Having just sat through all six episodes of Jack Tracy’s new webseries History I’m not sure that I’d like to have been his ex-boyfriend. It’s not that the 30-plus-year-old NY actor is not handsome, or cannot turn on the charm, it’s just that he has obviously mined his own dating past in such minute detail to come up with this intriguing show of his. It is very much his very own work as he created, wrote, directed, edited and starred in it too. Plus in his spare time he wrote and recorded the theme song.
The result is a very compelling story about Jaimie (Tracy) a 31 year old lawyer going through a nasty break-up from Jared (Andrew Lipton) his partner of 5 years and he struggles to come to terms to deal with the baggage of his past as he sets about building a brand new future. Having to let go of his apartment and being discarded by most of the friends he shared with Jared is tough, and trying to grasp new realities like the fact that he doesn’t have to sleep with men to become friends with them, makes this an interesting new learning curve for a man used to getting his own way.
Tracy’s tale so succinctly captures the contemporary lifestyle of young gay man in NY dealing with such issues as forming bonding friendships, rejection, online hookups, hangups with sexual role-playing and perceived masculinity in a culture that has moved on from being dominated by the AIDS crisis.
It is refreshingly warm, witty, extremely funny, with more than its share of sadness too, and as the tale goes back and forth with flashbacks to the past, it has patches of bitterness and resentment too. The joy though is seeing Jaime and his new friends (and some of his hot dates too) who help him evolve into the man he never knew at the beginning that he even wanted too be. He is not the only one who he is happy that he does.
Our hats are off to Tracy, and his entire cast and crew, for this beautifully produced series that was such a sheer joy to watch, and we hope they will be back with Series 2 very soon.
