in light of it being pride month and yesterday’s most recent example of greg being, well, greg, i wanted to highlight something that happened at the s22e2 taping i was at three weeks ago…
and accidentally ended up writing an essay. whoops. sorry. also contains light spoilers for s22 so skip this if you don’t want to see them.
there is an openly gay contestant on s22, well, two, but i’ll be talking about one specifically. he is your sort of… average white middle-aged gay male. the prize task this episode was to bring in something the taskmaster would NOT be jealous of. this man’s time rolls around, what does he bring in?
he brings in a football captain’s armband from some football cup or other, perhaps from team UK, except, it’s a pride edition so the armband is in rainbow colours. i obviously can’t remember what he said verbatim, but his main reasonings as to why the taskmaster wouldn’t be jealous of it were a) it’s football related, which ok, fair point, we know greg hates football but also b) it’s rainbow and therefore gay and god knows the taskmaster wouldn’t want anything gay right? he didn’t say it like that, but the implication was very heavy.
i don’t know if anyone else who’s reading this was also at the same taping, but if you were, feel free to say what you thought of this or how you interpreted this moment. to me, it seemed this prize and its reasoning really wrong-footed greg. you could see the gears in his head turning on how best to respond to this without saying outright just how wrong the contestant is, how bad this bit is, and/or outing himself. greg really is an excellent actor, and played his irritation off fairly well, but i think you could tell he was kind of put out by this implication of, at worst, homophobia, and at best, being straight. it actually reminded me so much of the paul chowdhry “buy a gift…” task moment, which led to the famous “i like women, i like men, it’s all good” statement we all know and love. and greg was similarly consternated this time, but… this time around, the contestant went at it with so much more of a pointed and odd, strangely homophobic undertone (i feel) than paul, that greg was not just mildly irritated and able to make a quip but actually put off. so congratulations to this contestant for drawing greg’s ire!
when greg tried to make a joke of it, tried to gently prod at said contestant and question his reasoning, the contestant was kind of irritated at the fact that this joke did not land the way he thought it would. i don’t know if he thought the taskmaster audience would enjoy the kind of locker room-esque bro-ish homophobia of the joke (which, definitely not) or if he could buddy up to greg à la wink wink nudge nudge you’re not gay and we’re bros right? but rest assured, it did not work in any case.
greg diffused the tension caused by this flop by making some gay kinky sex joke in the vein of wanting to be captain or being called something or other (read: during sex slash in a gay way) and saying something about hating football but loving this. again, i can’t remember what he said verbatim, maybe we’ll see when s22 airs if they haven’t cut most of it. that diffusion mostly worked, and said contestant did then have the social awareness to realise what was going on and stop digging himself a deeper hole.
i came away from this thinking: a) internalised homophobia is one hell of a drug, especially in gay men of said contestant’s generation, still, unfortunately, b) good for greg for shutting the contestant’s nonsense down in the discreet and professional way he did and c) my god, how could someone misjudge a situation and a person and dig themselves a hole that badly? things returned quickly and quietly to a “normal” dynamic after greg asked the next contestant what they brought in and moved everything on, but it still felt so fucking awkward for a while after.
thankfully, unsurprisingly, i can report that said prize ended up scoring fairly low. two points, iirc? the reasoning being, greg ended up saying it like this himself, why wouldn’t he want a rainbow armband that makes him the captain? or something to that extent at least. he definitely subtly signaled to the contestant that he was Not Having It.
what’s the point of this all? i don’t know if there really is one... but in light of greg being ever more quietly open and making little jokes (in a positive way) it felt relevant to share and also made me very happy to see him holding strong against homophobia in this way and these times. even if that homophobia is coming from inside the house.
i knew a surgeon and he once told me “nobodys insides look like how the textbooks say they will. you never know what you’re going to find in there once you open them up” and that was easily the most ominous thing anyone’s ever said to me
when i was taking my first year anatomy lab, we’d occasionally find a cadaver where things would branch off or attach in the wrong order, and when we’d ask our prof about it, he’d just shrug and say “they must not have read the book”
In the past 10 years of teaching in an anatomy lab, I have seen:
- A donor with a scrotum the size of my head. When we opened it up, we discovered it was a MASSIVE inguinal hernia and a good 1.5 ft of intestine were trapped down there.
- A donor with situs inversus totalis, whose organs were a mirror image of what we normally see (ie their heart pointed right and their liver was on the left, just for starters)
- A donor whose right common carotid artery branched off the aorta waaay over on the left hand side of the body and crossed alllll the way back across the thorax to get where it needed to be.
- A donor with 4 lobes for their right lung (should only be 3). We named the 4th lobe the Lisa Loeb, but all of the students were too young to appreciate our sparkling wit.
- A shocking variety of penile and breast implants. Y'all would not believe the number of different ways science has come up to counteract gravity.
- A couple of cases of ectopic kidneys, where a kidney didn't rise to its typical position just deep to the lowest ribs and instead stayed in the pelvis.
There is probably some other stuff that I am forgetting. Take home point is: the human body is weird and wonderful and you should learn more about yours!
Yeah, I don't discover the anatomical weirdness but I've had clients come in with extra ribs, missing ribs, extra vertebra, accessory muscles (that's when you have duplicates - sometimes fine, sometimes not), bones connected where they shouldn't be (spoiler: if your lumbar spine is connected to your hip, it Causes Problems), all sorts of stuff. Bodies are weird!
This made me remember that I had a friend in high school who had one thumb that was like half an inch shorter than the other. Not sure how that happened.
Still thinking about Greg and Alex playing We're Not Really Strangers
- Greg paying a compliment to Alex and not letting him get away with deflecting it. Alex's quiet "Thanks, Greg."
- when thinking about tattooing someone's name on him, the first name that pops up in Greg's head is Alex
- Greg not needing Alex to finish his sentences – Alex: "Is it a..." Greg: "It sort of is, yeah." Alex: "Are you one of the people that..." Greg: "No."
- them playing rock-paper-scissors and Alex laughing at Greg's "weak psychological game"
- Alex worried about whether Greg gets lonely when he's by himself and not surrounded by family/friends (because Alex himself is "not very good" at being alone). And Greg wanting to gift Alex a space of his own where he can do his creative things without interruptions (because having his own space, somewhere that's just his, is very important for Greg – he's said it in several interviews before – so he wants Alex to have that as well)
- Greg's continued obsession with Alex's relationship with his parents and his mum in particular (he's brought it up in other interviews too)
- Greg's delight at learning one of the naughty things Alex did in his childhood (the setting fire to a tennis ball game)
- "Gentle kisses" and Alex's comment about Greg being more vulnerable than people think (Alex saying something real and sincere about Greg!)
Early Taskmaster is so good but it is a bit fucking unheimlich every time Alex looks at Greg and you can see in his fuzzy little face that he doesn’t love him yet
i would love to know everyone’s take on When It Happens
Alex’s got the “must impress the Bigger Boy” energy from the beginning, but it’s all stars and no hearts in his eyes
and i think Greg loves Alex by the end of the series 4 record
i see “no stars for naughty boys” as a turning point because it’s the first time Alex offers Greg a banter bit that he knows what to do with; prior to that there was no clear way to ‘yes, and’ Alex’s banter, because it was just Alex being obsequious and servile and Greg’s role required him to smack that down. but the stars on the name tag gave Greg a path to stay in character while heightening the bit instead of just ending it! you can tell they’re both so pleased with it! in the next episode Greg jokes about Alex being required to move around like a snake at home, which i’m fairly certain is the first time Greg initiated an unscripted joke instantiating Lore. obviously there is plenty of later banter that Greg has no time for, but he is comfortable with just shutting Alex down or turning it into Gay Chicken, whereas in earlier series he gets all stiff and agitated.
also i think Greg wants to be in love with everyone he spends any significant time with, he was probably trying to love Alex from series 1 but Alex is so weird and deliberately off-putting and cagey and offensively polite, and Greg is too shy to force his way past all that, he needs a clear on-ramp
the video from the Sarah O’Connell show where Greg is super besotted with Alex and giving him little kisses is from the promo period for series 5, so definitely by the end of series 5 records
right now i put Alex’s turning point somewhere in the pandemic, but my rewatch is just starting series 7 so i’ll see if i change my mind about that. he told Greg he loved him in the banter section pretty early on (series 5 maybe?), but he started telling interviewers he loved him around promo for series 12, which is also the series where he declared his love in the banter section a second, much more excruciating time. i’ve come to believe Alex’s weirdly public processing of his awareness of his love for Greg in 2021 was genuine on some level, but I bet it’s visible in his big sparkly eyes well before that.
i think Alex started trying to properly be real friends with Greg after series 7, but i think it took a while, because Greg and Alex do “being friends” very differently and it was probably pretty awkward. like I think Greg’s little snit about Alex not knowing anything about him was real and Greg just thought it would also be funny, and I think Alex ‘yes, and’ed it by pretending not to know how many siblings Greg has, but also Greg was broadly correct because Alex doesn’t really seem to think “knowing details about your life” is an essential part of friendship. friends to him are the people you have the most fun playing with! and he and Greg have fun, so they’re friends! and the out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing is real, but Greg refuses to be out of sight, he WILL videocall without warning.
i want to congratulate alex horne on living the best life, not just subjectively, but by most of society's standards as well. he's killing it. good for him.
he's a smarty (but he's not arrogant about it at all)
he had an excellent education, going to a prestigious school
where he met the woman who became his wife, one of his soulmates; they clearly adore each other. it's super cute
he also met one of his other soulmates, his best friend with whom he has run multiple projects, and who inspired him to what eventually became the biggest financial success of his career
he has managed to turn his passion into a successful career
and! it is clearly still fun for him. he's having a great time every time (when does he sleep? we do not know)
his big financial success is basically running a short-duration comedian enrichment camp where everyone has a good time doing silly tasks for silly points for low stakes
he met a THIRD soulmate, his comedy partner, with whom he runs an incredibly successful TV show and has convinced to have some kind of BDSM relationship with him (is it platonic? is it sexual? idk but i'm happy for them both)
to public knowledge, he doesn't even have depression or anxiety or any other mental health issues. to be clear, i don't wish them on him. i am 1) noting these are fairly common among comedians and 2) noting my own envy (he didn't even get nerfed like the rest of us!)
he uses his financial success and fame to give back to charity and society
anyway im so happy for him. he's living the life. you go alex horne
one thing I will say about the yaoi in taskmaster is that it's crazy how there's a profound height and age gap but the shorter, younger one is both 6'2 and 47 years old. that's fantastic. taking notes
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