Oh good
gracious, Kieren and Rick. In the Flesh hooked me by the end of the
pilot, but it owned me by the end of
the first season, and Kieren and Rick were a huge part of that. Looking deeper at this really compelling,
massively complicated relationship (major spoilers for series 1.)
In a way,
as Kieren navigates figuring out himself as a young partially-deceased man in
series 1, he sees two paths laid out for him by fellow PDS folk Amy (embracing
her undeadness) and Rick (going along with his dad’s full-on denial that Rick
is undead.) Kieren himself falls somewhere
in the middle, not sure how to reconcile what’s become of him with how he still
feels. If Amy is encouraging Kieren
toward a new life, Rick is inviting him back into an old one, but it’s a life
where neither of them fit anymore, not like they used to. They’re still themselves, of course, but they
also are people with PDS, and denying
that fact won’t change it.
Strangely
enough, it’s this pull from Rick that really helps Kieren move forward in
coming to terms with his PDS. With Amy,
Kieren tends to dig in his heels and urge caution, warning her not to rock the
boat, but when he sees how Rick acquiesces to his dad’s anti-PDS rhetoric and
violence, it shakes Kieren out of his hesistancy. It makes him stop and go, “Wait – this is
really messed up.” He still cares for
Rick, enormously so, and in his horror at Rick being caught up in something so
conducive to self-loathing, it helps Kieren say, not just “stand up for who you
are,” but “stand up for who we
are.” In trying to save Rick from his
dad’s toxicity, Kieren finds a bit of peace for himself as well.
You get
the sense that this whole thing is a repeat of when they were alive. We don’t have too many details on Kieren and
Rick’s past relationship. We know that
they were close, that Rick’s dad freaked out after Kieren “made [Rick] a mix
CD,” that Rick joined the army essentially to prove he wasn’t a sissy, and that
Rick’s death in Afghanistan sunk Kieren into a depression that ended in his
suicide. We know Kieren blamed himself
for Rick’s death, which further influenced his decision to end his own life
(side note – I likee the conversation between Rick and Kieren about how the
latter died, and how shocked Rick is by it.
How he simply can’t believe that Kieren could have killed himself in his
grief over Rick, how he’d been so sure that Kieren was going to “make it out”
by leaving Roarton for art school, that Kieren would’ve been better off without
him.)
It’s a
similar pattern, with Rick’s desire to placate his dad’s prejudices wreaking
havoc on his personal well-being and Kieren getting caught in the wake of it,
but while Rick is falling into old habits, Kieren sees the writing on the
wall. He doesn’t want to go down that
road again. He’s more assertive, and he
begs Rick to be so too, for his own sake as well as Kieren’s. And though, thanks to Rick’s horrific wreck
of a dad, it still ends in tragedy, both boys are stronger in their own
parts. Under Kieren’s influence, Rick
stops lying about himself, and in the devastating aftermath, with Rick murdered
by his own father and dumped outside Kieren’s house, Kieren is shattered but
keeps on going. He confronts Rick’s dad
and throws the contemptible thing he’s just done back in his face, and even as
his heartbreak overwhelms him, he makes a conscious choice to “stay” this time,
to lean on his family and friends rather than collapse into his depression and
be consumed by it.
such a beautifully done story, it was so subtle but not queer-bait, which is rare, and shows the devastating effects of homophobia. ricks father kills his own son because he believes its a "tell tale sign" (rick admitting he is gay) that he is an "impostor", really emphasizes how sad it all really is.
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