Glee is back. Looking is back. Shameless is back. Gotham is back. The Good Wife is back. House of Lies is back. These are some of the best shows on TV, so: Watch. Empire is new and fabulous. So is Agent Carter. Watch.
But there are other things you need to watch as well, things that have none of the froth or drama tempered with humor of those shows. There's a lot of new TV this month. There's also a lot of TV news intersecting with those new shows. We want you to keep a close eye on how many terrorism-conspiracy-government operatives-CIA-FBI-style programs are on right now, because we think that trend means something provocative.
TV sets a tone, and there is a tone being set now that is subliminal and not a little dangerous. The locus on terrorism and government spying in a significant number of major series speaks to where we are in the so-called "war on terror." We were watching the debut episode of the new season of CBS' Madam Secretary, along with the winter finale of NBC's State of Affairs, and the overarching message was clear: there are layer upon layer of secrets within the U.S. government, and they can catch you up at any moment and whisk you off. Even the Secretary of State in Madam Secretary is not aware that her husband has been tapped for a covert job for the CIA. And on State of Affairs, the President has been kept out of the loop by rogue CIA operatives for some time. and now a senator is attempting a veritable coup against her. ABC's Agent Carter is set in 1946, but has a similar construct: layers and layers of secrets, with the "need to know" barrier creating artificial hierarchies within spy-dom.
This spate of new programming is intriguing also for what it posits from the outset: Torture, for example, is a given. So is killing. The bar is set so that extremes of violence don't even shock us because from the opening episodes we are shown that all of it is considered acceptable. When Fox's long-running series 24 debuted less than two months after 9/11, the nation was in a bloodthirsty mood. But even 24 inched the bar ahead incrementally each week. The very concept of the 24-hour clock on each episode added a complexity to the scenarios. Yet 24 was considered the torture show, the show that Dick Cheney watched with glee, and that taught our military how to hurt people with impunity.
These new shows, set 15 years into the "war on terror," presume we are acclimated to extremes of violence, that we know (thanks to Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden) our own government and those of our allies torture people. These shows presume that we know, as was said by the CIA director to the U.S. Attorney in an episode of Scandal where one of the characters was being tortured in the basement of the Pentagon, "This is America."
So it's in the context of this that we view what happened in France on Jan. 7 & 9, the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Cachet kosher supermarket in Paris. How many TV shows have we seen with the "enemy" surrounded? We just saw an episode of CSI last weekend in which the concept of "the greater good" used a series of innocents as bait for a killer. Is that our collective mindset now?
The lines between "art" and "life" are increasingly blurred, and we see that reflected in both TV dramatic series and the national news on TV. While the former may be worrisome because of that tone being set, the latter should be absolutely terrifying. The brutality of the attack on France's satiric Charlie Hebdo was grotesque. The subsequent assault on the kosher supermarket in a mostly Jewish Paris neighborhood was an unpleasant echo of France's anti-Semitic past.
But what concerns us is TV news reportage on the Paris attacks brought American Islamophobia into the spotlight yet again. As the endless "war on terror" continues, now in its 15th year with no end in sight, the tone of TV news remains disturbingly similar and increasingly confusing. TV reporting uses the words "terrorist" and "jihadist" with an almost gleeful abandon. But as we embed these terms into the national discourse via TV, we gradually shift the onus of "terrorism" onto one group: Muslims. Every terrorist on TV has an indefinable accent. Every terrorist has darker skin, dark hair, a "look." We don't need to know where these men are from, we know, because it's being embedded in our consciousness with each successive TV newscast or TV show.
We have never before seen the kind of extreme violence depicted in torture scenes on Scandal, State of Affairs, Madam Secretary and Blacklist. The violence is stomach-churning. Scenes of water-boarding on Scandal and SOA were so hyper-realistic, we found them very hard to watch. And those being tortured? They have that look. A profile. We know who we are supposed to think they are, whether that is named or not.
Legacy lost
Phylicia Rashad, the former Mrs.Huxtable on the long-running Cosby Show, spoke out on the controversy surrounding rape allegations from nearly 30 women. The allegations have dogged Cosby for years, but reached a crescendo in the past two months when a half-dozen new women came forward. Among those women were black supermodel Beverly Johnson and African American actress Michelle Hurd. But Rashad doesn't want to hear them or the other women. "Forget these women," Rashad told Roger Friedman of Showbiz411. "What you're seeing is the destruction of a legacy. And I think it's orchestrated. I don't know why or who's doing it, but it's the legacy, and it's a legacy that is so important to the culture. Someone is determined to keep Bill Cosby off TV. And it's worked. All his contracts have been cancelled. And now you're seeing it being destroyed. Why? This show represented America to the outside world. This was the American family."
Apparently, as in many American families, there were secrets. Rashad's comments went viral, prompting her to attempt to redirect them in an interview with ABC's Lindsay Davis for World News Tonig ht. The segment was reprised on Nightlin e. Rashad had likely not expected a tidal wave of African Americans creating a Twitter hashtag, #ByePhylicia, pivoting off her famous Huxtable lines. Comedian Chris Rock, who has appeared on numerous talk shows in the past few weeks discussing the Cosby scandal, tweeted this: "Dear Phylicia Rashad: I respect you, but I will not allow you to perpetuate rape culture for your TV husband. #ByePhylicia."
Cosby's recent contract for a Netflix special, as well as for a new NBC show, have been canceled. Cosby was the spokesperson and voice of our undergrad university for decades, until he resigned last month due the controversy. He has been a philanthropist and he has made a lot of people laugh for, well, ever. We can't remember a time when we didn't see him on TV.
But we also can't remember a time when famous men haven't been given a pass when it comes to rape. That's the real issue in the Cosby story. The hardest thing for straight America to realize is that straight men rape. One of the reasons NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has sustained over nearly 20 seasons is that there isn't a single person in America who doesn't know someone who has been raped. So when Rashad, a noted actress from TV, film and stage, calls up a conspiracy, she's just supporting a TV image, she's not supporting real women.
There's a scandal here. The women accusing Cosby are white, black and Latina. Some have settled out of court with Cosby. All have risked condemnation because Cosby is a national icon; he was the first black man on TV, in a major role on I, Spy; and The Cosby Show did for blacks what Will & Grace did for gays, it de-marginalized. No one wants to see that legacy destroyed. But what Rashad and the increasingly small group of Cosby supporters must understand is that the legacy of the show and Bill Cosby the man, not the Best Dad on TV character, are separate. No one can take away what that show did to alter perceptions of white America about black America. But that doesn't mean Cosby gets a pass at rape. Cosby actually joked about the rape allegations at a performance on Jan. 8, which is a level of arrogance that's truly insupportable.
Much as we support free speech, especially in the wake of the French killings, we would like to see the new TLC program My Husband's Not Gay permanently silenced. We thought 2015 might be the year we would stop hearing reparative therapy stories. We particularly thought after the much publicized suicide of trans teen Leelah Alcorn; the less well-known suicides of two young trans men, Andi Woodhouse and Jay Ralko; and the even less well-known suicide of lesbian teen Lizzie Lowe, there would be an outcry over this show. Instead we have what seems like a promo ad for reparative therapy. My Husband's Not Gay (yeah, he is!) has four gay men parading their wives and explaining how they just had to have a normal life like their parents had, so they repressed their gayness, and now they are sort-of-not-gay. GLAAD actually got a change.org petition (useless, but a statement) with 80,000 signatures demanding that TLC drop the show because of how dangerous it is.
According to the AP, "Responding to GLAAD, the network says it will tell compelling stories about different ways of life, and the four men on the hour-long show speak only for themselves." Some lives mean so little.
What a life is worth is a subtext of Fox's stunning new drama Empire, which debuted Jan. 7. Having Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson back on the small screen is a thrill. Having out gay black director Lee Daniels at the helm is another thrill. Empire is like a darker, hip hop Nashville, with some King Lear tossed in. And it's great. Some of the most compelling scenes in the season-opener were of the conflicts Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), a music industry kingpin, is having with his son Jamal (Jussie Smollett). Jamal would be perfect to take over the reins of Lucious' empire, but he's gay and Lucious can't cope. We see a flashback to the young Jamal playing dress-up in his mother's clothes. Lucious' rage takes over: he shoves his son into the trash. His feelings have never changed since. But Jamal's mother, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), loves and accepts Jamal, and wants him to take the reins of the business.
Empire is the highest-rated show to debut on Fox in three years, and ties ABC's How to Get Away with Murder as the highest-rated new show premiere in the 2014-15 season. On HTGAWM, Viola Davis won Favorite Actress in a New TV Series for her role as Annalise Keating on ABC's hit from gay creator Peter Nowalk. Davis said in her acceptance speech, "Thank you, Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, and Peter Nowalk for thinking of a leading lady who looks like my classic beauty. I'm so happy that people have accepted me in this role at this stage in my career."
The "classic beauty" line and reference to her age (49) was a subtle slap at New York Times TV critic Allessandra Stanley, who wrote that Davis was not a classic beauty. Stanley's piece so infuriated readers that the Times' Public Editor was forced to give Stanley a dressing-down. She's still at the paper, however, despite myriad calls for her firing. Stanley wrote that HTGAWM executive producer Rhimes ignored "the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to," and "chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful" than other actresses in Rhimes' shows.
Rhimes must have been smiling at the Golden Globes, and not just at Davis' bravado. Rhimes' long-running series Grey's Anatomy won again for Favorite Network TV Drama, and stars Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey each won for Favorite Dramatic TV Actress and Actor. Other gay wins included Glee's Chris Colfer, who won Favorite Comedic TV Actor. Out gay actor Matt Bomer won Favorite Cable TV Actor, and lesbian fave Pretty Little Liars won Favorite Cable TV Drama. Angie Harmon won Favorite Cable TV Actress for her role as the encoded lesbian in Rizzoli & Isles. Orange Is the New Black won Favorite TV Dramedy. Ellen DeGeneres won for Favorite Daytime TV Host for the 15th straight year, a record winning streak, making her the most popular lesbian in America.
Finally, the return of Glee Jan. 9 on Fox was much more than we could have hoped. This show has seen better days, but for its final season everyone comes home to McKinley High, reminding us of all the times we spent there with all our faves. It is somehow a comforting moment. And the worst torture you'll see is a flashback of someone getting a slurpy in the face, so no worries about being traumatized. So for the fave gays and the faux gays, the terrorism and the torture, you really must stay tuned.