The Queer Eye For The Straight Guy reboot has been a surprisingly good and emotionally impactful hit for Netflix since its premiere on the streaming service in February, but it could have been a very different show. What if Netflix replaced the Fab Five with five opossums fighting over ownership of your trash? (I think about this a lot.) People on Twitter have also been thinking about alternate versions of the show, making jokes with the format “Queer Eye, but it’s…” or “Queer Eye, except it’s…” followed by a pitch Netflix should totally get up on.
One of the earliest examples (and one of the most retweeted among the jokes) came from “Tally Hopeless,” who might have heard about Bodega, a start-up company that seemed to think they disrupted vending machines.
Queer eye except it's five representatives of the humanities telling Silicon Valley tech giants about how society works, and which of their ideas have already been invented.
— 🦇New Year, Who Dis?🦇 (@nataliereed84) August 2, 2018
Other people on Twitter made pitches that were sort of familiar, but who knows? These might just work:
Queer Eye but it's five teens who can morph into animals to fight parasitic aliens
— i bless the rains down in castamere (@Chinchillazllla) August 7, 2018
Queer Eye except, Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet.
She sends five magic rings to five special young people.— Patrick Lenton (@PatrickLenton) August 8, 2018
Queer Eye except it’s four ghosts who visit you on Christmas Eve to show you how greed and bitterness have turned you into a lonely old man
— Sister (@bizzy_likes) August 7, 2018
Queer Eye, but it’s five sisters trying to win the hand of a single man in possession of a good fortune who is in want of a wife.
— Boze Herrington, library goblin (@BozeReads) August 7, 2018
Some people wanted to keep their version of the show local:
queer eye but it's 5 opossums battling each other over your trash
— asia murphy (look! colonialism!) (@am_anatiala) August 6, 2018
Queer Eye except the guys come to Milwaukee and finish all the construction
— Michael Nicholas (@MikeNick_) July 18, 2018
Queer Eye, except it's just me with a cordless trimmer cutting off all the goatees in this Kroger
— clucky (@SoChickalicious) March 8, 2018
Other people sought to address cultural wrongs:
Like Queer Eye, but its 5 Mexican grandmas that hang out with white supremacists making them tamales, teaching them how to talk to girls, and throwing chanclas at them whenever they say something racist
— Richard Hale (@rhalewrites) July 28, 2018
Queer Eye but it’s five Native elders trying to convince a New Age hippie spiritualist that their practice is entirely fake
— low arctic (@LowArctic) August 3, 2018
While a few just wanted sweet revenge:
Queer eye but its 5 lesbians with swords killing your abuser
— muir (@leispiachh) August 5, 2018
Music served as inspiration for a few suggested shows, and — no lie — these all sound good.
queer eye except it’s a five-person amalgamation of warring couples and love triangles that do a bunch of cocaine and also make soft rock and are fleetwood mac
— austin brown (@blahstin) August 7, 2018
queer eye except it's 4 Swedes who follow you around and they sing ABBA songs and.. are ABBA
— Sean Bernard (@seanbgoneill) August 10, 2018
Queer Eye except it's actually the Spice Girls and they are going on tour
— Adam Kanzen (@adamkanzen) August 6, 2018
Queer Eye but instead of gay men it’s just Janelle Monae
— doer of things that are going on❤️ (@anhannani) July 21, 2018
The pitches continued:
Queer Eye, but it’s just five drunk women in a nightclub bathroom telling you that you’re AMAZING sweetie while Dancing On My Own by Robyn plays.
— Katherine Allan (10 minute version) (@kathrillhouse) August 10, 2018
Queer Eye but it's five guys who are a ska band
— Empath Seinfeld (@bombsfall) August 6, 2018
Queer Eye except it's the current lineup plus Heath Ledger's Joker
— House of 1000 Fionas (@cogentanalysis) August 6, 2018
Queer eye, but with 5 disabled people telling someone recently disabled that they haven’t fundamentally changed, but how to navigate the environment and people around them.
— Imani Barbarin, MAGC | Crutches&Spice ♿️ (@Imani_Barbarin) August 4, 2018
And some of the pitches just went super dark.
Queer Eye but it’s four horsemen and they’re bringing about the Apocalypse
— Tom Overton (@tw_overton) August 5, 2018
queer eye but it's five ancient women in horse skull masks pounding human femurs on the ground and chanting to call the rain down
— Goth Ms. Frizzle (@spookperson) August 6, 2018
Queer Eye except it's the void, and the emptiness of space lies before us, and the old ones are returning, they're coming to claim all of time and existence. They will feed. But one of them has a french tuck.
— Boudicca Press (@boudiccapress) August 9, 2018