We can't open every column with Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, besides which we aren't so convinced there's any "best of times" these days. So we're moving directly to Comedy Central's Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, without whom we might be going just a little bit insane at this point in the election cycle that makes Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature seem positively 4th St.
On Oct. 12, Bee's correspondent Allana Harkin interviewed some Trump supporters at a rally about Hillary Clinton's qualifications to be president. One guy enumerates that she's been a First Lady, senator, Secretary of State. Harkin says, "I'm impressed already," and the guy looks at her and says, "But I mean what has she done?"
The last guy among the interviewees, a millennial for Trump, is the piece de resistance. He says, "I would hope we wouldn't go to war during her menstrual cycle and she doesn't get too emotional" to which Harkin says, "I know, because honestly, I'm about to get my period like any minute, and I want to f-cking rip your head off."
At which point The Wife turns to us and says, "This guy and Trump should be worried that every woman in America gets her period at the same time and we come after them with blood coming out of our eyes, blood coming out of our wherever," referencing Trump's comments about Megyn Kelly last year, which now seem so G-rated. Count out the days, folks, count out the days.
There we were, unable to sleep and perusing Twitter at 4 a.m. on Oct. 14, and what do we see but two more breaking news stories from The New York Times and The Daily Beast about Donald Trump and tapes from his TV days on NBC's The Apprentice. What more could there be? On Oct. 10, Entertainment Tonight 's co-anchor Nancy O'Dell spoke out at the top of the show about Trump's statements to O'Dell's former co-host Billy Bush (we always thought he was one of the sleaziest members of the Bush family, so take that in) at Access Hollywood about going after her when his current wife Melania was pregnant: "I tried hard to f-ck her."
O'Dell said, "As a journalist for 26 years now, it is my job to bring you news about others, rather than turning the focus on myself. But by now, I'm sure that most of you have heard the audiotape that became national news and part of the presidential race. My name was mentioned, and unfortunately, the release of it has thrown me into the middle of the political arena, of which I didn't ask to be a part. There is no room for objectification of women, or anybody for that matter, not even in the 'locker room.'"
Arianne Zucker, another object of Trump's comments on the 2005 audiotape (he was about to be working with her on Days of Our Lives ) said simply, "It's not about me." But on the tape, Trump is heard commenting on Zucker's legs and saying he wants to "use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her." He adds, "You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait." Tic Tacs issued their own response via Twitter: "Tic Tac respects all women. We find the recent statements and behavior completely inappropriate and unacceptable."
SNL did a promo for Tic Tacs on Weekend Update with a man's hand holding a container of orange (of course) Tic Tacs with the caption, "Grab Bad Breath by the Pussy."
SNL did some housecleaning over the summer and came back stronger than ever with less bro-ness and more adult humor. Out gay writer Chris Kelly joins Sarah Schneider as co-head writer. We hope this means more work for the solo out member of the cast, Kate McKinnon, and more LGBT skits on the show. We will miss Alec Baldwin's spectacular more-Trump-than-Trump on SNL when Clinton wipes the floor with Trump on Nov. 8 �" or Nov. 28, as Trump told a rally on Oct. 12. "Be sure to get to the polls Nov. 28, folks." Seth Meyers said on his show after airing a clip of Trump saying "get out and vote Nov. 28," "I can already hear Trump saying Nov. 9, 'CNN is so biased, they're already saying Hillary won, when the election is 19 days away.'"
Of course Trump is saying the election is rigged, specifically by black voters in majority black Philadelphia, and that he's not sure he will accept the results of the election if he's not the winner, so we may see Baldwin on SNL longer. Who knows.
As CNN reported Oct. 12, a woman identifying herself as Rhonda told Mike Pence at a rally in Newton, Iowa, "Our lives depend on this election. Our kids' futures depend on this election, and I will tell you for me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I'm ready for a revolution, because we can't have her in."
Pence, looking nervous, told her, "Don't say that," then added, "There's a revolution coming on Nov. 8. I promise you." (Or Nov. 28, depending on whom you talk to.) Rhonda said, "What are we going to do to safeguard our votes? Because we've seen how the Democratic Party is just crooked, crooked, crooked."
But we digress. We were going to tell you about how Mark Burnett, producer of The Apprentice, says there's more horror on the tapes of the show, but he can't release them because of contracts and residuals. But The Daily Beast revealed some of what was on the tapes. Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin, who's also been on myriad TV shows and has been nominated for four Emmys, was a runner-up on a season of Celebrity Apprentice. On that show, where she was raising money for a deaf charity, and raised the most of any single contestant, apparently Trump tried to grab her by the Tic Tacs, and when she demurred, according to several staffers, he called her retarded. On Oct. 14 out gay actor George Takei (Star Trek) quipped, "Trump referred to actress Marlee Matlin as 'retarded' because she's deaf. Matlin said she expected this from Trump because he's dumb."
According to The Daily Beast, Celebrity Apprentice staffers said Trump "had a habit of insulting, mimicking, and demeaning as mentally handicapped his star female contestant, all because she was deaf."
Richard Hatch, the first winner of Survivor and an out gay man who was also on the show, told People magazine, "Watching him in the boardroom making sexual comments to Marlee Matlin, to all of the women on The Apprentice, it was obvious that that's just a part of who he is. It was obvious and it was grotesque. It was blatant and it was frequent. He did it with Lisa Rinna, he did it with Marlee Matlin. He did it with whoever happened to be there at the time. He did it in front of Ivanka [Trump, his daughter]. That was not just uncomfortable for me. It was weird."
Hatch told ET, "He doesn't engage with women normally. I think he thinks he's complimenting people, when he's practically drooling. My guess would be that he would describe it as flirting."
Meanwhile, let's not forget that for National Coming Out Day his running mate renewed his calls for conversion therapy for LGBT people. What a pair.
Real deal
Speaking of gayness, The Real O'Neals is back, and we like it more than we did last season. It's sweet, and when was the last time you saw a scripted show with a gay lead? Exactly. Plus RuPaul is a recurring figure on the show, and we can never have enough RuPaul. Kenny's internal monologues all feature LGBT notables this season. In addition to RuPaul, there's Emmy winner and Glee alum Jane Lynch, Lance Bass, Tim Gunn, Tyler Oakley and token heterosexual Jimmy Kimmel.
On the premiere episode that aired National Coming Out Day, Kenny (Noah Galvin really is just delightful in this role, and out himself) decides he's going to bring people out of the closet and make it better for the other LGBT people at his school. His Catholic school. Hilarity ensues. Kenny decides to start an LGBT club, saying excitedly, "If I build it, they will come out." Kenny also thinks other LGBT kids will join because, well, "I've done a lot for them" by coming out himself. But only one student, Allison (Ramona Young), an Asian lesbian, shows up. Allison isn't out to her family and spends all her time trying to blend in, wearing brown to hide in the background. There's a moral to the story, of course, because sitcoms, unlike real-life politics, always have morals. Kenny realizes he's pushing Allison too hard, and that it might actually make her life hell to come out to her family. At the end she turns up in lavender, and he apologizes to her.
"It was wrong of me to force you to come out to your parents before you're ready. That's not my call to make," Kenny tells Allison. "It was important for me. I got caught up in my experience, and how now that I'm out, everybody else should be, too. But my journey is not yours. You have to come out when it's safe and right for you."
A difficult message to deliver, or to hear for those of us who have been out forever, but as long as people like Trump and Pence are waving conversion therapy like a red flag in front of a bull, it makes sense. Will Allison be a recurring character? We hope so, even though it means yet another lesbian person of color filling that two-for-one slot on a show with only white people. Nevertheless, we'll take it.
There are two more lesbians of color that have been added to the TV landscape this season. Sarah Dunn's new ABC sitcom American Housewife premiered next to The Real O'Neals. The show stars Katie Mixon (Mike & Molly) as Katie Otto, a fat (not really) housewife in skinny suburbia. She has a black lesbian friend, Angela (Carly Hughes) and a straight Asian friend (San Francisco stand-up comic Ali Wong, who is brilliant; if you ever get the chance to see her, run to do so). Mixon, Hughes and Wong are all exceptional. The show, however, should be titled Fat Housewife, because the only topic of discussion (despite Katie having three kids, one of whom may be autistic) is weight, weight, weight. Heavy sigh.
On Greg Berlanti's Supergirl, which has been moved to the CW from CBS (a better fit), we have one of the first-ever LGBT characters in the DC Comics world in lesbian cop Maggie Sawyer (Floriana Lima). The Hollywood Reporter asserts she even had a relationship with Batwoman. We'd love to see some flashbacks of that. Lima played the sexy bisexual Latina reporter Bridey Cruz on ABC's The Family last season, where she became one of several lesbian/bisexual women of color to be killed off violently in various series, which upset us on many levels. Hopefully Maggie Sawyer lasts longer.
Speaking of queers of color dying on the tube, we were a little stunned (spoiler alert) to have Levi (Ramon De Ocampo) blow his brains out seconds after revealing his sexual orientation on the Oct. 13 episode of Notorious as he stands before a veritable shrine to his beloved, Oscar (Kevin Zegers), who is currently in prison for killing his wife, Sarah (Dilshad Vadsaria, another woman of color). We'd been waiting for the reveal, since Levi turned out to be the one catfishing his business partner and best friend as a sexy blonde porn star. But when Julia (Piper Perabo) turns up at his house and they talk and suddenly out comes the gun and she gets sprayed with his very realistic brains, we were stunned.
We had hoped to see some kind of resolution to Levi and Oscar that didn't involve suicide. Plus, we still don't know who killed Sarah. We just see her elegantly murdered body at the opening of each episode. There has to be a better way to introduce LGBT people of color to the TV landscape. Oh wait, there is! On Peter Nowalk's (yes, he's gay) How to Get Away with Murder, we saw not one but two complex gay storylines play out in one episode on Oct. 13.
Annalise (Viola Davis) is still toying with Eve (Famke Janssen). We know Annalise is a monster, but we feel she's redeemable, not deplorable, so we can't quit her, but geez, the way she plays with Eve is like watching kids pull the wings off flies. Fascinating in a way, yet horrifying, too. We think they might end up together again because Annalise has sent Nate packing, but Eve is moving to San Francisco to live with some other real, full-time lesbian, so they just make out. Then Eve tells Annalise she can't, she just can't fall back into bed with her. Except we can see she wants to, so we hope she takes out a short lease in SF, because you never know.
Meanwhile, Connor and Oliver are still inexplicably broken up because of Oliver's strange ethical obsession, so they talk about sex all the time and are both on Grindr, but not actually hooking up with anyone. Or are they? Connor thinks Oliver is hooking up, so he goes to meet two boys who look pretty young: one white, one black (because this show is really trying to follow the Shonda Rhimes racial balance guidelines Nowalk learned when he was at Grey's Anatomy, even though we disbelieve that scenario with Connor entirely, but points for multiculturalism). Connor asks to see the boys' ID, they show him, he tosses them each condoms, they strip, and tighty whities go flying.
Later, Connor and Oliver are talking at a birthday party for Wes, and Oliver says he can't find dates because of his HIV+ status. It's a bittersweet moment because Connor says they should get back together, but Oliver says no and we still don't get it. Feels tortured when Connor doesn't care about Oliver's status because he's doing PreP and he loves him, but Oliver is messed up. So that's how it's done. Real life, real sex, real emotion. Why we love TGIT.
Finally, let's do the time warp again! Oct. 20 Fox debuts Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and the delectable Adam Lambert as Eddie in the remake of the cult classic that we actually saw more than 40 times while in college, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Ben Vereen plays Dr. Everett Scott (great Scott!) and Tim Curry, who originated the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, plays the Narrator.
Cox was on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Oct. 13 looking soigneé and talking about her role. The film debuted that night at the Roxy in L.A. At the premiere, to which she brought her mother, Cox told Billboard, "I am a black transgender woman from Mobile, Alabama, from a working-class background who is starring in Rocky Horror Picture Show. The movie is about freedom and embracing who you are. Letting go of all your inhibitions. I hope that's what people take away, that anything is possible."
So for sweet transvestites from Transylvania, earnest Catholic schoolboys trying to open the closet, and the continuing saga of that monster the GOP created, you know you really must stay tuned.