi. Angel got booked to be the new Bebe girl and asked Papi to come with her to a party … as her boyfriend! It’s official! But there are pitfalls in the 1990 world of modeling and clubbing, namely drugs. One of Angel’s friends convinced them to do some coke, convincing them it was okay because it was ‘medical grade’. Papi was dead set against it but Angel convinced him it was just like taking medicine. I don’t think it was. The pair ended up back at the House, making love and saying the L-word to each other. In the morning, Damon barged into the room not knowing what was going on and saw the vial. Angel said it was free and she dropped it out of the window, begging Damon not to tell Blanca. But the hard partying made Angel two hours late for her photo shoot and Mrs. Ford was not happy, pulling her aside and giving her a stern warning about falling into this trap and burning out before she gets started. Calling the hair and makeup team to get Angel put together, one more person approached her … the photographer that had previously humiliated her and got the shit kicked out of him. Oh boy, this may be a problem.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, Ricky got a call from the guy he may or may not have slept with on the Al B. Sure tour, the one who essentially broke up him and Damon. Bad news — he’s HIV+. Pray suggested Ricky get tested again and he tried to brush it off saying he only got some oral pleasure from the guy (not in that polite term though). But Pray insisted and accompanied Ricky to the clinic when the test results came back. Ricky is HIV+, sobbing on Pray’s shoulder afraid that he’s going to die.

An almost goofy episode ended on a couple of very heavy notes that may have major implications over the course of the final three episodes of the season.

What did you think of this episode? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.