Three of our favorite (and scariest) holidays are over: Halloween, Dia de los Muertos and Election Day. And now, apparently, it's Christmas. Even though there's still leftover Halloween candy on the living room table.
On Halloween night, ABC Nightly News reported how stores all over America are "jump-starting" the holiday shopping season. The reporter stood in front of over-decorated Christmas trees in a New York department store while kids were just getting ready for trick-or-treating. Halloween night, we saw ads from four major chain stores replete with snow and Christmas shopping. Snow. While it was still Halloween. Uh, Christmas is almost two months away.
We hate this. We don't want to be hearing Christmas carols in October. Or even November. We don't want to hear them before Thanksgiving, which is not, contrary to some retailers' perception, all about shopping. We get that we live in a consumer culture. But maybe we need to scale it back. Because it's, you know, awful .
Plus, this rushing of the seasons also means we have to hear the Right whine delusionally about the "war on Christmas" for much longer. How can there be a war on Christmas when the holiday is ubiquitous for nearly two full months? That's our TV rant for today, folks. Prep for "Jingle Bells," Burl Ives and George Michaels before he was a registered sex offender for the next seven weeks. Oy.
Why can't Christmas be more like Halloween? Halloween on the tube never overstays its welcome. We get about two weeks of it on scripted TV. There's Martha Stewart and the Martha Stewart wannabes showing you how real Halloween decor is done, my dear. There are all the shows doing prep for makeup and costuming. Then, finally, we get the morning shows and talk shows dressing up their anchors and hosts on Halloween only, not for days in advance. Today won Halloween this year with its SNL Today show. Now if SNL could just win SNL, it would all be good. More on SNL later.
Halloween doesn't drag on and on. It knows when to finish.
We were forced to stay in this Halloween, kept company by the tube while our beloved dealt with trick-or-treaters. We really enjoyed seeing so many people of color doing Halloween, like on Black-ish and Cristella. Gosh, it almost looked like real America. That only took how many decades? We decided to watch the lesbian episodes of Lifetime's (don't judge us) Witches of East End. Because Julia Ormond's Joanna Beauchamp is just breathtaking, and we were in the mood for lesbian witches on Halloween.
It must always be Halloween or Dia de los Muertos at Ryan Murphy's house, because this season of American Horror Story is the most creepy and complex yet. Freak Show even bests Asylum, not for terror, but for under-your-skin-ness. AHS is fabulous TV. Gay showrunner Ryan Murphy has pretty much invented the whole "limited series" concept that is fast becoming a new standard on TV. Murphy also wrote and directed the premiere episodes this season. Tidbit: Murphy and his husband David Miller just had their second son via surrogate last week.
This season of AHS, even more than previous seasons, there is a real subtlety in the Monsters Among Us concept that resonates beyond the theme of the Freak Show. The subtextual elements of this show are so parallel to LGBT lives then and even now (Freak Show is set in 1952). Sex plays an important role: both the sex people have, and the sex they don't have. The miasma of that slightly paranoiac 1950s Us vs. Them social construct envelops everyone, and while the period is deftly portrayed here, we also see the clear parallel to our own time.
On Oct. 29 it was announced that TV's gay It Boy, Neil Patrick Harris, would join the cast of AHS for the final few episodes, as will Harris' husband, actor David Burtka. Harris is in the midst of his book tour and fresh from his Tony Award win for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He's also just been announced as the host for the 2015 Oscars, and is currently co-starring in the hit film Gone Girl. On Oct. 27, NBC announced Harris would be hosting a variety show for the network next season. The show will be based on the U.K.'s Saturday Night Takeaway, but the NBC version will neither use the original title nor air on Saturdays. But it will be an hour long and most likely will be based in New York. Harris is as ubiquitous as Christmas before December.
One of the creepiest characters we ever saw Harris play was a sociopathic killer on Law & Order: Criminal Intent a decade ago. We can only imagine what he will do with Freak Show. Murphy told reporters that Harris had some specific ideas he wanted to explore and that the two were collaborating on what Harris' FS character will be like. We can't help liking Harris, and look forward to him on AHS. We appreciate how Harris spreads his gayness everywhere, touching every aspect of popular culture and forcing America to accept that the gay won't go away.
Almost as ubiquitous as Harris, with her millions of Twitter followers and her vivid digital footprint, Ellen DeGeneres, the lesbian everybody loves, just launched a new YouTube channel in collaboration with Warner Bros. Ellentube is so user-friendly, it may be the real homosexual agenda everybody is always alluding to. Millions are already signing up to watch.
Speaking of Ellen, her wife, Portia de Rossi, is chewing the scenery on ABC's Scandal this season as Elizabeth North, head of the RNC (Cyrus calls her Lizzie Bear). We think there would be real problems for 2016 if Lizzie existed in real life, since she's ruthless. Meanwhile, the rumors keep swirling that Portia and Ellen are having marital difficulties. On Halloween, RadarOnline reported that the couple had a public fight about Portia's Scandal role, which apparently Ellen insists Portia never would have without Ellen pulling strings with Shonda Rhimes. We hate hearing such rumors about America's lesbian sweetheart. But our memo to Miz de Rossi is: Even if your wife got the role for you, you still have to play it. And you are fantastic. It's not just the slicked-back hair, pencil skirts and machinations with the gay escort to undercut Cyrus' power, it's you.
Grimm tales
We were prepped to hate NBC's Constantine because of the hype that the show, based on the comic series Hellblazer, had edited out the protagonist's bisexuality. It debuted Oct. 24, and it is really good. NBC has paired it with Grimm, which has a strong queer presence. Last season Grimm added the character of Trubel, an androgynous 20something whom Nick and Juliet take in to keep her out of trouble. Young lesbians all over America (and some not-so-young) are tuning in just to watch her. Actress Jacqueline Toboni was still at the U. of Michigan when she was cast in the role. According to EW, the 22-year-old Toboni had studied drama at the Young Conservatory at ACT in SF, but had no professional experience. But she read for exec producer Jim Kouf, and her reading blew him away. We love stories like this. We also love Toboni. Trubel (short for Theresa Rubel) wears a lot of leather, jack boots, sports a very short haircut, rides a bike everywhere and eats like a machine. She's a real grrl, and she's added another dimension to an already stellar cast.
Grimm is the lead-in for Constantine, which is certainly violent. The debut episode began with Constantine (played with a blend of ennui and elan by Welsh actor Matt Ryan) screaming through some electroshock therapy. But we are seeing a possibility for some homoeroticism in Constantine 's future. Constantine hangs out with men a lot, and while he is seriously sexy, he's not pursuing anyone, although women pursue him.
The whole comics-to-TV thing is very hot this year. One of the best new shows is Fox's Gotham, and the CW's new drama The Flash was the most-watched telecast in the history of the network.
Gay showrunner Greg Berlanti has two new shows this season: The Flash, which he developed, and NBC's The Mysteries of Laura, which he exec produces, and which was just picked up for a full season. We find MOL very enjoyable and a perfect vehicle for Debra Messing's comedic talents. The show also has a gay character in Max.
The Flash works in tandem with last season's CW hit, Arrow. Like Gotham and Arrow, The Flash stars a tragic figure. Barry Allen, the Flash, witnessed his mother's murder. Obsession with finding her killer drives him to discover what caused the strange circumstances of her death, for which his father was wrongly accused. Allen is played by Grant Gustin, who debuted the role on Arrow and co-starred on the CW's updated 90210. Gustin also co-starred on Glee as Sebastian Smythe, the guy who kept trying to get between Blaine and Kurt. Berlanti was definitive prior to the debut of The Flash that there would be gay characters on the show. So no editing of the characters' sexuality, like on Constantine.
Berlanti has several other projects in play. Next season he's doing Supergirl for CBS, and he just sold Riverdale, based on the Archie comics, to Fox. That series will include Archie comics' first gay character, and will be written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who has worked on both Glee and Looking. So the comic thing will continue, and Berlanti is apparently now the king of it. The gay king of it. Which is just fine, as long as he makes Supergirl a lesbian who looks just like Grimm's Trubel. Or like Arrow 's Bex Taylor-Klaus.
Speaking of trouble, we are pretty disappointed with ABC's Grey's Anatomy for breaking up Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) last episode. These two have been the longest-running lesbian couple on prime time, and we love them. But then the Seattle Grace duo ended up in couple's counseling, which most of us know is the death knell for a relationship.
They also had the worst therapist ever. At the end of a 30-day no-sex, no-speaking-to-each-other "break," Arizona, who we thought was going to leave Callie, told her she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her. But Callie, who had feared Arizona would leave her, decided she didn't want to stay married. As one lesbian we know said, "I felt like I had to have a strong drink after this happened."
We understand the whole concept of keeping characters fresh on long-running shows, and GA is in its 11th season. But viewers love Callie and Arizona precisely because they've been through so much and stuck it out. And there are almost no lesbians in prime time because the lesbians keep going off with men or just going off. And that's what Callie is doing. She's headed back to her bisexual roots. Because women with men is so original. We expect more of a Shonda Rhimes show. These are the shows that have brought everything to the table, including a gay White House Chief of Staff and a white president with a black mistress. So why couldn't there be an actual lesbian couple who stayed together?
We also hate the new CBS comedy The McCarthys, which debuted on Mischief Night, sans mischief. This is another show with a good idea gone horribly (or predictably) wrong. It's got a great cast, which includes Laurie Metcalf and Tyler Ritter, but it's one more back-to-the-future gay sitcom. We know a lot of millennials stay at home with their parents till they're 30. We know that some gay men are overly fond of their mothers. But we also know that in 2014, when there are so few gay characters on TV, putting a 20something who lives in Boston at the center of a sitcom where his being gay is the main trope, we need a little more. Actually, we need a lot more.
That's not the case for Ronny McCarthy (Tyler Ritter). He likes to hang out with Mom and watch TV, like an episode of Leave It to Beaver when the Beav is home sick from school. He lives in Boston, but doesn't know the Celtics are the basketball team. We don't even understand this show. Who are these people and why, in a city like Boston, are they attached at the hip? Doesn't Ronny know any gay people? So why doesn't Ronny (who is, after all, played by the 29-year-old and pretty adorable Ritter) want to go be gay with someone instead of watching Lifetime with Mom? The neutered gay man is still a very popular meme on the tube. Which is why we love How to Get Away with Murder and its just-short-of-porn gay sex every week. Finally, gay men in their 20s tearing each others' clothes off. You know, like real life. The McCarthys doesn't just fail with its gay character, though, it fails the entire family.
Speaking of CBS sitcoms, Sean Hayes (who just got engaged to his longtime partner Scott Icenogle) is now a series regular on The Millers, which is one of the funniest sitcoms on the tube. Hayes plays Kip Withers, who is a bit like Hayes' old standby role of Just Jack on Will & Grace, but at least here it works. His new straight-lady pal 20 years after Karen is Carol (Margo Martindale), the Miller family matriarch.
Finally, if SNL hadn't brought in Chris Rock and Prince for the Nov. 1 show, we would have said, bury it already. But there is no one funnier than Chris Rock, and Prince is, well, Prince. But we're pretty over this show. We saw a vintage episode last week from 1990 with one of the show's best casts: the late Jan Hooks and Phil Hartmann, Nora Dunn, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. Phenomenal. Every skit was pitch-perfect. The host was (a very young) Tom Hanks, the musical guests a not-yet-desiccated Aerosmith. What's wrong with SNL at 40 is it's only sporadically funny and has lost its political edge. Blaming Obama for Ebola isn't wit, it's right-wing rhetoric.
So to see comics brought to vivid life, to see Christmas come early, and for Neil Patrick Harris everywhere and all the time, you know you really must stay tuned.