There's a lot happening on TV this month, as April has not been the cruelest month at all for the tube, unless you consider the end of Mad Men and Justified.
The return of HBO's Game of Thrones and BBC America's Orphan Black (oh Cosima, and Tatiana Maslany, how we've missed you) is, well, fabulous. Don't forget to watch Funny or Die's send-up, Gay of Thrones. The latest murder on Scandal was shocking. A twist of fate will be revealed on Grey's Anatomy this week that may signal a tectonic shift in several storylines on that show. We thought Callie and Arizona might be getting back together after a rapprochement on the April 16 episode, but our hopes were dashed.
Promos for several new shows have us salivating, notably Wayward Pines, set to premiere on Fox on May 14. This thriller, exec-produced by M. Night Shyamalan, stars four Oscar-nominated actors, some now turned TV heavyweights: Matt Dillon, Terence Howard (Empire ), Juliette Lewis (Secrets and Lies ) and Melissa Leo (Treme ). Dillon plays Ethan Burke, a U.S. Secret Service agent investigating the disappearance of two federal agents in a mysterious small Idaho town. Think Twin Peaks meets True Detective.
Speaking of True Detective, season two of the HBO juggernaut returns June 21. But there's plenty to watch in the interim.
Aquarius is another limited series we're anticipating. The NBC drama stars David Duchovny (Californication ) as police sergeant Sam Hodiak. The series is set in 1967 (with fabulous music, including of course, the eternally sexy Jim Morrison of The Doors). LAPD sergeant Sam Hodiak (Duchovny) is helped in a missing persons case by undercover officer Brian Shafe (Gray Damon), who behaves like a hippie and fits in with the people being questioned. Unknown to them, their investigation will lead them to Charles Manson. Oh yes. The series will premiere in a two-hour opener on May 28 and move permanently to The Blacklist slot for the summer while that show is on hiatus. On June 4, Aquarius will be followed by season 3 of the most compellingly homoerotic gay-or-just-European thriller on the tube, gay showrunner Bryan Fuller's incredible Hannibal.
On May 3, Showtime premieres the second season of its fabulous horror/thriller series, Penny Dreadful. The series, which stars our personal fave, Eva Green (every bisexual's heartthrob), and Timothy Dalton, can be picked up without seeing season one, as it's largely episodic. If you missed the first season, Showtime gives a succinct description: "The title refers to the penny dreadfuls, a type of 19th-century cheap British fiction publication with lurid and sensational subject matter. The series draws upon many characters from 19th-century Irish and British fiction, including Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mina Harker and Abraham Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Victor Frankenstein and his monster from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." What isn't said here is that this is the stuff of nightmares. Absolutely horrifying and well worth watching.
Some shows we probably should all be watching as the 2016 presidential election season moves into full swing are HBO's Veep, which just started its fourth season and has been picked up for a fifth; Netflix's House of Cards, in its third season and just picked up for a fourth to debut next year (star Kevin Spacey told Metro last week that he thinks the show will run for 12 seasons, which would take it through Hillary Clinton's entire first term); Scandal, of course; CBS' The Good Wife, which this season is really showing the seamy underbelly of Chicago politics; and CBS' Madame Secretary, which increasingly is working as the shadow show for Clinton's lead-in to the presidency.
Every one of these shows uncovers a layer of politics, mostly Beltway. And each one reveals the nuances of what happens behind the scenes of decision-making that can and often does change the world. Last week's episode of Madame Secretary was a most compelling look at how easy it might be to accidentally set a nuclear confrontation into motion. Tea Leoni is superb as Elizabeth McCord, the eponymous Secretary of State. It's a show worth deconstructing for thinking about the next presidency.
Jenner pass
But no matter how much there is to watch, there is one show everyone is poised for, and that is airing momentarily. The clock's been ticking out on The Big Interview for months now. There have been the hints and the rumors and the denials. Is it even possible for The Actual Interview to live up to the hype? We don't know, but we will definitely be among the millions watching April 24 when ABC's Diane Sawyer does Bruce Jenner: The Interview in an expanded two-hour 20/20 slot. At press time the teaser clip on YouTube had already been viewed nearly two million times. Two million. Amazing.
In the clip, promo'd heavily on ABC, in which the voiceover tells us "the journey, the decisions, the future," Jenner says, "My whole life has been getting me ready for this." Tune in for the "this."
Bruce Jenner has been rumored to be transitioning for months �" growing his hair long, getting facial plastic surgery, occasionally being seen with nail polish. But there's no sign of breasts, and Jenner has continued to dress like a man. With the exception of the hair, there's really nothing different in Jenner's appearance or manner to signal transition, this is why The Interview is expected to be a dramatic reveal.
The clip shows Jenner walking with Sawyer outdoors in snow. There is nothing in Jenner's look to signal a change. Jenner is walking, hands in pockets, dressed like a man, walking like a man. (Cue Grace Jones.) Jenner's voice sounds the same, although a bit old, a bit shaky. Sawyer looks dazzling, as always. She's 69, Jenner's 65, yet Jenner looks markedly older than Sawyer, and the juxtaposition of her unstudied, casual femininity with Jenner's butch good looks is a striking contrast. It somehow makes the story all-the-more compelling. There's a poignancy to the clip, to Jenner's words, as Jenner says them to Sawyer. ABC certainly got the promotion of this right for maximum interest.
We aren't sure how we feel about this interview. We've never been fans of the Jenner-Kardashian megalith. We've never understood the attraction to their reality series, to them, to any of it. We know Olympic Gold lasts forever, but 1976 seems an awfully long time ago to us, while Jenner's 25-year marriage to Kris Kardashian seems to be the actual reason Jenner is famous.
We know that there is a desire to get the trans story out in the public eye. But we just wonder if Bruce Jenner (the new name is set to be revealed in the interview) is the best purveyor of that story, given Jenner's age, reality-show history, volatile relationship with Kris Jenner, all of that. But, as we said, we will be watching. Sawyer is such a seasoned and superb interviewer. She's won every important TV journalism award from Emmys to the Polk Award to the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She's received a GLAAD Media Award for Excellence in Media. She's gone to women's prisons and slept in solitary, sans makeup and contact lenses. She's done a gut-wrenching series on hunger and poverty in Appalachia that was so memorable we doubt we shall ever forget it. She's interviewed some of the most important figures in the world, like Nelson Mandela. And some of the most vulnerable, like Jacee Dugard after she was released from her 18 years of captivity after having been kidnapped at 11.
Sawyer told TV Guide, in an exclusive on April 17, that "this is a really compelling conversation about so many things. A broad look at life." Sawyer also noted, "It's about family and about how we all live our lives." Sawyer said in her interview with TV Guide that she conducted a series of interviews with Jenner, on both coasts. So Jenner is in safe and capable hands. Sawyer, whose close friend is Robin Roberts, has been vetted by the LGBT community and been found not just acceptable, but an excellent ally. Yet that doesn't subvert the reason we will all be tuning in, which is the voyeurism factor, which is why we aren't sure how we feel about this interview.
Straight people have always been fascinated by our LGBT lives from that perspective. Since they have historically viewed us as freaks and perverts, they want to know the details, the specs, the intimate things they aren't privy to. We can't help feeling the Bruce Jenner interview is about that first and foremost. Since Sawyer had stipulated that no questions be off-limits, we can't help wondering if this is the best thing for Jenner. But perhaps spending eight years on Keeping Up with the Kardashians primed Jenner for life in the spotlight. There are no aspects of Jenner's personal life that haven't already been given the media treatment.
Yet this transition, despite the compelling promo line from ABC, is indeed a recent phenomenon for Jenner. A year ago Jenner was on Jimmy Fallon's show in a suit and tie, one leg propped guy-style on the other knee, doing guy-stuff with Fallon. He was irked by Fallon, as he told Kim Kardashian in a brief conversation that is actually quite insightful from Kim. Jenner also ate a banana throughout, and not delicately, either. Jenner's 88-year-old mother has said more than Jenner about the presumed transition than Jenner has thus far. Her most interesting exchange was with talk show host Wendy Williams.
We aren't alone in wondering about this interview. On CBS' The Talk last week, guest host Karla Mosley, the African American actress who is playing a character just revealed to be trans on the CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful, initiated discussion of Jenner's transition and the upcoming interview. We do want to know how B&B is going to gloss over the fact that Mosley's character Maya Avant entered the show looking for the daughter she gave up for adoption after she got out of her women's prison. Oops. Co-host Kelly Osbourne (Fashion Police) said she wasn't that interested in what Jenner had to say because she has so many friends who are in the process of transitioning or who have transitioned. What she wanted to know was how Kris felt about it, after their many years of marriage.
Lesbian co-host Sara Gilbert said she had a lot of questions, "Like I want to know when he knew and how he feels about it. I want to know if he's going to be attracted to women still. Is he going to live as a lesbian?" Gilbert slipped then and started to say, "Is he going to live as a man?" instead of is Jenner going to be attracted to men. But that slip brought laughs from the co-hosts and the audience. Which made us cringe. It's part of our concern over Jenner and this interview. Gilbert recovered and continued, "I want to know when we start calling him, her."
Mosley jumped in and asked, "He's no stranger to the media, so was he a part of this whole media blitz? How did he feel? It's challenging."
Sharon Osbourne, whose family was the subject of the MTV reality series The Osbournes from 2002-05, had her own questions, and voiced what many are thinking. She said, "He's 65. I'm 62. Now I don't think I'm going to wake up tomorrow and say, 'I want to be a boy.'"
Again the audience began laughing, but Osbourne did not. She continued, "No, seriously, how do you change? It must have been in him forever. And so this poor man must have been totally repressed for years and years and years. And then going and marrying into this family of extremely sophisticated, beautiful women must have been torture for him."
Mosley added, "And also having to play a very masculine role." Then Kelly posed this question to the group: "Can you imagine being trapped in someone else's body?"
At that point Sheryl Underwood went back to Gilbert's earlier question, "How early did he know this? And when he was at Robert Kardashian's bedside and saying, 'I'm going to take care of your children and everything's going to be alright,' and now they got 10 kids, but did he [Jenner] tell the three wives that he had [that he thought he was female], and when did he tell them?" That last is a good question and one that we have always had about people coming out late in life as gay or lesbian. How much damage is done to others by remaining in one's particular closet, be it gay, lesbian or transgender?
Underwood then said, "But my real question is, 'Are you truly happy?' And when he says, 'Yes, I am truly happy,' then we all got to leave it alone. When he says, 'I am happy and free for the first time in my life,' we should just leave it alone after that."
This got wild applause from the audience, and it's hard to argue with. All of us who are lesbian, gay or trans have had to come out at some point (or will have to: do it now!). For 18 years in this column I kept asking Robin Roberts when she was going to come out. When she finally did so a year ago she was 53. Yet it wasn't like we didn't know. So why wait all those years, appearing to live a lie?
Still, coming out gay and coming out trans are vastly different. Only the "when did you know" question is similar, like when 83-year-old Joel Grey came out in January. At 83. Didn't we all think he was gay the first time we saw Cabaret? We thought he was gay when we were in high school. But then he was married to a woman for 30 years, had two children, who knew? Likely not his wife.
We saw that scene play out on ABC's Scandal with Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry), the president's gay chief of staff. We saw his early marriage to a woman and how the disaster of a closeted gay man marrying a straight woman destroyed her as well as their marriage.
Come out. It's not just about you.
In January, Kris Jenner was giving an interview on E! in which she said unequivocally that the rumors of Bruce Jenner's transition were false. And after 25 years of marriage and two children (Jenner had two children each with his previous two wives) and raising Kris's four children from her marriage to Robert Kardashian as well, did the topic never come up until the couple split last year? These questions aren't just being raised on the top-rated daytime talk show. They are being raised in our own community. How Sawyer poses those questions and how Jenner answers them will reverberate through the LGBT community. It's one thing to have activist trans persons like Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black, The Mindy Project ) or Janet Mock addressing the trans question in TV interviews. Cox is 30, Mock is 32. Their millennial status means they have come of age in a trans-accepting milieu. Cox and Kelly Osbourne are only a few months apart in age, and as Osbourne noted, many of her friends are trans.
Model Kendall Jenner, daughter of Bruce and Kris, shut down reporters last week during an interview with GQ when she was asked about her father's transition. The 19-year-old said, "That's not about me, so can we move on?" She was asked if she was upset because the rumored transition was true or not true, and she said, "That is not for me to answer."
The Sawyer interview is alleged to be the lead-in for a new reality series Jenner has planned, a spin-off of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which will document all aspects of Jenner's transition, including the final gender reassignment surgery. TMZ reports that this show, rumored to be on E!, is in a holding pattern until after the Sawyer interview airs. The show is rumored to be debuting in May, and likely will be announced and promo'd during the Sawyer interview.
We hope the interview goes well. Most of all, we hope Jenner will be, as Underwood queried, happy.
Looking back
Jonathan Groff isn't so happy. The sexy 30-year-old has played Patrick Murray on HBO's Looking for the past two seasons, and the out gay actor wishes the show had not been cancelled. He told People magazine, "There's not a lot of gay programming on TV. We wanted to create a show with gay men where they weren't tragic figures or the comedic relief or sexually sensationalized. but just multi-dimensional human beings. So I feel sad that Looking was canceled, but grateful for the time that we had."
Response to the show's cancellation, Groff said, was overwhelmingly positive about what the show had accomplished. "That was amazing to see that sort of outpouring of love and support for the show. I think that speaks to just the need and desire for more gay stories to be told. Hopefully it maybe paved the way for other people to create [more] gay stories. Hopefully someday there won't be just one gay show on the air but multiple shows. I remember being a kid and feeling like when somebody mentioned in a moment that they were gay or [saw someone gay] on TV, it was like an exciting sense of relief to see someone talk about being gay, so I try to do that as often as I can. It sort of goes back to that Harvey Milk thing of, 'Tell your friends, tell everyone.' I always try to wear that on my sleeve."
Did we not just say, Come out, come out now? We like Groff. We hope someone puts him in something else soon.
We also like Fox's The Following, from out gay showrunner Kevin Williamson. This show has retained its homoerotic drama. The new season, which began last month, is, well, fantastic. The addition of Michael Ealy (The Good Wife, Almost Human) as TV's only black serial killer has been simply superb.
Ealy, with his amazing pale blue eyes and runway-model good looks, is swoon-worthy. But his evocation of the chameleon killer Theo, FBI consultant Ryan Hardy's (Kevin Bacon) new nemesis, is peerless. He makes a fabulous counterpoint to James Purefoy's Joe Carroll, the serial killer who brought Hardy back to the FBI. The Following is dark. Possibly the darkest show on TV. But its exploration of masculinity and where that takes some men is endlessly fascinating.
We're sorry Valerie Cruz, who has played lesbian FBI supervisor Gina Mendes since the show began, is leaving, but there are so many intricacies on this show, there's much more to be revealed.
Finally, out lesbian and perennial fag hag (are we still allowed to say that?) Sandra Bernhard has returned to comedy on CBS' 2 Broke Girls, and she's, well, perfect as the postmodern ennuied hipster Joedth (pronounced Jo, in a running joke that the edth are silent), the owner of The High, a restaurant where Max and Caroline (Beth Behr) start working.
The show has amped up the gay this season, and Bernhard delivers some of the primo lines. Max (Kat Dennings) has a new crush �" a beautiful Irish boy who prompted one of the diner's regulars to query when he walked in, "Is it too late to be gay?" (We cannot tell you how funny this line was when delivered by former SNL cast member Garrett Morris, who is 78.) No, it is never too late to be gay. Or lesbian. Or trans. Or bi.
So for The Big Interview and some really stellar TV that's scripted, for the latest political announcements �" because at least a half-dozen more Republicans are going to announce �" and for gay showrunners competing for the darkest shows on the tube (yes, we mean you, Kevin Williamson, Bryan Fuller and Ryan Murphy), you know you really must stay tuned.