There are only a few days left of 2016, and we can't wait to see the end of this terrible season of Gotterdammerung. It's been a bad year for LGBT people, made worse by the exiting of President Obama and the failure to formally elect Hillary Clinton (three million more in the popular vote and she's not PEOTUS? Really, America?). Things portend to get worse under the how-did-this-happen Trump Administration, because in the pesky news-you're-not-seeing, most of the Cabinet has been involved in some way with the Family Research Council, the country's most virulently anti-gay organization, listed by the SPLC as a hate group. That's why LGBT papers like this one are more important than ever as voices of resistance, and why seeing ourselves reflected on the tube is essential.
One of the biggest TV stories of 2016 was how TV news and punditry were big contributors to Trump's election, according to Nielsen ratings. The Washington Post reported that Trump had received more TV coverage than any presidential candidate in U.S. history. The New York Times reported Trump received $2 billion worth of free media coverage, including airing of his rallies and speeches in prime time on CNN and MSNBC. Yet on Dec. 21, Trump tweeted: "I have not heard any of the pundits or commentators discussing the fact that I spent FAR LESS MONEY on the win than Hillary on the loss!" Alec Baldwin is going to have a great 2017 on SNL. The material is endless.
This was a vintage year for stellar TV, particularly dramatic series. Top on many lists are Game of Thrones and Westworld. We have never quite got past the plethora of rapes on GOT to truly enjoy it, but it's definitely a strong drama, and "Winter is coming" has special meaning now.
Westworld was a spectacular addition this year, and if you haven't watched, put it on your binge list. Based on the Michael Crichton novel and the 1973 film, it's a sci-fi Western thriller that's got a fabulous multiracial update by HBO that just sings. Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Evan Rachel Wood and James Marsden are the main cast members in the amusement park/android farm. It's complex, dynamic, incredibly compelling, one of the year's top dramas. Both these series make clear metaphorical statements about the dystopian society we are about to enter, so if you haven't watched, view them as primers for the way we live now.
TV series with a political edge have always held an especial lure for us, particularly in an election year, and politics did well on the tube in 2016. While some missed Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, we found satirical solace in Stewart's replacement, Trevor Noah, Stewart's former correspondent, Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show, and most especially Stewart's other long-time correspondent, Samantha Bee, on her fabulous Full Frontal.
No one took on Donald Trump with the ferocity of Samantha Bee, and we salute her for that and for regularly pointing out the sheer magnitude of the misogyny leveled at Hillary Clinton, which was rarely addressed elsewhere. Bee did some unnerving on-site interviews with people about Clinton that were pure theatre for their raw, exposed hatred of a powerful progressive woman.
Another Daily Show alum, Stephen Colbert, really brought his A game toward the end of the general election, and post-election his humor has gotten darker and more visceral. We like this Colbert. We hope he sticks around for the new year.
SNL had great moments this year as well. Kate McKinnon's Hillary Clinton, Kellyanne Conway and Angela Merkel showcased our fave lesbian comedian's breadth of impressions (she also does a great Justin Bieber, which appeals to the lesbian crowd). Larry David's Bernie Sanders was more Bernie than Bernie. Alec Baldwin's Trump was so good, it forced Trump onto Twitter every Saturday night like the out-of-control loon Hillary Clinton warned us about with her famous "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons" quote. Michael Che and Colin Jost also provided incisive political humor with SNL 's Weekend Update .
One of our fave political dramas for the seven seasons it ran, The Good Wife ended this year. The multi-Emmy-winning show had intrigue, dark humor, sexy bisexuals. Out gay actor Alan Cumming was Eli Gold, the man you love to hate, one of the best political manipulators ever on the tube. Archie Panjabi played the bisexual bombshell Kalinda Sharma. With kohl-rimmed eyes, lots of tight leather and a baseball bat in her SUV trunk, Kalinda could bed anyone into delivering whatever information she needed. Julianna Margulies was the eponymous good wife Alicia Florrick, forced by political scandal back into the courtroom. Alicia was a complex, multifaceted female character rarely seen on the small screen.
There were many solid LGBT storylines over the seven seasons The Good Wife ran, and it was a show that rarely failed to deliver with wry humor, strong acting and smart dialogue. It was a satisfying show with only one iffy season, and it portrayed both politics and the law from the ugly underside, no-holds-barred. Storylines weren't tidy, and by this year's final season, we began to see how there's rarely black-and-white in the legal or political worlds, just a multiplicity of often unsatisfying greys.
Robert and Michelle King, the writing duo responsible for The Good Wife, gave us the year's most enchanting political comedy-drama with BrainDead. That series was the coda on the 2016 political season, interpolating as it did background of Sanders, Trump and Clinton talking in real time. Set in Washington, DC inside Capitol Hill, BrainDead combined science fiction with politics and conspiracy theory in a delightfully witty and compelling fashion. Mary Elizabeth Winstead played the idealistic lead, Laurel Healy, a documentary filmmaker who runs out of money for her arcane project and is forced to go back home to live with her parents while she sorts herself. Her brother Luke (Danny Pino) is a sitting Democratic senator with a GOP nemesis, Red Wheatus (Tony Shaloub in a tour de force performance worthy of yet another Emmy). Enter the alien bugs that eat the brains of select politicos, with mayhem ensuing a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The 13-episode one-season wonder is well worth a look on Netflix and says more about the sausage-making of American politics than most want to see. CBS kept moving the series around, which we think contributed to its early cancellation, but perhaps Netflix will pick it up for more.
Honorable mention for political dramas that bleed into the myriad complexities of Real Life go to the queer-heavy The Family (though we'd like to see less killing off of lesbians of color on the tube, and this series was one of several to do that this season), Madam Secretary, Veep, House of Cards and American Gothic .
The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story won a much-deserved Emmy for lesbian actress Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) for her role as Marcia Clark. The stunning FX limited series (10 episodes) developed by gay showrunner Ryan Murphy was brilliant. Most performances were pitch-perfect, but Paulson, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran and Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden were especially memorable. This series was a revelation. Most of us thought we knew everything about the Trial of the Century, but the layers uncovered by the series were as compelling as they were maddening. Joining Murphy directing the series was John Singleton, the first African American to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Director (1991, Boyz in the Hood), and the strength of each episode reflects the attention from the directors. A truly stunning series and a must-see.
For their complexity as gay-focused series, the two best dramas were ABC's American Crime and USA's Eyewitness. (American Horror Story had a problematic sixth season.)
Eyewitness ended Dec. 18 in an extraordinary season finale, so we won't do spoilers in case you've been too enmeshed in holiday partying, but this is a series to watch on demand if you missed it. The 10-episode arc is reminiscent of ITV's Broadchurch and its American remake, Fox's Gracepoint, with regard to the claustrophobia of a small town and how a crime in a closed community throws suspicion on outsiders and otherizes people quickly.
We liked Eyewitness for its dramatic tension, its raw sensuality and its realistic portrayals of the panoply of gay experience. The cast is flawless, from the two relative unknowns playing the young gay characters to Julianne Nicholson, playing the central detective character, Sheriff Helen Torrance. We're still mulling over the finale and may have to watching the entire 10 episodes again.
No series has stuck with us this year like American Crime. Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) created this remarkable series in 2015. Like American Horror Story, it runs in discrete, anthology-style chapters utilizing the same main actors each season.
Ridley is addressing a lot here. Race, class, gender, sexuality, violence. The focus of season two was the alleged rape of a high school boy by a fellow male student while the two were attending an elite private school.
It was a shocking storyline. As the season evolved, the complexities of the relationships were revealed: the interactions between the two boys who had sexted prior to the alleged rape, the feelings each boy had about what had happened, the way gayness is addressed by the working-class versus the middle- and upper-classes. Stellar performances by the two boys �" Connor Jessup as Taylor Blaine, the victim; and Joey Pollari as Eric Tanner, the accused rapist �" kept viewers as confused as the people surrounding the two boys. Eric didn't seem like a rapist. Taylor didn't seem like a victim. They were both gay, or at least Eric was. Taylor had a girlfriend, and his bisexuality was both part of his attraction and part of the conflict. Both boys were working-class in a school for wealthy elites. Eric, a basketball star, fit in as a natural leader. Taylor, a more creative and artistic boy, hovered on the margins.
The cast was extraordinary. Lili Taylor has been nominated for an Emmy for her remarkable portrayal of Taylor's mother Anne, a diner hostess who has done everything to reconnect with her son and get him into the school. Felicity Huffman, nominated last season and this, plays the icy and manipulative head mistress of the school. Regina King, who won an Emmy for season one and is nominated again for season two, plays Terri LaCroix, the high-powered black businesswoman whose life is changed when her son is initially accused in the rape. Timothy Hutton is Dan Sullivan, the coach whose wife smokes pot and whose daughter sells pills and who disbelieves his players could have been involved in either the rape or a subsequent beating of the victim.
Ridley's provocative counterpoint of adults and teens, whites and blacks, blacks and Latinos, working-class and upper-middle-class, gay/bi/straight makes this drama so rich, so believable, it makes you ache with the realness. The intense nature of the sexuality is raw and dangerously edgy for TV. We found it disturbingly reminiscent of our own high school experience (we were the working-class student expelled from our elite all-girls high school for being a lesbian).
The interactions between and among the various characters are palpably realistic. We feel deeply for Taylor, but we also feel deeply for Eric. The adults seem far more lost than the teens and unable to bridge the chasm of age and experience to help their children. Violence simmers throughout. Race, gender, class, sexual orientation are all ultimately irrelevant. Ridley shows us how violence is always just beneath the surface of our psyches, how little is required to trigger it, and how all the maxims about how class or race or gender define it really aren't true �" it's circumstance. Always and inevitably. There were many powerful series this year, but none as strong as American Crime. If you missed it, Netflix it or watch it on Hulu. It's a remarkable piece of real filmmaking and one of the most memorable series ever on TV.
There were other series that deserved attention this year, perhaps none as underrated as The Americans, now in its fifth season. This show, about two Soviet agents living in America in the 1980s, is both period piece and provocative coda on the incoming administration. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell play Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings, suburban couple by day, KGB agents by night. This series should have strained credulity and become a little silly by now. Instead it has developed a depth and a dark humor that have taken it to another level. Like Masters of Sex, The Americans delves deeply into the psyches of the central characters and makes us question what exactly is meant by loyalty, fealty, love, betrayal. We don't talk about this show much because it doesn't have a gay element, but it does have a smartness and verisimilitude to it that never cease to keep us intrigued and wanting more. Definitely one of the year's best.
How to Get Away with Murder and Empire are on our best list for their serious and consistent portrayals of gay and bisexual characters, stellar acting �" there really are few actresses on the tube as good as Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson �" and solid writing. Both series are the creations of out gay male showrunners, Peter Nowalk and Lee Daniels respectively. These series reel in the viewer with weekly cliffhangers: You just have to know what happens next.
Four new horror/supernatural thrillers we fell in love with in 2016 are on our best list: Stranger Things, Falling Water, Luke Cage and The Exorcist. Watch their first seasons so you can be prepped for the next round in early 2017.
We don't love comedy like we do drama, but there's a lot of great comedy on the tube right now, so you have many choices, including web TV. Our favorites for consistency are black-ish, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Transparent, American Housewife, The Real O'Neals, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Broad City, Archer, Fresh Off the Boat and Orange Is the New Black. All hilarious, and yes, one needs comedy these days. It's still seemingly easier to stick LGBT characters into comedy than drama for reasons we have yet to discern. These shows either pivot off a gay or trans character or include gay or trans characters. Some even have lesbians, a rare sighting on the tube these days, and when you do see them, they may be killed off quickly.
As the year draws to a close that is a lament of ours: With so much seriously good TV, why is there still so little lesbian and gay TV? Yes, we can find characters here and there, and some shows surprise us, like This Is Us or Notorious or The Exorcist, with a sudden gay reveal. But where are the shows that pivot off the lesbian and gay characters the way Transparent does the trans lead? Why are the majority of lesbians on series TV actually bisexuals, and why do so many of them end up dead? We watched three lesbians of color get killed off in the space of a month. Why was Looking a bust, and how is it nearly 2017 and we haven't had a show like The L Word or Queer as Folk in a decade?
Jill Soloway proved with Transparent that LGBT TV with a primary LGBT character can work. If Oprah can keep producing shows about black lives, why isn't someone like Ellen DeGeneres or Neil Patrick Harris tossing some money into lesbian and gay shows of similar breadth and quality? We choose those two because they are omnipresent on TV and are both out.
The beautiful and provocative Queen Sugar, created and directed by Ava DuVernay, was executive produced by Oprah, and wouldn't have happened without her. A story about black women told by a black woman directed by a black woman on a network owned by a black woman. How much more authentic can one get? We need lesbian and gay TV like this. We need lesbian and gay TV like the solid and serious trans TV we are seeing, be it HBO's The Trans List or Soloway's series, which has been an Emmy juggernaut and made people focus on the importance of telling trans stories from a trans perspective. (We know Soloway isn't trans, but her parent is, and so are her consultants.)
Every time we attach to a lesbian character, she's killed off. Gay male characters are still, for the most part, being neutered unless they are written by a gay male showrunner like Nowalk, Murphy or Daniels. Bisexual characters are treated dishonestly and often fetishistically. So as a year of stellar TV draws to a close, we look to 2017 for more and better lesbian and gay TV, more and better evocations of lesbian and gay lives, more fair and honest representations of bisexuals, more trans characters of the caliber we've been seeing. These are not extreme requests so many years after Stonewall. If network TV can produce a series of the caliber and raw and complex gayness of American Crime, it can do it more than once.
So a Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for all your support and good wishes this year as we have recovered from this catastrophic health crisis. Here's hoping in 2017 you will continue to stay tuned.