What a time to be alive. Three political debates in one week, all post-election day? Who doesn't love that? Political junkies like we are just revel in this stuff. Especially with gay suicides on scripted TV like Madam Secretary, Blindspot and Scandal book-ending the candidates in one week of TV.
Let's talk Hotel Cortez. On Nov. 11 the cast of Ryan Murphy's most over-the-top season of his F/X series American Horror Story had a sit-down with reporters and dished the Hotel season. We have to admit, Hotel has been a little bit bloody for us. Did Lady Gaga's Countess have to do that to Tristan (Finn Wittrock)? Did Dr. Alex (Chloe Sevigny) really bring The Baby back to the Countess? One of our fave couplings this season has been Liz Taylor (not the Liz Taylor, but sort of) and boy toy Tristan. But as we know, Tristan belongs to the Countess, and sharing is so not in her wheelhouse. Wittrock is such a good actor. His scene-stealing role as Dandy on AHS: Freak Show last season was the best in the season.
Out gay actor and Tony Award winner Denis O'Hare has been so good this season. He was nominated for an Emmy for season one of AHS, and it will be criminal if he's not nommed again for this season. O'Hare's playing a character oh-so-different from any of his previous roles. As O'Hare told the Television Critic's Association press tour, "I'm playing Liz Taylor, movie icon. I'm not actually playing Elizabeth Taylor, but I'm playing a person who is inspired by the awesomeness of things like Butterfield 8 and Cleopatra and eye makeup like that. I shaved my head for the part and other body parts."
At the AHS set-side chat with reporters on Nov. 11, Oscar nominee Angela Bassett (Ramona Royale) said of her lesbian role this season, "Being in a sexual situation with the Countess, having to sign a nudity waiver about how it was going to go, that was the scariest [moment]." Ramona had an affair with Gaga's Countess. According to Variety, Bassett said that the iconic singer talked her through their over-the-top sex scene. Ever the jokestress, Gaga got Bassett a cake for her birthday (can you believe that body is 57?). The cake-topper? Bassett and Gaga having sex. Wonder how Bassett's longtime hubby, actor Courtney B. Vance, feels about that.
O'Hare also talked sex scenes. The erstwhile character actor apparently never had one until Hotel. Referring to his scenes with Wittrock's Tristan, O'Hare said, "I had a sex scene this year, my first one ever, which I was terrified by because I'm a character actor. I'm not called upon to flash some ass, and that was uncomfortable for me. I tried to make sure my sex partner was always blocking me." Job. Well. Done.
We keep hoping to see Liz Taylor get into the sack with Det. Lowe (the gorgeous Wes Bentley: we've wanted to see more of him since his malevolent turn on AHS: Freak Show with his amazing beard). That scene at the bar. Oh. My.
O'Hare also said Hotel tapped into a lot of his own tortured history because of the character he is playing. "I am a 53-year-old gay man who had to come out in the 80s, when it wasn't fashionable. I was a Catholic, so I had a very painful experience with being gay. This role was sort of putting the finger directly in that wound and forcing me to confront that." O'Hare is now happily married, and he and his husband have an adopted son.
So was there dish about Gaga? Is she a diva? Hard to work with? Cat-fights? Apparently, Lady Gaga is indeed a lady, and everyone loves working with her. She threw a big party for the entire cast and crew prior to the show filming to break the ice. She's not a scene-stealer. Out gay actor Matt Bomer (Donovan) noted, "It's interesting because you don't realize what a huge cultural figure you're working with." Talking about his young children asking about Gaga, Bomer said, "Oh my god, am I cool?" Yes. You. Are.
Speaking of cool, can we just say Jordan Smith is the star of this season of NBC's The Voice? The unlikely star knocked everyone's stilettoes off with his rendition of Sia's "Chandelier," and it's been what the judges would call "an amazing journey" ever since.
We aren't huge fans of The Voice, which has gotten a little too country for us this season, but we do love Smith, who could not be a more unlikely star. Smith got all four judges buzzing for him. All four gave him a standing O, and Gwen Stefani had to run over, give him a hug and tell him how amazing he was. Smith is the prototype for the bullied kid at school who was a little too gay, too fat and too geeky. We hope his rising star serves as a giant FU to everyone who gave him grief. He's a semi-finalist as of this week, so let's hope he makes it to the final five.
Dark shadows
Smith's success aside, it doesn't always get better, as most of us who are LGBT know too well. It didn't get better for any of the gay and lesbian characters spotlighted this week on the tube. Suicide remains the only alternative for some people, because homophobia and lesbophobia are still such a thing, and the closet is a dark place filled with demons. On CBS' Madam Secretary, one of Henry's (Tim Daly) students at the War College alerts him that another student, Ivan, will be risking his life if he returns to Russia because he's gay and a crackdown on homosexuals is happening. (Madam Secretary shadows the current state of global affairs closely.)
But Henry's effort at bringing him in to defect backfires. After dressing in his uniform, Ivan, whose father would rather see him dead than gay, gets out his service revolver, and one shot to the head. We watch the blood fan out in a halo around his head like a Russian religious icon. It's a chilling moment when we realize, with Henry, what is going to happen. The careful dressing in the uniform. The message left on Henry's voicemail. Henry racing through the quad and up the steps, two, three at a time, to Ivan's room, kicking in the door with the adrenaline of a man desperate to save a life. Too late.
On the Nov. 12 episode of Scandal, Navid is a translator for the Imir of Bandar, a fictional stand-in for Saudi Arabia and a not-so-subtle reference to Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the U.S., 1981-2005. As he translates for Olivia (Kerry Washington) at a White House dinner, he tells her he wants to defect. In a series of events he is forced to reveal state secrets first, but when they don't appear to pan out, he is denied asylum and slices open an artery with a scalpel.
Olivia races to Navid in much the same way Henry races to Ivan. We feel the adrenaline pumping. When she breaks into the room to find him on the floor, blood pulsing out of him, we are certain he will die. So. Much. Blood. But thanks to Liv, who now looks Jackie Kennedy-esque with her suit stained with Navid's blood, he survives. His tearful revelation that he is gay is gutting and unexpected. Navid is more than willing to leave Bandar for America "to stop living in fear." Tragedy is averted, but as lesbian and gay viewers know, homosexuals in Saudi Arabia and 75 other countries can be imprisoned and/or put to death for being gay. Iran has a particularly gruesome practice: enforced sex changes for gay men and lesbians. So Navid's is one life saved. But in the real world, there are many more.
On Greg Berlanti's fabulous new NBC show Blindspot, Bethany Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) was just revealed as a lesbian. The revelation is tragic, because her lover, Deputy White House Political Director Sophia Varma (gorgeous Sarita Choudhury), ends up killing herself. Too many service revolvers. The whole episode is about the perils of being gay: a black football star is being blackmailed for being gay by corrupt cops in a storyline that is entirely too realistic.
We appreciate seeing these storylines folded into some of the best of TV's scripted dramas. We just wish it weren't so easy for writers to say, "Hey, how about a gay suicide for this episode?" and everyone in the writers' room knowing it will be hyperrealism 101.
This leads us inexorably to real life. We learned on the Nov. 12 CBS evening news that a married lesbian Mormon couple in Utah is fighting to keep their foster child. April Hoagland and Beckie Pierce were approved to foster a child months ago. The baby, now nine months old, has been living with the couple almost from birth. On Nov. 10 Utah Judge Scott Johansen ordered that the child be removed from their home to "go to a heterosexual couple" because according to him, studies show kids do better with heterosexual parents than with homosexual ones. (Studies actually say there's no difference.) Utah's Director of Child Services believes this is Mormon overreach. The biological mother of the baby girl has requested that the child stay with Hoagland and Pierce. An appeal of the ruling will be heard in December. But we would just remind everyone that children have been removed from lesbian mothers for decades. It hasn't stopped. The politics of who gets to be a family hasn't stopped. Witness the current political debate season.
We really liked the Democratic forum moderated by our lesbian in the media, Rachel Maddow. It was a good forum with tough questions (well, at least for Hillary Clinton), and the one-on-one format gave viewers a clearer picture of each candidate. Sure, Maddow is unabashedly feeling the Bern, but it still felt like we came away knowing more than we did coming in. It was good to know that Martin O'Malley is just as stiff and robotic sitting across from one interviewer as he is standing at a podium.
The GOP debate, though? Wonkier than the CNBC debate last month, but softballing Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is not the right play. At some point these sons of immigrants are going to have to address immigration. Then we'll see if their numbers continue to rise.
Everyone talks about Jeb's poor debate skills, but Trump hates the debates, and when the camera is not on him he seems to take lizard naps. We're seeing Trump's star fading, much as we believe Ben Carson is the truly crazy one on that stage. Can't you see him wandering the halls of Hotel Cortez in AHS talking about pyramids filled with grain, stabbing friends and hitting his mama with a hammer?
Because this debate was hosted by Fox, the news you didn't see was about Kevin Swanson. He's an extremist "Christian" pastor and radio talk-show host whose anti-gay, anti-woman rhetoric would put ISIS to shame. Swanson hosted an event for the Republicans. Freedom 2015: National Religious Liberties Conference was a conference of "Christian" demagogues looking for their perfect candidate. Pastor Swanson wants gays and lesbians put to death by the government, which he says makes sense because other countries do it. Swanson has said that if his son were to marry another man (hmm, is his son gay and just not out of the closet yet?), he would "show up at the wedding and smear his body with cow manure." Wow, he's really thought that one out.
None of this kind of stuff happens for the Democrats. The Nov. 14 debate looked as sane and rational as the previous debate and forum. CBS Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson was the central moderator for the Iowa debate, along with CBS political correspondent Nancy Cordes and well-known Iowa journalists Kevin Cooney and Kathie Obradovich. Before the event Dickerson told the Des Moines Register, "The goal of the moderator is to illuminate the views of the candidates on the issues that matter the most to voters, and you don't need to be on the side of the party to do that." Nice disclaimer.
No more debates until right before Christmas. On Dec. 15 what remains of the GOP candidates will joust in Las Vegas for CNN, and on Dec. 19 the Democrats will be in New Hampshire on ABC. So for the political Sturm und Drang, for the blood and the guts of AHS, for the dulcet tones of Jordan Smith, and for the next gay suicide story-line, you really must stay tuned.