Unprisoned, Season 2: Will Finn finally come out, or stay gay-vague forever? Plus a lot of search engine misdirections

 

Unprisoned, on Hulu, features an elderly man named Edwin, who spends 17 years in prison for cocaine dealing, is released, and has to reconnect with his estranged daughter and 16 year old grandson.  He spends the first season trying to avoid violating the terms of his parole and finding a girlfriend, while the estranged daughter does TED talks about relationships and has relationship problems with her boyfriend. It's heterosexist all the way down, except for the son, Finn, played by Faly Rakotohavana.

Through Season 1, he never expresses any interest in girls, nor do his mom and grandpa ever try to push him into meeting or dating girls.  The lack of expressed heterosexual interest codes him as gay, but it's a very fragile code: showrunners often go through an entire season, or more, with a character that all viewers think is gay, only to give him a girlfriend at the last moment and yell "Fooled you!  Gay people don't exist!" It already happened on Doogie Kamehameha, M.D..  

It could not be more obvious that actor Faly Rakotohavana is gay in real life, but I googled him and "gay" anyway, and got this result:

So the murderous doll has a talk show now? His interviewees are Zackary Arthur and Teo...., not Faly Rakotahavana.

By the way, it looks like he's interview his costars in the Chucky tv series, Zackary Arthur and Teo Briones. 

None of these people is Faly Rakotahavana, either.  The one on the left is Will Smith, and the one on the right, "Uis hth",  would go gay for him. What does that even mean?  Uis is only attracted to women now, but if ___ agrees to date him, he'll change to gay, and only be attracted to men for the rest of his life?

Found him: Louis Smith.  There aren't any shirtless photos of him, except behind paywalls.

Back to Finn: I was fearful of watching Season 2, due to the possibility that they would clobber us with a "Fooled you!" girlfriend.  Especially Episode 2, where "Finn tries to make a friend." 

I clench my teeth and brave through it after the break

The family sees a therapist, played by John Stamos, top photo, and complains that Finn is online all day, never having any face-to-face contact.  Mom explains: "I just want him to go to college, fall in love, get married, and have a nice life."  I don't like her assumption that it is impossible to have a nice life without being married, but it's not necessarily heterosexist.  She doesn't mention "having kids," so she could expect Finn to marry a man.

The therapist gives Finn a homework assignment to invite someone to his house.  So Finn invites Spencer, played by Aidan Merwarth, but ignores him for an online game. They don't even play together!

Aidan sits around, bored, plays with his phone, insults Finn's Lego dinosaur, and leaves. Poor guy thought he was going to get some snogging.

He runs into Finn in another episode, wraps his arm around his shoulders, insults his Lego dinosaur, and rushes off.  I can't tell if he's being mean or trying to flirt.

Gay hint here, but not a very strong one.

Next I went through the entire season, fast-forwarding to Finn's scenes, and found two more gay hints:

1. He's at a college fair with Grandpa Edwin, and decides to check out a college.  Edwin notes that it's a girls' school, but then backtracks: "You go do you...be fluid."  But Finn was embarrassed by his grandfather hanging out with him, and wanted an excuse to run away.  He chose a college at random; no actual indication of his gender identity.

2. Grandpa Edwin talks him into volunteering at a halfway house for ex-cons.  One of the cons is talking about how much he likes women, and Grandpa Edwin asks, "Finn, you ain't never had a girlfriend, right."

 Astonished at this bizarre revelation, an ex-con asks: "You...do like girls, right?"  

Grandpa chastises him with "Fay!"  The subtitles say "Hey!", but I listened four times, that's definitely a "f" sound.  

Fay/Hey backtracks: "Not that I give a shit. Now look, I'm trying to hear about some ass, man."  Finn asks where the bathroom is, and runs away.

Takeaway: Wouldn't Edwin know if Finn never had a girlfriend, and if it is because he's too shy to ask a girl out, or because he doesn't like girls?  

And what does Finn's expression mean?  "I'm straight, but too shy to admit it," or "I'm gay"?

At this point I'm lost, and that's all for the season. 

I'm going to give it a miss. There aren't enough queer codes to guard against the inevitable Season 3: "Finn gets a girlfriend."

I'm going to assume Faly Rakotohavana is straight too, and google about his girlfriend.

Interestingly, what pops up is: "Brandi Glanville talks gay relationship with..."  I assume it's with the person she's licking, who must be a woman. 

Wait, it is a man, #WWHL host Andy Cohen.  So Brandi must be a drag queen.

And a Fox news video: "Man who shot Trump at rally identified. Faly Rakotohavana talks "Unprisoned." Georgia's top fruit celebrates girlfriend video."

I'd like to know how a fruit can have a girlfriend, but it's probably better to let Faly Rakotohavana go altogether, and post another photo of Adrian Merwarth.

And his butt, or somebody's butt.  I've been misled so often in the last two hours that who can tell?

But not the TikTok video that states that he is a girl doing ballet.

See also: Unprisoned, Season 1