Queer Eye has upped the tears.

Early on in its rebooted form, the Netflix series still got a lot of mileage out of cheekily scolding its participants over the external stuff: how to dress, how to take care of your hair and face, how to style your home (or rather, how not to do those things).

This was a hangover from creator David Collins's original iteration, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which broke ground and pulled in high ratings and awards when it aired in the mid-2000s.

Queer Eye still covers the aesthetic stuff. Tan France handles the clothes, Jonathan Van Ness looks after the hair, Bobby Berk is the decor guy, Antoni Porowski gives the tips on cooking and eating well and how to use a lot of avocado in stuff.

Karamo Brown (left) with a hero from season three of the show. ( Netflix )

And the first season did have the occasional hyper-emotional moment, particularly one episode that ended with a young man overcoming his fear of coming out to his mother.

But the entire ethos of the show is now about the internal. It's a meta-makeover that has run in parallel to our culture's, which these days proclaims wellness over material worth, self-improvement and self-empowerment over having nice stuff.

The show's change is not a wholesale one — our humble guest star still gets a heap of enviable new clothes and homewares — but it's notable and becoming more defined as the seasons progress, and seen not just in the participants but the hosts, whose backstories are increasingly making for emotional asides.

The internal is where the show now plants its flag (Twitter search "Queer Eye + crying" for a good time). Queer Eye is what Jonathan might call a teeny-tiny-baby makeover of the soul.

Because of that, the most fabulous member of the Fab Five these days is the one whose role, for a long time, was hardest to define: "culture" expert Karamo Brown.

Leaning into Karamo's power

Fans know the title is a misnomer.

Karamo doesn't take the episode's "hero" to the theatre or a gallery. His background pre-reality TV is not in the arts, the way it was with his counterpart in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Jai Rodriguez, who is a musician and actor.

Karamo spent years as a trained counsellor, including working with LGBTI youth in Los Angeles. The "culture" Karamo is an expert in is the stuff that makes our existence meaningful.

Karamo Brown hugs a hero from season three of Queer Eye. ( Netflix )

"Do you all know what culture is," he asks a bunch of Illinois high school kids in the new season's first episode (one reply — "yeast?" — is not technically wrong, but it does tell you something about the ambiguity of Karamo's role). Karamo goes on to explain.

"Culture is just really about shared attitudes, shared emotions, values that make us who we are," he says.

When he asks about the culture of the school, whose loveable music coordinator is the episode's hero, another student replies:

"I think we like to support each other so we all can do our best."

A fitting answer — almost like it was scripted!

This season, the show is leaning into Karamo's role as the participants' — and by extension, our — emotional support person. This has given us not just a few extra-deep cries but one of the wildest moments in the show's existence.

In episode two, our hero is Wesley Hamilton, a 30-year-old disability activist who became paralysed after being shot in the street when he was 24.

Wesley seems to have a lot of stuff sorted out. He doesn't harbour anger about his situation; he feels he has grown immeasurably from the man he was, a drug dealer who didn't expect to live past 21.

But Karamo spots something. He senses unfinished business. "That night is critical to who you are as a man," he tells Wesley.

Suddenly, the scene is a coffee shop, interior. On the couch is Maurice: the man who shot Wesley.

The conversation is intense. It runs for a minute or two in the episode, but Karamo recently revealed it lasted more than three hours and nearly didn't happen.

"He was extremely uncomfortable," Karamo told Vanity Fair about Wesley. "He asked several times to not go. He was like, 'I can't do it, I can't do it'. And the gentleman who shot him literally was calling my phone and saying, 'I'm not showing up. This is an ambush'."

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It's not lost on the viewer that this meeting has a larger narrative. As a black man in America and a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the scene of deadly school shooting in 2018, Karamo understood the trauma of gun violence. He knew there had to be way to find meaning in that, and it appears he was right.

"And that's what we all look for," he said. "When we get fired from jobs, when we lose a child, when we lose a relationship that we thought was going to last forever — you have to say thank you, and understand what you're supposed to gain from that moment."

Wesley Hamilton became a paraplegic after being shot at 24. ( Netflix )

'Try not to lose it'

Karamo's now more defined role as the show's emotional centre is only making this a stronger and more enjoyable viewing experience.

Name your modern-life anxiety — the insecurity you feel after 10 seconds on social media, your shitty landlord, how hard it is to get adequate childcare — and Queer Eye is a balm.

It is not a show that reflects your world back to you; it is not a dystopian nightmare, or about waring kingdoms or grief or divorce.

It's about the world as you hope, on your best days, it might be. It's a spiritual cleanse, like a sauna but with crying.

"Try not to lose it," the show's Twitter account implores you, but I say ignore that. Go deep. Karamo Brown is the cure for what ails ya'.

Karamo Brown in the first episode of the new season. ( Netflix )

Season four of Queer Eye is now streaming on Netflix.