There are too many series out there depicting the lives of 2SLGBTQIA+ people for me to keep track. On the one hand, many of these series aren’t good so it may not feel like a duty to keep track of them. On the other hand, I, like most queer people, are masochists who will watch queer series even if they’re bad. I’ll wait to deliberate on whether or not OutTV’s Sugar Highs is worth watching even though I feel like there’s a tone I’m emitting in this paragraph.

To keep the suspense longer, I’ll give as quick of a synopsis as possible of Thom Fitzgerald’s Sugar Highs, depicting three San Francisco based you cis gay men. Being young means life is volatile, and these men decide to make it more volatile by downloading those sugar daddy apps. Things look great for app developer Mickey (Samuel Davidson) but that won’t last. His roomie, Tad (Joey Beni), performs self-sabotage by dumping his current sugar daddy.

Mickey is bi and Tad is straight, and the third baby/roomie is Bud (Adam Fox). Not looking like a Bud in the slightest, he is the least active of the babies. Sugar Highs has him pursuing men of colour, which on the one hand, I like some diversity. On the other hand, why do queer shows relegate men of colour like me as romantic interests. An alternative would be a man of colour as one of the babies, but they suck in more ways than one.

I’m not going to waste my time watching the first season. Let’s be real, it’s easy to deduce what takes place during that season anyway. I did read some plebeian critiques of last season criticising Bud as way too unlikeable. And that’s still a problem this season. The series’ other sore point is Tad, and elements here make him seem himbo and more vacuous. By elements I mean that the show styles and writes him incorrectly, and Beni also doesn’t pull off himbo well.

One of the things I have to explain here is Bud’s lack of activity on the baby side. He did, after all, dump one of his daddies (Scott Thompson – I’m happy he has paycheque but still). Because of this, has to resort to pimping out his roommates. One of the hot daddies Tab gets in Sugar Highs is someone with a terminal disease. I get it, this is a ‘comedy,’ but it bears repeating that this show deserves better writing. For instance, it shouldn’t do things like reducing that dying daddy as a walking poop joke.

Watch Sugar Highs on OutTV.