We saw the perfect New Yorker cartoon the other day. A straight couple is sitting on their sofa watching their big-screen TV. The man is talking on his cell phone, answering the caller with, "Yes. We've been binge-watching CNN." We would have said "CNN and MSNBC," but the cartoonist nailed it.
Let us, for a moment, revel in the irony that the top three cable news shows are hosted by two gay men (Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon) and a lesbian (Rachel Maddow).
On March 31, we were having a Schadenfraude moment watching clips of Gen. Mike Flynn come back to haunt him as his attorney asked for immunity while Hillary Clinton was in her leathers in SF talking about women and power. Yas queen.
But all news and no scripted drama makes for obsession, so while we wait to see which member of the Trump Administration is the first to be indicted, we are happy to announce the new spring season is in bloom.
But first, some coming-out TV news. There we were, perusing Twitter for what new assault on LGBTQ people Trump & Co had planned, and there was The Walking Dead star and Calvin Klein model Daniel Newman coming out.
Yay! Newman tweeted "I'm #OUTandPROUD #LGBT. Love you guys. Be proud to be yourself. We need everyone just the way you are! I'll chat with you guys tonight."
Newman then posted a video explaining why he needed to make the public statement. The 35-year-old actor explained that while he was volunteering at a center for homeless youth, a young woman thanked him for supporting the LGBTQ community, presuming he was straight. Newman corrected her, and she said if he came out, "You could help change our lives." Newman admitted, "It hit me like a gut punch. It felt like someone knocked the wind out from me. I realized how important it is in this day and age to be visible and have people know who you are. We're partially to blame for kids getting beat up, ridiculed, and the stereotypes and stigmas. If you don't like them, you need to be visible and change them."
The Georgia actor said life was very different growing up in his Irish Catholic family from how it is now, and he'd witnessed a lot of closeting. That must change, Newman now realizes, and you can feel the impact Trump had on his decision to come out. "Our culture has changed so much, the whole world has changed," he said. "You see at this moment how rights are getting stripped away so quickly. Who are the people that are easiest to take rights from? People that are invisible, people who are silent."
In his video Newman lauded the men labeled "sissies," and said the most effeminate men have always been the gay male heroes. "They're the strongest because they didn't have a choice," he said, "those guys are incredible and so amazing. If you don't identify with that, you need to be visible, you need to show the entire full spectrum of the community."
Newman urged other closeted LGBTQ people to come out. "When you're accomplishing incredible things and you're hiding who you are," he explained, "you're hurting hundreds of millions of people."
The video is on Newman's Twitter page and also on YouTube. We can never get enough of coming-out videos, so for us it was a several hankie event. Share it. Some kid out there like we all were needs to see it. Now more than ever.
Daughter dearest
More out actors are always good, so having T.R. Knight join the cast of TGIT's The Catch made us happy. We're still hoping for another bisexual storyline with Sonya Walger's character Margot, even though she seems to have swung back to boy toys. The (spoiler alert) reveal of her con-artist daughter on the March 30 episode left us wondering where that will lead. Daughter dearest is decidedly edgy.
We got caught up on A&E's final season of Bates Motel just in time to see Rihanna and the plot thicken. We'll be sorry to see this series end.
NBC's Grimm ended in a stunning series finale on March 31 after six seasons. We've loved this quirky supernatural thriller since it debuted in 2011. The full series will be available for streaming on Hulu, and we highly recommend it. Diverse cast, intriguing plotlines, ongoing battle between Good and Evil. Actual resistance storyline. What more could a resistance fighter want?
Our fave new series, Bravo's Imposters, ends its first season April 11, but creators Adam Brooks and Paul Adelstein teased a second season to The Hollywood Reporter, and we will be there for it, if it happens. We can't get enough of this dark comedy-thriller about a young woman who cons wealthy men and women into marriage, then takes off with all their money.
Imposters was the biggest surprise of the winter season. We knew Feud would be brilliant, of course. But a little series on Bravo with an Israeli star (Inbar Lavi) we had barely heard of? How clever of Bravo to make the con woman bisexual to throw the men off-kilter. We admit we liked the lesbian storyline the best, but our only real complaint about the series is co-star Uma Thurman, as the fixer Lenny, didn't get enough screen time.
But as old and new favorites come to their series or season finales, new shows debut, and there are some fab series to look forward to this month.
The new Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, like the CW's Riverdale and Netflix's Stranger Things, looks tailored for teens, but has plenty to offer adult viewers as it addresses themes of suicide, bullying, toxic masculinity and how we survive Otherness.
13 Reasons Why has full star-power. It's executive produced by Selena Gomez. The showrunners are Diana Son (American Crime, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Southland) and Brian Yorkey, whose Next to Normal won the Pulitzer for Drama. Yorkey adapted Jay Asher's novel 13 Reasons Why for the TV series. The mystery, which began streaming March 31, opens with the suicide of Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford). The death stuns her parents (Grey's Anatomy alum Kate Walsh and Tony-nominated Brian d'Arcy James) and rocks her school. Why would this beautiful young woman kill herself?
As it happens, she wants some of the people in her life to know why, and leaves behind a box of 13 old cassette tapes in which she explains to those who most need to hear it how she came to this terrible and oh-so-final decision.
Langford is terrific as the tormented teen. Dylan Minette (Scandal, Lost) plays Clay Jensen, who has a pivotal role in discovering the tapes. Fans of Pretty Little Liars will be especially engaged by the mystery, queer angles and disturbing world American teens must navigate when social media rules and the secrets we most want hidden are often revealed in the most devastating ways.
Fargo, the fabulous FX anthology series spawned by the Oscar-winning film, returns for a third season. The main cast �" Ewan McGregor, Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, David Thewlis and Jim Gaffigan �" is back in this dark, darker, darkest of comedies.
This season is set in Minnesota in 2010. McGregor plays the dual leads of Emmit and Ray Stussy. Emmit is the Parking Lot King of Minnesota, a handsome, self-made real estate mogul and family man, while his younger yet balding and pot-bellied brother Ray is now a parole officer. Ray is an angry guy who thinks his unhappy and unsuccessful life is his brother Emmit's fault.
Unsurprisingly, when Ray tries to change his luck, it goes incalculably wrong, and detective Gloria Burgle, played to perfection by Carrie Coon (The Leftovers), has to sort out the grisly crime.
A series of series created and written by women debut this month. Among them is a new sitcom on NBC. Tina Fey and Robert Carlock are back, executive producing Great News. Fey and Carlock worked together at SNL and on 30 Rock. Their Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has been a huge success. So it's hard to imagine Great News, which debuts April 25, won't be hilarious (the trailer is pretty funny) and have some queer elements.
The series was created and written by 30 Rock alum Tracey Wigfield, and stars Briga Heelan as a news producer who has to deal with a new intern, her mother. The series also stars comedy greats Andrea Martin and John Michael Higgins, reality-TV star Nicole Ritchie, SNL alum Horatio Sans and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Adam Campbell.
Mary Kills People is the latest in Lifetime's series by women. The trailer debuted March 31, and it's fantastic. Executive produced by Tassie Cameron (Rookie Blue ), created by Tara Armstrong and directed by Holly Dale (The Americans), Mary Kills People brings Hannibal alum Caroline Dhavernas back to the small screen to kill again.
We loved Dhavernas as the murderous lesbian doctor in Hannibal. In MKP, Dhavernas plays ER doctor Mary Harris, who has a side business of euthanasia. This ultra-dark comedy (how is there so much murder in comedy these days?) is a Canadian production and has already aired up North, where it got stellar reviews. The preview suggests a Nurse Jackie feel, but with Dhavernas' signature understated performance. The six-episode first season debuts April 23.
There are few series that have been more anticipated than The Handmaid's Tale, Hulu's 10-episode take on Margaret Atwood's classic feminist-dystopian novel. Could the timing be more appropriate when VP Pence declared how proud he was on March 30 to cast the tie-breaking vote in the House to defund Planned Parenthood?
As Hulu describes the plot, "In a dystopian near-future, the totalitarian nation of Gilead rules the former United States amidst an ongoing civil war. Widespread infertility due to environmental contamination has resulted in the subjugation of fertile women �" called Handmaids �" by the religious fundamental government. Offred has been posted at the home of a Commander, and his wife, tasked to bear them a child under the strictest rules and constant scrutiny; an improper word or deed on her part can lead to her execution. Offred can remember the 'time before,' when she was married with a daughter, but all she can safely do now is follow the rules of Gilead in hopes that she can someday live freely."
Emmy-nominated Mad Men alum Elisabeth Moss stars as Offred. Orange Is the New Black star Samira Wiley, who just married Lauren Morelli on March 25 in a gorgeous ceremony, plays Moira, Offred's college friend. (Wiley met Morelli, a writer on OITNB, on set. Morelli fell hard for Wiley, divorcing her husband and eventually getting engaged to Wiley. They have been The Most Beautiful Young Lesbian Celeb Couple ever since.) The series also stars Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski and Ever Carradine, among others.
The Handmaid's Tale debuts with a three-part opener on April 26. Subsequent episodes will be shown weekly.
So for the out-and-proud and the deeply closeted, the darkly comic and the disturbingly dystopian, as well as the usual Sturm und Drang, as we navigate Trumpworld, you know you really must stay tuned.