When we watched Gail (Charlotte Sullivan) and Holly (Aliyah O'Brien) kissing in a bar on the June 26 episode of ABC's cop drama Rookie Blue, we thought how perfect the timing was: first-year anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision on DOMA, and 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Go Pride!
But we also wondered, as we often do, if there would be the same sort of extended, public, get-a-room kind of PDA scene in a prime time drama if the characters were 20something male hotties. It's a rhetorical question, but we intend to keep asking it until someone responds. Because much as we like seeing pretty women kissing on TV, and much as we think it's great for budding lesbians to see, we also are continually bothered by the fetishizing and appropriation of lesbian sexuality.
We're hoping to see some lip-locking on NBC's Night Shift when Dr. Drew Allister's (Brendan Fehr) boyfriend returns home from Afghanistan. Drew was so excited at the prospect in this week's episode, all he could say was, "He survived. He made it. He's coming back to me." Wow. Makes one think about all those gay and lesbian soldiers suffering in silence under DADT.
Night Shift is uneven, but we really like the fact that everyone has seen war. Since most Americans don't even know that two million American men and women have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan or both, it's a necessary reminder. So there had better be some kissing when those two reunite after being separated by war. And if it's still making producers anxious to have guys kissing, we're nowhere near equality. (We've said before, sitcom kissing is not the same as drama kissing, so please don't tweet us about Cam and Mitchell.)
Speaking of the conflict of the closet, if you missed the PBS Independent Lens documentary The New Black, you can now see it online at PBS.org. Directed by Yoruba Richen, it details the drama and conflict in the African- American community over marriage equality and LGBT civil rights. Interviews with activists, families dealing with LGBT family members, clergy in the black church all examine or exemplify homophobia in the black community, with the church at the center.
Richen's film depicts New York, California and Maryland, and is very compelling. Richen says, "While the debate around gay rights has deepened some divides within the black community, it has also opened a space for new conversations about overcoming oppression for everyone." Her film is well-worth a look, this is not a film for African-Americans only. Richen explores how the right has exploited homophobia within the black community to bolster their own anti-gay agenda, which has affected all of us. This film is every bit as powerful as HBO's The Case Against 8, which is running on demand throughout the summer.
Speaking of those pesky equality issues, did we really see this exchange on the June 26 Today show? We admit we are an anti-fan of Matt Lauer, we don't know why he makes twice what ABC's Diane Sawyer makes for actual news anchoring, and we don't find him very personable. We found him even less so after this. Lauer interviewed new General Motors CEO Mary Barra about the continuing recall problems at GM. Lauer asked if she felt she could run a company and be a good mother.
"I want to tread lightly here," Lauer said, then proceeded to do anything but. Laurer asked why she got the job. "Some people are speculating that you also got this job because people within General Motors knew this company was in for a very tough time, and as a woman and a mom you could present a softer image and softer face for this company as it goes through this horrible episode. Does it make sense, or does it make you bristle?" Well, it made us bristle.
Barra was clearly somewhat taken aback, this being 2014. She said, "Well, it's absolutely not true. I believe I was selected for this job based on my qualifications." Barra was clearly ending that aspect of the interview, but Lauer was not.
"You're a mom, I mentioned, two kids, you said in an interview not long ago that your kids said they're going to hold you accountable for one job, and that is being a mom," Lauer said. "Given the pressure at General Motors, can you do both well?"
Barra responded, "You know, I think I can. I have a great team, we're on the right path, we're doing the right things, we're taking accountability, and also I have a wonderful family and a supportive husband, and I'm pretty proud of my kids the way they're supporting me in this."
Barra has worked at GM since she was 18. She is now 52. She is the first woman in the world to run an automobile manufacturer. The idea that she was given the job because somehow a woman would be sympathetic defies belief. Not surprisingly, Lauer got blowback for his questions, and a Twitter storm erupted that ended with him trending because so many women were demanding a boycott of Lauer and the Today show. Lauer defended himself by saying he would have asked a male CEO the same questions.
Except he never has. In 2009, Lauer interviewed Ford CEO Alan Mulally, and of course never asked him how he could balance fatherhood (Mulally has five kids) with being a CEO. We would note that Lauer has three kids and travels the world for his job. No one's ever said it's improbable that he can do both.
Dome drama
Stephen King manages to be a husband, father, one of the most successful writers in the world, musician and now, actor and TV screenwriter. The new season of CBS' Under the Dome began June 30, now written by co-creator Stephen King. We loved this dystopian sci-fi drama last season (with gay characters right from the start) and we've been waiting for its return for months. Well worth the wait.
Speaking of dystopian, HBO has its own dystopian drama, The Leftovers, which debuted June 29. It joins several other end-of-the-world dramas (it must be the summer of our dystopia). We mentioned TNT's The Last Ship and FX's The Strain in our last column. Syfy has Dominion, a sequel to the 2010 film Legion. CBS debuts another sci-fi dystopian thriller, Extant, starring Halle Berry on July 9.
We're excited by The Leftovers because we love the show's creators. Taking a page from Stephen King, award-winning novelist and screenwriter Tom Perrotta is screenwriter for the HBO drama based on his novel. He is also the show's co-creator, with Lost alum Damon Lindelof. We were die-hard Lost fans right to the bitter non-end.
The show stars Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler and Ann Dowd. The Leftovers takes place in the wake of a global "rapture," and centers on the people who were not taken but were left behind in a suburban community, the fictional town of Mapleton, NY. People are unsettled to their core. Some join cultish churches, some find other ways to distract themselves. All of it is complicated, atmospheric and creepy.
The show begins with a flashback to the day of the disappearances. We see a mother, clearly overwhelmed, with her baby, about to go somewhere in her car. The baby disappears. There are some other chilling disappearances, then The Leftovers returns the viewer to the present, where a third-anniversary memorial of the disappearances just riles everyone up. This a slow-arcing but not plodding drama, and the stellar writing puts it in contention for one of HBO's best shows. It's been a good year for HBO, with Game of Thrones in major Emmy contention (the nominations will be announced July 9, and the awards ceremony is Aug. 25). Plus GOT now ranks as the most-watched series HBO has ever run, more than The Sopranos and The Wire.
Showtime is another channel with many Emmy contenders. Back for another season is Ray Donovan, with Jon Voight so good, we almost forget he's a Republican. The show returns July 13. We keep telling you to watch Showtime's period drama, Penny Dreadful. It's fantastic. There's isn't a more iconic gay character from the period than Dorian Gray, is there? No. Although Josh Hartnett's portrayal of Ethan Chandler is a whole new level of gay.
Speaking of gay, TNT's Major Crimes (The Closer spinoff) has just returned for its third season. And it's returned with a gay storyline that will be at the center of the drama all season as Rusty (Graham Patrick Martin) comes to terms with his sexual orientation. We were waiting for this storyline to evolve last season, then thought our gaydar was off. It wasn't. We're hoping Major Crimes finds a way to link Rusty to the show's sarcastic gay medical examiner, Dr. Morales (Jonathan Del Arco). Del Arco has been with the series since it was The Closer, and we'd like to see the out gay actor playing the out gay medical examiner involved in more action outside the morgue. And not just because he's hot. But because it's time.
For pure trash fun with a gay edge, Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth are playing at "detectiving" on ABCFamily's Mystery Girls. The shtick here is that the duo are former 90s TV stars who are now solving crimes. We admit, it's enjoyable seeing the former Beverly Hills 90210 ladies together again. They aren't a lesbian love match like Rizzoli and Isles, but they are very engaging.
Speaking of fun, we just loved this. On June 26, British comedian Russell Brand, a frequent guest on the American late-night talk-show circuit, called Fox News "a fanatical terrorist propagandist organization." We just couldn't have put it better ourselves.
Speaking of news, we were shocked by ABC's major shake-up when, on June 26, the network announced a changing of the guard for its three main anchors, Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos and David Muir. According to ABC, "Sawyer will lead new programming, tackling big issues and extraordinary interviews. Stephanopoulos, Anchor of Good Morning America and This Week, has been promoted to Chief Anchor of ABC News, handling special reports and breaking news. Muir, Anchor of 20/20, will become Anchor and Managing Editor of World News starting Sept. 2."
It's the biggest change in a news lineup since 2011, when Katie Couric stepped down as the first solo female anchor of a network news program, CBS Evening News. Senior Correspondent Scott Pelley was promoted to that anchor spot. Unlike when Couric left CBS, however, Sawyer leaves in the top ratings position. May sweeps left her in first place.
Sawyer has been taking more and more time from the anchor seat in the past two years to do in-depth, award-winning investigative pieces for ABC. She has focused on hunger in America, poverty in America, the hidden drama of Appalachia, and the broken school system in Philadelphia. Her series on Appalachia and hunger won her Peabody Awards, and she has won the Daytime Emmy several times. We've written about Sawyer's compelling series here over the past five years she's been doing those investigative pieces. Her work has been both breathtaking and heartbreaking. But while we'd love to see more of that kind of serious journalism from her, the ABC shakeup does exactly what the CBS shakeup did: returns the evening news to a white guy line-up with Pelley, NBC's Brian Williams and Muir.
If you're not a news junkie like we are, you may think it doesn't matter, the news is the news, but Sawyer and Couric both shaped their newscasts to be more inclusive of women's issues and issues others might consider "marginal," like the very things Sawyer has been devoting her investigative pieces to. Or, of course, gay news. We like Muir and he's a fantastic reporter, having done amazing work from around the globe. But it's difficult not to see his promotion as a clear grab for a younger demographic (even though ABC already owns the coveted 25-54 demographic) since at only 40 (and looking younger), Muir will be by far the youngest anchor. Sawyer is 68, Williams is 55, and Pelley is 56. According to ABC, "Stephanopoulos will add the duties of Chief Anchor of ABC News to his responsibilities. For the last four years he has helped lead Good Morning America to #1, and after returning to the program two years ago, has driven This Week to its best competitive position in a generation. In his new role Stephanopoulos will also lead the network's coverage of special events and breaking news. The best political journalist on television, Stephanopoulos will also lead ABC News' election coverage starting with the mid-terms this fall, the 2016 presidential race and beyond."
ABC has consistently replaced women with men in promotions, which we find concerning. We understand seniority, but we also question how seniority is earned for women at ABC. Christiane Amanpour took over This Week, where her skills as a global foreign-affairs reporter and war correspondent made her appear smarter than her guests. She was replaced with Stephanopoulos, and sent back to the war zones. She was assaulted on camera during the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt.
Martha Raddatz has filled in for both Sawyer and Stephanopoulos, but she, too, despite her years in the same post at ABC that Pelley was in at CBS, has never landed an anchor position. She has, however, seen more war zones than any other correspondent at ABC, except Amanpour.
The whiteness and maleness of news is an issue that is consistently raised by women and people of color in TV journalism, but never seems to get addressed. So while we admire Muir, we view him, rather than Raddatz, replacing Sawyer as problematic.
Another shake-up at ABC occurred the same day as the news announcement. The View, which has been a ratings-grabber since it debuted in Aug. 1997, is ditching two of its co-hosts, African-American comedian Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy. Unlike with Sawyer, we could not be happier to see these two go. Shepherd's a proponent of the flat earth. McCarthy is notable for her anti-vaxxer philosophy. There was a huge controversy over McCarthy being chosen for the show's roundtable, but Barbara Walters apparently wanted someone as out of touch with political reality as Elisabeth Hasselbeck, whom McCarthy replaced.
The View is currently on hiatus, and will end this season in August. The show has not announced any suggested replacements. Walters retired from the show in May. We'd like to see a lesbian on that show, since there hasn't been one since Rosie O'Donnell left, and CBS' The Talk has the mostly silent Sara Gilbert. But most of all we'd just like the new women to not be crazy and to know that science is a thing now.
Speaking of Walters, she interviewed Elliot Rodger's director father Peter in an exclusive for ABC's 20/20 on June 27. Rodger told Walters he couldn't believe "my son was a mass murderer. There's no way that I thought this. We didn't see this coming at all. This is America's horror story. You don't see it." Walters told 20/20 co-host David Muir, "They knew their son was troubled, but they didn't think he was violent." It's a pretty compelling interview, not as self-serving as one might expect. Rodger is clearly suffering. Watch it at ABC.go.news.com.
One series we love on ABC is NY Med, the new season of which debuted June 26. This is one of the best reality series on the tube (if you aren't squeamish). It gives a clear if unsettling view of life inside a big-city hospital. One of the doctors on whom the show focuses is Dr. Mehmet Oz, here in his role as top cardiac surgeon. We like that this show has a plethora of women as well as men in the medical field, that there are always gay people, patients and doctors, and that it is insightful, not glib. Not everyone survives. Which makes viewing somewhat harrowing, since it's real life, not fiction. Highly recommended.
Finally, our fave contest show this summer is, once again, America's Got Talent on NBC. We saw one of the gayest acts we've ever seen on this show last week, and we expect more in the coming weeks. But there is also some amazing talent. And none of the tedium of some of the other contest shows like all the behind-the-scenes who-cares on Dancing with the Stars or The Voice .
So for gay TV, for lesbian fetishizing, for white-guy-only news and for the shows we watch without critique because their brilliance blows us away, you know you must stay tuned.