The Fabulous Beekman Boys Is a Bad Combo of Queer Eye and Food Revolution

You've got to love any show about farming that starts with one of the main characters saying, "What I read online when I Googled how to build a pig pen was..." That's exactly how Planet Green's new reality show, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, kicks off. If you can believe it, the show goes mostly downhill from there.

The premise of the show is that a gay, New York City couple, Josh and Brent, buy a weekend place upstate and try to make a go of farm life. Well, sort of.

The catch is that their weekend place is a mansion (named the Beekman Mansion), and their farm is located on a gorgeous 60 acres. In order to hang on to their cushy digs, they start making a line of goat products, mostly soap and milk. The goats, however, seem to belong to the farm's manager, Farmer John, who oddly breaks into tears at the mention of his beloved goats.

In order to finance the operation, Josh, a a New York Times best-selling author and former drag queen named Aqua (renowned for wearing clear, plastic breasts with goldfish swimming around in them), works during the week in New York City at an advertising agency. His partner, Brent, a doctor and former "healthy living VP" for Martha Stewart, stays on the farm all week and, well, it's not exactly clear what he does. He says he's tending the farm, but mostly he appears to be neglecting the garden, having beers with the other gay couple in town, and making lists of things to annoy Farmer John and Josh with.

The first episode provides a few laughs as Brent and Josh look like true city slickers chasing escaped pigs around their property. Brent reveals his uber-queen, type-A personality, insisting that the tractors be parked exactly four feet apart with their shovels raised to the same height. It gets worse in Episode Two, where Brent asks Farmer John to make the barn "not smell so much like a barn" when the couple prepares for a party. Brent even tries to hand-scrub the pigs to make them look more presentable.

Brent is clearly not kidding when he admits that Farmer John "is the only real farmer here." There are one or two light moments, like  when Josh asks "Who says us gays can't raise kids?" as he and Brent are bottle-feeding baby goats. But even that feels staged. The most intriguing character is Polka Spot, a fiery llama who fakes being sick whenever Josh is around.

Brent tries to persuade viewers that their intentions are to show people "how to live a simpler life and what the farm can offer." And Josh adds a few lines about wanting to connect with his food and knowing the importance of where food comes from. But so far, neither one makes me believe a word of what they're saying or that they possess any sustainable foodie intentions whatsoever.

If the show's crux is going to be showing viewers a learning of curve of city to country life, that might be semi-interesting. If it intends to help viewers understand the difficulties of being a profitable small farm, then that will give it some merit. And if it truly succeeds in being a lesson about how to reconnect communities to their food source and transform consumers into farmers, it will be something of a miracle.

Then again, it's a reality TV show. And like most reality shows, it seems to be more focused on the growing tensions between the lead couple. Brent and Josh say that everything they have learned so far has come from Farmer John or searching the Internet. But so far, none of Farmer John's wisdom has been imparted on the audience, and it seems that Brent and Josh might have more success in life if they turned to a relationship counselor instead of a goat farm.

I'm going to hang in there for a few more episodes, though, just to give the lads a fair shake. And also because I've been enjoying the mix of argyle sweaters paired with rubber boots.

Photo credit: John Stammers