I watched Love. Victor season 2 for the fourth time last night. The first few times I watch a show or movie, I tend to notice details or think of things that I hadn’t thought of before. For example, the first time watching the season, I missed that it was Felix who shouted “Yaass queen!” at the beginning of the third episode (the one right after Victor comes out in the hallway). The second time I watched, I thought it might be Felix, so I paid attention on the third time, and sure enough it was him. I have to say that that line never made much sense to me. While Felix says some odd things, that one doesn’t strike me as a very Felixlike thing to say. And that makes me wonder if it was supposed to be someone else and ended up being Felix for some reason or if Anthony decided to just shout it and the producers loved it so much that they kept it in.
Anyhow, when I watched the show for the third time, I was trying to figure out what happened to Benji and Victor. While most of the fault undoubtedly lies with Isabel and some with Victor (see my initial reaction for a lot more about this), it occurred to me that a good amount of the fault lies with Benji and I’m not talking about the AA below-the-belt shit he said. It started before that. At the end of season 1 and the beginning of season 2, Benji assured Victor that he knew what he was getting into with Victor being so new and all. And for most of the season, Benji seemed to get that Victor needed time to talk and process. However, during the AA fight, it became obvious that Benji was never as really cool with everything as he pretended to be. Victor’s need to talk things out, his need to keep up a relationship with Isabel, and everything else really got on Benji’s nerves. But Benji never let Victor know. On the one hand, I get it. You don’t want to shut your boyfriend down. On the other hand, Benji was always pushing Victor to be honest and wasn’t being honest himself. This was obvious from the first watch. What occurred to me later is the probable reason why Benji was being like this.
I think Benji was feeling tremendous pressure to be the perfectly knowledgable boyfriend/guru, which is not a good combination. He seemed to feel that he couldn’t share his feelings with Victor because he didn’t want Victor to shut down, but he needed to find a way to share them. When he didn’t, he exploded at Victor and one thing led to another and they took a break. Benji seemed to think that he couldn’t be vulnerable or needy or anything other than the strong flying buttress of support. And no one can be that. Now, I will say that it is possible that he talked with his sponsor or someone else, but absent any proof in the story (either verbal or visual), we have to assume he didn’t. And that is something the two of them really need to sort out if they want to have a chance together. Now that Isabel is out of the way, that should ease a lot of the pressure, but they still need to both communicate with each other better than they have been.
At some point, I’ll write a post about what I want to happen in season 3 now that the show is officially coming back. Until then, bye y’all!
