Among other things, Queer as Folk is revolutionary for its nudity and graphic depiction of same gender sex. Mercifully, the Queer characters are not the sexless wonders depicted on other series featuring gay men. Let’s face it: we’re never going to see frontal nudity or gay sex on Will & Grace. The series is very funny, but it asks us to believe the incredible: a handsome, well-built, youthful attorney (Will Truman) can’t find a suitable boyfriend on the Island Manhattan.

On the other hand, naked, same gender bodies have been slapping together unabashedly, joyfully, since Queer as Folk’s first no-holds-barred episode.

But the series is much more than soft-core fodder for homosexuals and lesbians: over five seasons, Queer as Folk’s bar-hopping, largely carefree boys and girls have grown and developed into men and women of substance, living authentic, full lives. Some of them are partnered; others are parents. Still others nurture skills and talents just hinted at when the series began. That’s as it should be.

Then there’s Brian Kinney (Gale Harold). As Evelyn Waugh puts it in Brideshead Revisited, “Change is the only evidence we have of life.” If that’s true, then QAF kingpin Kinney is stone cold dead. Rather than on Queer as Folk, this guy belongs on Arrested Development. Apparently change is the only four-letter word in Mr. Kinney’s vocabulary.

The character is Queer’s nod to the much-chronicled Peter Pan syndrome in which a man makes a commitment to non-commitment, unaccountability, and emotional detachment. Sufferers of the Peter Pan Syndrome age, they just don’t mature.

In late 2000, when we met him, Brian Kinney was the hottest homo in Pittsburgh, the uncontested King of Babylon, the characters’ gay club of choice. Egomaniacal and self-absorbed, Brian Kinney was a rogue advertising account executive. Physically perfect, he was a dream lover, but a lousy boyfriend. At best, Brian was a difficult friend. At worst, he was impossible. More contemptuous of middle class morality than Eva Peron, he was an estranged son, and a kicking and screaming father to his newborn son.

Flash forward to Season Five. Brian Kinney owns two successful businesses, but he’s now the Avis, or Number 2, hottie in gay Pittsburgh. Pushing 35, he’s still a lousy boyfriend, a dubious friend, a less-than-devoted son and father.

Brian Kinney’s mantra is: “I Won’t Grow Up!” That incantation was endearing in its original context, sung by the prepubescent lost boys in the Broadway musical Peter Pan. When the mantra belongs to an adult pushing middle age, it is sad, tragic. We may not scorn Brian Kinney, but we do pity him. Even in Neverland, you must eventually mature; consciousness must develop and ripen. Its natural impetus is toward growth.

Brian’s Queer Peter Pan Syndrome is even more limiting because it’s coupled with a relentless compulsion to put down the characters who have opted for balanced, full lives. And that’s everyone else on the series.

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