Thank the gods for SNL, Full Frontal and Stephen Colbert's Late Show. We've never needed political comedy more. President Trump's Feb. 16 press conference may have seemed like one of those open mic nights at a low-rent comedy club, but we all know this crossed the line from comedy to horror weeks ago.
Stephen Colbert spent his Feb. 16 monologue riffing off the alt-facts press conference, mimicking Trump in a restaurant.
Waiter: "Can I start you off with something to drink?"
Trump: "I HAD THE BIGGEST ELECTORAL COLLEGE VICTORY!"
If only it were satire.
Colbert had been more benign during the primary and general election, though he never ruffled Trump's hair like Jimmy Fallon did on The Tonight Show. He's taken the gloves off and gone straight to "lie" and "f---," ripping into Trump and his many minions, like Stephen Miller, who had said on the Sunday talk shows that "the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."
Colbert gave his most stunned expression and said, "Will not be questioned? Let me test that theory. What the f--- are you talking about?"
Miller had said he was "prepared to go on any show, anytime, anywhere," so Colbert issued an invitation to Miller for the Late Show. Colbert said, "Listen, if you don't show up, I'm going to call you a liar. And if you do show up, I'm going to call you a liar to your face."
Spoiler alert: Miller did not show up.
It's hard to fathom how we've gone from zero to Watergate in less than a month, but some people did warn us this would happen. She warned us repeatedly.
SNL has also saved us this season. In addition to Alec Baldwin's Trump, Melissa McCarthy's Sean "Spicy" Spicer is possibly the best political interpretation ever, and gives us something to look forward to over these bleak weeks of Gotterdammerung. If you have somehow been off the planet and missed this bit of comedic brilliance, the segments are available on YouTube and Hulu.
Kate McKinnon, the only out member of the SNL cast, is playing several characters in the Trump team. McKinnon's best work is her brilliantly dark and increasingly damaged Kellyanne Conway, who on the Feb. 12 episode tried to stab CNN's Jake Tapper to death in a political rendering of Fatal Attraction. Not desperate for an affair, but desperate to get back on Tapper's show after he banned her for inventing the "Bowling Green Massacre."
McKinnon's also added Betsy DeVos and an incredibly creepy Jeff Sessions to her retinue. Her Angela Merkel provides some balance �" just like real life. She also debuted a hyper-realistic Elizabeth Warren, touting the evils of Wall Street.
Will McKinnon ever play Hillary Clinton again? On Feb. 16, The People's President, as Michael Moore and millions of others refer to her now, was snapped dining with McKinnon in New York. The photo of the two women graced Page Six of the NY Post. The paper reported Clinton was dining with McKinnon at Orso restaurant prior to seeing Glenn Close (Damages, The Shield) in Sunset Boulevard. "Lots of laughter emanated from their table," it was reported. Does this mean Clinton herself might be hosting SNL, where she's appeared in segments over the past year?
On Full Frontal, Samantha Bee took on Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who could be calling for impeachment right now were he not, as Bee called him, Trump's "faithful husky." She referenced news anchors calling Ryan the "intellectual leader of the party" and quipped, "In today's Republican Party, that's kind of like saying Moe is the smart Stooge."
In a segment titled Paul Ryan: Portrait in Courage, Bee explained, "Watching Ryan play moral watchdog was like watching Taylor Swift pretend to be surprised at an awards show �" bland and fake, but weirdly compelling. Take another cue from Taylor Swift, Mr. Speaker," Bee continued, comparing Trump to Tom Hiddleston. "Know when to dump the guy you've only been pretending to like to help your career. It's kind of hurting your 'moral compass of the party' brand."
She put her finger on the entire GOP when she queried, "How did a principled social and fiscal conservative like Ryan wind up in bed with a bigoted, adulterous grope machine who wants to blow $25 billion on a coyote urinal?"
Woke up
We have really been looking forward to Ryan Murphy's Feud: Bette and Joan, which begins on FX March 5. So we could have done without seeing Susan Sarandon on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes on Feb. 15. Ratings wars being what they are, Hayes thought he'd bump his up by antagonizing millions with a Sarandon interview.
The short version, ICYMI, is Sarandon thinks it's great Trump is president because people are "woke" now, by which she means privileged white people, since the rest of us were already "woke" and hoping for a progressive administration with a platform hammered out between Clinton, Sanders and some high-powered women of color and a few gay guys.
Hayes took on Sarandon, who had previously said Trump would be better than Clinton because Clinton was �" since Sarandon never looked at her platform �" "status quo." It was a messy fight, as Hayes asked if she regretted her refusal to vote for Clinton (Sarandon had supported Nader in 2000 and 2004, so this is her second execrable vote) and Sarandon accused Hayes, who has won Emmys for his reporting, of not being a real journalist. "Can you look me in the eyes and tell me you are doing your job to cover these issues completely?" the actress asked. "We don't need to have a conversation about my imagination about where Trump was going to be."
"Excuse me," Hayes shot back. "I spend all day covering things."
Welp.
Sarandon was skewered on social media. It was probably a bad day for her to also float the idea that her "sexuality is up for grabs." Poor choice of words, given the guy she helped elect's fave phrase about women.
And we'll just state for the record that some of us are weary of lesbians being viewed as some consolation prize for straight women who are struggling to attract the men they want as they get older. Yes, it's cool to be queer. It's more cool to just be a good ally.
That said, Feud: Bette and Joan is some of Murphy's best work, and for those of us for whom Davis and Crawford are gay camp icons and the films and stories of old Hollywood were an escape, the series is perfection.
The storyline is simple but not simplistic, and focuses on the making of the 1962 thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which the two �" who had a legendary hate for each other �" starred.
Sarandon, for all her politically jejune parroting, is very, very good as a less mean Bette Davis than we've been led to believe the legendary actress was. Think All About Eve and you have a keen sense of the route Sarandon has taken with Davis' character. She does have a few moments right out of Thelma and Louise, and you will recognize them when you see them.
Jessica Lange, unsurprisingly since she has been the focal point of several seasons of American Horror Story, is a spectacular and nuanced Joan Crawford whose facial expressions are just amazing.
Both women are Oscar winners, and it was genius casting on Murphy's part. The sets are incredible, and Murphy uses tone beautifully, as he has in American Horror Story.
Feud has a brilliant award-winning supporting cast as well: Stanley Tucci, Alfred Molina, Judy Davis, Sarah Paulson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Kathy Bates.
More than anything this is a series about what it is to be an aging star in Hollywood, and that story is, regrettably, largely unchanged in the 55 years since Davis and Crawford made What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Consider that Gloria Swanson was only 50 when she made Sunset Boulevard, but the she's treated in the script as if she were ancient. In the updated Broadway adaptation, Glenn Close is, like Sarandon, 70. Yet in 1990 when she starred as Gertrude in Hamlet, she played Mel Gibson's mother. They are only eight years apart in age.
There are exchanges between Davis and Crawford that are sharp and brutal and oh-so-real as Davis tells Crawford to wear a lighter lipstick and ditch the iconic shoulder pads because both make her look older and more severe. "I'm trying to help you here," she says.
It's fascinating that Murphy has done such great directing with women and really allowed some actresses, like Paulson, to do their best work. Murphy has also made space for many actresses who are over 50, which is an age where women fall off the sexual screen �" big, little and real-life.
Navigating this series must have been uncomfortable terrain for Sarandon and Lange, who were, unlike the two women they portray, quite beautiful and highly sexualized ing�nues in their respective youth. Looking age in the literal face, even as these women remain strikingly attractive seniors, cannot have been easy �" which makes for an even more impressively realistic rendering of the characters.
Every time we've seen a promo for the eight-hour mini-series When We Rise, we've hoped that Vice President Pence and the other anti-LGBT folks within the Trump administration are seeing it and cringing at the thought of the "normalization" of LGBT lives over several nights, with a Congressional address given by Trump sandwiched between the first and third episodes.
We remember so clearly the first time we met Cleve Jones, and Guy Pearce feels very believable as Jones �" driven and earnest. Dustin Lance Black has said in several interviews that he wrote the series with the broadest audience in mind, and he hoped all Americans �" even Donald Trump �" would like it.
That broad appeal is evident in the first episode in which the main characters in their younger forms become acquainted with San Francisco and the gay and lesbian communities. They �" and we �" are folded into the history of how they meet each other and also meet some of the legendary LGBT activists who quite literally changed our world.
Every time we have seen the promo over the past two months we have fought back tears. We are old enough to have lived through much of this time. We were among the first journalists to be writing about the AIDS epidemic in the mainstream press, and our memories are and will forever be visceral.
There are elements of When We Rise that will feel tame and restrained �" particularly as we have expanded the sexual landscape on both large and small screen to incorporate gay and lesbian sexuality. That said, When We Rise has �" largely due to Gus Van Sant's direction in the opening episodes �" a monumentality to it, even in the briefest scenes. Part of this is because we know what's coming, this being history, and part of this is because it is OUR history.
If you are tempted to give When We Rise a pass because you already know everything there is to know about the San Francisco LGBT movement and the AIDS crisis and the Names Quilt, try to check that cynicism. More than perhaps any time since the era When We Rise depicts, this series is just so necessary.
In an interview, Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire), who plays Ken Jones in the series, put it succinctly, "Right now, at this time, I see a very divided country and a nation in pain."
Williams said When We Rise is not just for the LGBT community, but for everyone feeling the pain of marginalization under the new regime. "We need to be reminded there are a lot of stories of triumph and courage, and this is one of them. It's a great time to tell this, to celebrate our diversity and our unity."
Undeniably. That When We Rise is on ABC, and thus totally accessible to anyone in America, makes it that much more compelling. That we are seeing this story of our own movement as resistance against the forces of implicit fascism makes it viewing you cannot miss.
One of the places we've seen some raw and even emotionally brutal gay male relationships is ABC's Scandal. This season has pushed Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) into the forefront of the ensemble drama as he vies to be the first openly gay President of the United States. It's been an intense year for Cyrus �" spoilers ahead.
He was fired by the current president, Fitz (Tony Goldwyn), for whom he's worked as Chief of Staff through the entirety of the show's six seasons. He broke up with his second husband, Michael (Matthew del Negro), over his affair with the sociopathic Tom (Brian Letscher), who's a CIA assassin. The new candidate for whom he's been working, Frankie Vargas (Ricardo Chavira), is, as Cyrus proclaims, "the real deal" �" a true progressive �" and Cyrus seems genuinely happy to be in his orbit as his campaign manager.
But then Vargas is assassinated right after choosing Cyrus as his VP, and when the election results come in and the first woman candidate for president, Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young), loses (yes, this is a painful storyline), and it appears that a monster �" Cyrus �" has stolen the election, well �"
Cyrus is in prison for murder right now, and got a severe beating in the Feb. 16 episode. What happens next is anyone's guess, as Scandal feels more documentary and less over-the-top as actual Washington gets crazier.
Portia de Rossi's Elizabeth North is a special soupcon of awfulness this season. She's been an aggressively ambitious political strategist throughout, but working with Cyrus has brought out a whole new layer of Cruella in her.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is the longest-running prime-time drama on TV, and as such, is always trying to stay relevant. The Feb. 15 episode dealt with sexual assault as a form of hazing boys perpetrate against each other. It was a grim tale of inter-generational violence as an abusive father who didn't want his three sons to be "pansies" beat them into submission �" and taught them to do the same to others. It was an intense look at the culture of violence young teens are subjected to by their peers and the men who should be mentoring them, but are often just creating an atmosphere of incipient violence and concomitant fear.
Mid-episode, one of the sons and the abusive dad are at the hospital being grilled by detectives as the assaulted boy lies dying. "People are incredible with this PC crap," the dad tells detectives about his son's fractured arm �" which he broke punishing the boy for getting caught for the sexual assault. "He plays through the pain. Not like those other pansies." The language and presentation sounded so acutely Trumpian, it made us wince.
The premiere of CBS' new legal drama Doubt was underwhelming. We watched because we still carry a torch for Katherine Heigl, who stars, and whom we fell for during her years on Grey's Anatomy. The other reason we watched was because Heigl's co-star is Laverne Cox.
We wish we could like this show more because of Heigl and Cox and maybe Dreama Walker, but not Dula Hill or Elliott Gould. This show feels borrowed: premise, storylines, characters. The final scene of the premiere was lifted whole-cloth from Boston Legal, where each episode ended with James Spader and William Shatner having scotch out on the balcony together. On Doubt it was Heigl and Gould. We didn't like the plagiarism.
Even the Emmy-winning Judith Light is borrowed from Law & Order to play the best role in the whole show as the murderer mother of Heigl. Light's brilliant, effortless acting only serves to remind us how great acting in a five-minute scene shows up mediocre acting in the other 55.
Cox feels dropped into the cast for diversity �" another two-for-one, as we seem never to have LGBT characters who aren't also subbing for an ethnic/racial minority. We have no information on her background and there's a half-poignant, half-cringeworthy scene where she's talking to her schizophrenic client and he asks her about her gender, and they have this exchange:
"Are you a woman or a man?"
"I'm a woman, but I used to be a man."
"I just wanted to be sure it was real and not in my mind."
"It's real."
We wanted to love this scene, but it ends up framing Cox's character Cameron's trans status as somehow linked to mental illness. We loved how Cameron says effortlessly, "I'm a woman, but I used to be a man." We hated the implication that this was somehow a crazy hallucination.
So for the daily madness that is the Trump regime, the sublime satirists and comedians calling it out, and all the other intriguing stuff in between, you really must stay tuned.