Aahana Swrup
‘Tip Toe’ is a dark comedy series that centers around Leo Struthers, the owner of a bar on Canal Street and a pillar of the local queer community. One morning, when the protagonist accidentally locks himself out of his house, he has no choice but to knock on his next-door neighbor’s front door. Clive Gloss, a handyman and a father of two boys, is hardly in the same social orbit as the magnetic bar owner. Therefore, the potential of a friendship between these two neighbors remains tentative to say the least. Even so, Leo finds himself sharing a spare key to his house with the man, hoping the decision won’t have negative consequences. Meanwhile, things grow tense for Zee, one of his employees at the bar, when the young woman finds herself sharing a house with a group of incredibly transphobic men. SPOILERS AHEAD.
A Hookup Gone Awry Leads to an Awkward Morning After
The episode opens with an ominous tone as a neighborhood is drowned out in the horrific shrieks of a woman. In front of her house, her husband stands frozen in front of a street light from which the next-door neighbor has hung himself. However, the story begins ten days before this chilling incident. Leo runs out of his house in his undergarments, chasing after a man who easily evades him. When he returns to his townhouse, he comes to the unfortunate realization that he has locked himself out. As such, he finds himself knocking on the front door of his neighbors, the Glosses. When Clive, the family’s patriarch, answers the door, Leo makes up a lie about taking out the garbage, unwilling to admit that his one-night stand had run off with his laptop first thing in the morning.
Leo then asks to use his neighbor’s phone to call his friend, who has a spare key. However, he naturally doesn’t remember his friend’s number and is hoping Clive’s wife, Marie, can help out with that. This means that he has to be let into the other’s house to save him the indignation of waiting outside in his underwear. Reaching out to his wife makes the handyman privy to the neighborhood gossip, wherein the story of Leo chasing after a young man has already spread like wildfire, much to Leo’s chagrin. Eventually, he manages to reach out to his friend, Steph, who agrees to help him out of the bind. Yet the commute means the bar owner has to wait 30 minutes. Clive maintains that he can’t wait inside the house since he has to be at work, and he’s unwilling to leave his neighbor alone with his teenage son. Although his behavior could be protective, it is likely just homophobic.
The Spit and Polish Posse Take Their Stand Against a Group of Transphobes
After Steph comes to Leo’s rescue, the latter is able to get on with his day and go to work at his bar on Canal Street. He shares an abridged and dramatized version of the morning tale with his staff, who all seem to love to hear their boss’ exploits. Afterward, he has to take an interview with a young aspiring bartender, who really only wanted to cheat the system to feign injury and bank on a day’s worth of wages. Another complication arises when Judy, the head of security, alerts the owner that Zee, one of the employees, has been squatting at the establishment. Concerned for his employee, Leo talks to the bartender about it and learns about her unsafe living situation.
Zee lives in a house-share with a Polish man. Although things were alright at first, eventually more of his friends moved in and discovered that their housemate was a trans woman. After that, they started consistently threatening her with murder and rape, threatening her life in her own home. Off-the-bat, Leo makes arrangements for his employee to move in with one of her co-workers, who has the room to spare. Moreover, when she expresses concern over her belongings, still sitting in a house-share, the owner, along with other employees, decides to accompany her in a quest to get them back. Yet, they’ve barely made it out of the house when the Polish guy and his friends wake up and threaten to gang up on Leo and the others. Nonetheless, Zee, brandishing a baseball bat, stands her ground. Better yet, soon Judy joins her with a licensed hunting gun. In the end, the group is able to flee from the scene, leaving the transphobic roommates in the dust without any outright violence breaking out.
Melba’s Birthday Celebration
At night, when Leo returns home, Clive rings his doorbell and asks for his spare key in the event that the morning’s events recur. Nonetheless, he doesn’t extend the same courtesy to his neighbor. The next day, Leo finds Melba, an old friend and a devout patron of the establishment, sitting at the bar from the very start of the day. At the end of his long shift, the owner finally shifts his attention to his friend and goes out on the town to celebrate the latter’s birthday. After drinking and clubbing, the two find themselves at a comedy drag show. Unfortunately, Melba ends up picking a fight with the performer, accusing her of being a Tory, benefiting from the plights of the underprivileged people while ironically enjoying liberal freedoms. This gets both of them kicked out of the club.
Thus, Melba and Leo end the night outside of Spit and Polish, sharing drinks and conversations. Things inevitably take a heavier turn when they talk about the tense political climate. The bar owner is hopeful that public favor will swing in leftist favor again despite the current overwhelming hate. Furthermore, he seems to believe he isn’t particularly involved in politics despite running a business that is a haven for young queer, and especially trans folk. Melba thinks that, considering all the hatred and accusations of pedophilia Leo receives from bigoted people online, he is all but on the frontlines of the culture war. He also emphasizes how, despite the existence of a home turf, queer people have now become even more vulnerable than ever due to their high visibility. In the end, we learn that Melba has been in love with Leo for years and continues to hold out a candle for his friend despite the other’s lack of reciprocity.
Leo Discovers George Gloss’ Well-Kept Secret
Back at home, Leo discovers a box of a combination key safe sitting on his dining table, suggesting someone had entered his house while he was gone. The next morning, Clive enters his house with his tool, overextending the liberties of his spare key. When the bar owner expresses his discontent, the neighbor insists he’s just trying to help. He’s here to install the combination key safe, which he delivered to his house the prior night, so that Leo won’t have to deal with getting locked out again. Afterward, he also makes him pay for the materials, including the safe and the additional key Clive got made. This creates an opportunity for the two to converse, and the latter tries to diminish Leo’s career.
The bar owner refuses to let himself be bulldozed over. Therefore, when Clive attempts to go on another rant bordering on transphobia, Leo lays into him about how the cisgender heterosexual crowd has been the one obsessed with gender identity since the beginning. The tense conversation creates an awkward environment between the two, one that the protagonist feels the responsibility to soften. As such, he ends up taking the handyman up on his offer to contract some work around the bar. Later that night, Leo stumbles upon something concerning while scrolling through a hookup app. As it turns out, George, the neighbor’s teenage son, has a profile lying about his age that he presumably uses to hook up with men. Although he doesn’t know it yet, Clive’s other son, Saul, also has an illicit secret: a job as an online content creator specializing in explicit sex work.
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