This was such a week to fall in love with TV all over again. ABC's American Crime debuted and could be one of the best shows ever to hit the small screen. The Following, from gay showrunner Kevin Williamson, returned for another homoerotic season. Empire got gayer. The Slap got even deeper and edgier (out lesbian director Lisa Cholodenko, of the Oscar-winning The Kids Are Alright, is an executive producer on the show and has directed several episodes). Scandal burned it up (literally) with a tribute to Ferguson. Dig, created by Gideon Raff (Homeland ) and Tim Kring (Heroes ), debuted on USA starring former lesbian Anne Heche and sexy Brit Jason Isaacs (Rosemary's Baby ). CBS debuted Battle Creek, one of two new shows from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.
Glee started counting down to the series finale (cue sobbing) on March 20. Madame Secretary returned just in time to dovetail with the GOP-manufactured "scandal" of Hillary Clinton's emails that everyone in the world was getting, yet somehow no one from the president to her own staff noticed that the return address wasn't the State Department until last week, six years later. The Good Wife returned with a gut-grinder of a gay storyline that will make everyone think. The Voice returned and brought "The Dress." Oprah announced she was closing her Chicago-based Harpo Studios where the iconic Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated talk show in TV history, was filmed for 25 seasons between 1986-2011. Ellen was everywhere, and Rosie was nowhere.
The news brought some laughs. Jon Stewart (why is he leaving again?) weighed in with a massive eye-roll on the Hillary email drama, opening his March 5 show with, "Have you heard the news? Future President Hillary Clinton may have to pardon former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." After playing a news clip from CBS where the reporter says, "A bombshell report indicates former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have broken the law," Stewart says, "Oh my God, what did she do? Did she funnel arms to ISIS to pay for a land deal in Arkansas? Did she sell Alaska back to the Russians in exchange for their silence on Benghazi? Did she pad her resume with fake countries she negotiated treaties with? I should have known there was no such place as Pantsuitistan.
"Do you think maybe wrong-email-address-ghazi will be a big boost to her Democratic primary rival, TBD? Personally, I think her email trouble helps sew up the senior vote," he concluded. "They can relate." No wonder John Oliver wants a hologram of Jon Stewart to take over Stewart's spot on The Daily Show.
The Justice Department report on Ferguson that was released March 4 was anything but funny. The March 5 episode of Scandal reprised the events in Ferguson in a way that only Scandal could. It was just as grim as the actual events. Knowing that it was ripped from the headlines just made it all the more painful to watch. It addressed police brutality, racism and the chasm between white and black America when it comes to both the law and justice. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) begins the episode on one side of the divide and ends on the other.
African-American actor Courtney B. Vance, who languished for years on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, then spent a year on The Closer, has had more success on Broadway, where he has been nominated for three Tony Awards for his dramatic work and won a Tony in 2013. Last season he was given the thankless role of First Gentleman to Alfre Woodard's Madam President on NBC's disturbing spy thriller State of Affairs. Vance made the smallish recurring role come alive. He was electric as Marshall Payton, the man with no actual role to play in government. As the father of the teenager shot by police in the Scandal episode, Vance was brilliant, bringing all the pathos of the recent police shootings of young black men to bear in the role.
Stewart added his own commentary on Ferguson in a clip widely shared on social media. Stewart explained that the 15 times police K-9 units have been deployed and dogs have bitten people, all were black, prompting Stewart to note, "Even the Ferguson dogs are racist!"
We were not thrilled by the ISIS bit on the March 1 episode of Saturday Night Live. Considering what ISIS has done to women and girls, having a young woman run off to join ISIS with her father's blessing seemed well outside the bounds of acceptable humor. The skit was not the first time SNL has targeted ISIS. The show had also done a take-off of Shark Tank with ISIS looking for money for jihad.
Speaking of tastelessness, noted pediatric neurosurgeon and rumored Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said on the March 4 CNN show New Day with Chris Cuomo that being gay is a choice because people "go into prison straight, and when they come out, they're gay." Carson sort of apologized the next day on CNN, noting he "realized that my choice of language does not reflect fully my heart on gay issues." Uh, okay. Then he added, "I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended."
In other words, he just meant he shouldn't have brought prison into it. Because he also said, referencing his years at Johns Hopkins, "Some of our brightest minds have looked at this debate, and up until this point there have been no definitive studies that people are born into a specific sexuality."
But here's the thing about Carson. He's said this before. In fact, it's one of the main reasons he's a Tea Party favorite. He's anti-abortion and anti-gay. In 2013. Carson was forced to withdraw from being commencement speaker at Hopkins after he said on the Sean Hannity show of same-sex marriage, "Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn't matter what they are. They don't get to change the definition." Pedophiles, dogs and gays. Nice.
So on March 4 he told Hannity that the gay questions are gotcha journalism and that "every time I'm gaining momentum, the liberal press says, let's talk about gay rights, and I'm just not going to fall for that anymore." Well, as we always say, if you don't think it, you won't say it. Just for the record, the American Psychological Association asserts "most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation." Yeah, we knew that, because we've never been to prison, but we're still gay.
Jenner speaks
Former news anchor Diane Sawyer got the big Bruce Jenner interview for ABC in February. The interview is scheduled to air during sweeps. Sources who may be the Jenner/Kardashian clan have leaked to In Touch magazine, The Mirror, Radar online and other outlets that Sawyer asked all the questions and Jenner gave all the answers, including that Jenner is still attracted to women, not men, that Jenner's breasts are now a size B but will be surgically enhanced to be larger, and that the penis will stay.
Radar reported that ex-wife Kris is "humiliated by Jenner's impending change," but that she and Bruce Jenner's son Brody were also interviewed for Sawyer's interview. "Brody shed some real light on what the family is going through right now," Radar reported, adding that the former Hills star "made it clear" that he and his siblings support their father's transition decision.
A different kind of reality was addressed in ABC Family's The Fosters: teen homosexuality. Controversy was stirred by the series' creators' decision to show a kiss between Fosters 13-year-old Jude Foster (Hayden Byerly) and another boy. We feel compelled to note here that most heterosexual tweens/teens (13 is on the cusp) have had their first fumbling kiss at 13. Jude has been falling for Connor (Gavin Macintosh), and Connor has been doing a maybe, maybe-not dance with Jude and a girl, Daria. Then came the sort of kiss 13-year-olds have. Kind of sweet, kind of not-quite-up-against each other. Kind of chaste. Kind of tear-jerking, if you were an adult gay man or lesbian watching.
In real life, Byerly is 15, and in an interview this week he said that he and Macintosh had to get comfortable with the role since they are both heterosexual, but that they talked about it and discussed the momentous impact it would have on gay and lesbian kids watching the series. Byerly said, "I want people to watch the show and see the struggle that Jude goes though and feel more comfortable about themselves." Yes. That.
Then there's what happens in the real world. Out black gay director Lee Daniels, co-creator and executive producer of the groundbreaking Fox drama series Empire, was discussing being black and gay at the Television Critics Association press tour on March 1. Daniels said point-blank that "homophobia in the African-American community" is "killing African-American women." He had been asked about the blatant homophobia of his main character, music entrepreneur Luscious Lyon (Terrence Howard). He told the TCA that he'd been simmering over the issue for years, since he was working on his 2009 film Precious .
Daniels told the TCA, "When I did Precious, I had to do research on AIDS in the 80s so I went to the Gay Men's Health Crisis Center in NYC. I expected to see gay men, and there were nothing but African-American women and babies with HIV. That blew me away." The award-winning director told the TCA that "rampant homophobia" in the black community was the cause of the HIV epidemic among black women because so many black men who were really gay were "secretly engaging in gay sex because of the stigma.
"Homophobia is rampant in the African-American community, and men are on the DL. They don't come out, because your priest says, your pastor says, mama says, your next-door neighbor says, your homie says, your brother says, your boss says [that homosexuality is wrong]. They are killing African-American women. So I wanted to blow the lid off homophobia in my community."
Empire has definitely blown the lid off. Luscious' gay son Jamal (Jussie Smollett) is totally gay. He's got the oh-so-hot Latino not-so-ex ex, Michael Sanchez (Rafael de La Fuente). And Jamal's gayness and talent are increasingly at the center of Empire. He is both his mama Cookie's (the incredible Taraji P. Nelson) favorite of her three sons, and also the pawn in her attempt to regain control of Empire.
The gay storyline in Empire is different from the one playing out in The Good Wife, which returned March 1. Out gay actor David Hyde Pierce (Frasier) plays closeted Frank Prady, a popular TV legal analyst and author who decides to run against the current Illinois state attorney, James Castro (Michael Cerveris). But now he's running against Alicia (Julianna Margulies), and the two of them have made a kind of pact to not be awful. Except the people working on Alicia's team don't agree, and have sent out lisping robot calls about Frank. Then Alicia herself, who has a gay brother, goes to see a Democratic donor with money falling out of his ass. The legendary Ed Asner plays Guy Redmayne, a handsy widower with an eye for Alicia. He's also a virulent homophobe. As she moves out of his reach he regales her with stories of how Prady is a "pansy" and a "faggot." She says nothing. This is the way it happens: good people doing nothing. Redmayne offers her money for her campaign, and she doesn't refuse. She never speaks out against what he says about Prady.
When Prady arrives to woo Redmayne, Redmayne tries to feel him out on the gay issue by dissing Alicia as a slut. Prady takes umbrage and refuses to entertain any more thought of taking Redmayne's money because of how he's talking about Alicia. He leaves, integrity intact. Cut to Alicia drinking a glass of wine and looking shattered. Which happens when good people sell their integrity. Her daughter, Grace (Makenzie Vega), the teenage born-again Christian, comes in and asks her what's wrong. Alicia says she's not happy with herself. Grace tells her she's the best person she knows, and Alicia bursts into tears. But she's already taken the money.
The multifaceted layering of conscience is only one of the themes of the extraordinary ABC drama American Crime, which slid neatly into the TGIT lineup after last week's season finale of How to Get Away with Murder. Created by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave), this complex story of a murder and the ripple effect it causes in the racially charged setting of Modesto has Emmy stamped all over it. Ridley wrote and directed the first few episodes, and the premiere reads like a film, replete with jump cuts and Hollywood montage, shock cuts and match cuts. The premiere is visually sumptuous, even as the subject matter is harrowing. Felicity Huffman and Timothy Hutton play Barb Hanlon and Russ Skokie, the bitterly divorced parents of Matt, a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Matt has been murdered, and his wife Gwen brutally beaten and raped. She is alive, but in a coma. Russ gets a call from police and goes to identify the body. He asks to use the men's room, where he howls in a primordial keening before throwing water on his face and leaving to speak with police and then call Barb. Barb is controlled and almost vacant. She can't get past the fact that Russ was called and not her. We learn that Russ was a gambling addict who ruined the family financially. He's recovering, putting himself back into the lives of his two sons. But now Matt has been murdered.
Barb is a racist. She speaks of illegals and "those people" with whom she shared public housing when she was raising her sons as a single mother. We don't like her. We like Russ. But we aren't sure we can trust Russ. Because he looks like he could crack open at any second. There are several threads running through the storyline, and all of them lead to Matt. Benito Martinez, who was so brilliant as David Aceveda in The Shield, plays Alonzo Gutierrez, a struggling Mexican-American single dad trying to raise two teenagers, both of whom are in trouble (Tony (Johnny Ortiz) is implicated in the murder of Matt).
So for big-screen brilliance on the small screen, for smart satire and comic relief, for the news you wish you weren't seeing, you really must stay tuned.