The “Queer Eye” Reboot Has A New Fab Five

Back when I was closeted baby gay, there was nothing better/more terrifying creeping downstairs to the basement to secretly watch Queer Eye For The Straight Guy while my parents dreamt of their presumed heteronormative family. But it eventually went off the air, and baby gays have had no guidance of how to convert the Red State masses! Luckily, the show (like everything else) is coming back, and the new Fab Five has been revealed.

Carson Kressley and the other four won’t be back to transform a plumber from Biloxi into a gleaming metrosexual swan, but Entertainment Weekly says the Netflix reboot will feature Bobby Berk (design), Karamo Brown (culture), Antoni Porowski (food and wine), Jonathan Van Ness (grooming) and Tan France (fashion).

I remember when Karamo was on Real World: Philadelphia, where he kind of was struggling to come to terms with being gay, so three snaps in a Zorro formation for Karamo for blossoming into a Grade-A gay peacock!

While the original show was a bit of a gay blitzkrieg and quickly let the five do their work and bolt, the Netflix show has the guys spend several days with their “hero” (because straight dudes need more of an ego boost. Cough.), and executive producer Rob Eric says this lets the guys truly bond and make a difference (aka change Red State America’s ideas about gays):

“In order to make the emotions bigger, you actually had to see how [the Fab 5] were reacting to being with a cop from the South who was a Trump supporter, [or] ‘hillbilly Tom,’ who refers to himself by saying ‘you can’t fix ugly,’… These guys walked away truly loving every single hero that they made over and talked about them for weeks afterward. It affected them just as much as they affected our hero.”

I can’t think of a better way to change minds than breaking bread at an Applebee’s (that’s what I tell myself when I go for the fifth time in a week), so kudos to these kweens! Let’s just hope Kim Davis is the next “hillbilly Tom” they spruce up in season 2!

Pics: Bravo, Netflix