‘Queer Eye’ Season 5 Celebrates the Kind Side of Philly

Queer Eye Season 5 made me emotional, and not for the reason you might think. While the Netflix series is known for inducing “all the feels,” Queer Eye Season 5 threw this Philly area native a curve ball by paying tribute to the often unseen kind heart of Philadelphia. It was a profound experience to see the place I grew up treated as a warm, welcoming place full of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people who will show up for you no matter what. Not since Rocky Balboa climbed up those art museum steps in triumph has Philadelphia looked so good onscreen, and we have the Fab Five of Queer Eye to thank for it.

I can still remember the exact moment my older sister explained to me that people “hate” Philadelphia. At the time, our family lived in Wilmington, Delaware — a suburb of the “City of Brotherly Love” — and I was taught to root for the Eagles, Sixers, and Flyers out of principle. However, this all became complicated when my sister shared that people hate Philly sports fans because we’re “bad fans.” “We don’t just throw trash and bottles at the opposite team,” she said, shocking me with just that, “we throw them at our own team when we’re pissed off at them.” Since then, I’ve navigated the world of sports team and city rivalries with an abundance of tact, understanding that Philadelphia has a reputation for not being very nice.

Queer Eye Season 5 turns this preconception on its head. By focusing on Philadelphia, Queer Eye is not only allowed to seamlessly show that the mid-Atlantic is just as good at hospitality as the South and Midwest, but that the Philly area has its own specific brand of open-heartedness. It’s a culture rooted in self-deprecation, sacrifice for loved ones, and sarcasm hiding deep vulnerabilities — but always open doors. Queer Eye Season 5 doesn’t just celebrate Philadelphia, but reveal it as a wellspring of old school working class values.

Queer Eye debuted on Netflix in 2018 as a reboot of Bravo’s landmark makeover series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Like the original, Queer Eye sends a team of five culturally astute queer men to help one person in desperate need of a makeover. However, the updated version shifted the focus to be on their “hero’s” inner self over outer appearance. The new Queer Eye also left the already cosmopolitan landscape of New York City for rural Georgia, and later the greater St. Louis area. In the first few seasons of Queer Eye, the Fab Five not only had to deal with helping boost the self-esteem of their subjects, but occasionally tussled with deep-rooted bigotry. Early seasons have featured Karamo Brown having a heart-to-heart with a Trump supporter, Bobby Berk confronting his own trauma at the hands of the church, and a trans man gaining confidence in his own skin.

Queer Eye Season 5 is different. Sure, the series is a juggernaut hit and therefore the Fab Five’s arrival is met with the thrill of a foreign dignitary. However, from the get-go, we are treated to a different kind of welcome. In Season 5, Episode 1, “Preaching Out Loud,” the Fab Five are asked to help an out gay pastor feel more comfortable in his own skin. The church he preaches at has no qualms about his sexuality; instead what has to be undone are decades of internalized insecurity.

Internalized insecurity seems to be a prevailing theme in the Philadelphia season. Each season of Queer Eye features subjects who have kind hearts but a lack of means or time to take care of themselves. Season 5 almost ups the ante on this, giving us selfless community workers, doting fathers, hard-scrabble immigrant stories, and one sassy mother who has shifted her life to put her daughters and ALS-diagnosed husband first. For me, again, this hit home hard. (For a moment, I even thought the aforementioned mother, Jennifer Sweeney, might have been someone my sisters went to high school with. She seemed that familiar to me!)

All this is to say that Queer Eye Season 5 reminded me of home, and my home isn’t “mean.” My family and the neighbors we grew up around might not sugar-coat things with syrupy sayings, but that doesn’t mean that their isn’t love. The “mean” streak attributed to Philadelphia culture is part hard-earned armor, part protective realism. The truth is the Philly area culture is one of deep sensitivity. If folks seem stand-offish or defensive, it’s because they’re already so vulnerable around the people they love they can’t risk any more hurt. The sarcasm, the hard-line attitude, the chip on the shoulder…it’s all there to protect a sweet, beating, sacrificial heart that doesn’t want to hurt more than it already has to.

While Philly natives revel in self-deprecation over their reputation as a bitter sports town, the truth is much more complicated. Over the course of Queer Eye Season 5, the show manages to pay tribute to a particular kind of Philly hospitality that usually goes unnoticed outside the greater Delaware Valley. It’s not rooted in unconditional love or the pretense of kindness, but it’s a hospitality that rewards loyalty, sacrifice, and hard work. It’s a hospitality that is on full display in the latest season of Queer Eye on Netflix.

(Okay, but we probably shouldn’t throw trash at our own players. I can admit that. But in Philly’s defense, negative reinforcement is a performance strategy! We’re just being honest!)

Watch Queer Eye on Netflix