Soaps & scares: The Lavender Tube on history, Halloween and more

  • by Victoria A. Brownworth
  • Tuesday October 15, 2024
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Parry Shen and Van Hansis in 'General Hospital' (photo: ABC)
Parry Shen and Van Hansis in 'General Hospital' (photo: ABC)

ABC's "General Hospital" may have done away with the lesbian pairing of Kristina and Blaze while making way for a front-burner storyline for Kristina, but they have also brought back two gay male characters. Lucas Jones (Van Hansis) and Brad Cooper (Parry Shen) have a complex history. They were married back in 2015. Their tumultuous relationship was such that now that Lucas has returned to Port Charles, soon after the trans woman co-chief of General Hospital, Dr. Terry Randolph (Cassandra Jones) has re-hired Brad in the lab on a trial basis (he was previously fired for switching test results), Lucas confronts Brad and says he wants nothing to do with him.

Parry Shen and Van Hansis in 'General Hospital' (photo: ABC)  

The role of Brad has been played by Shen, who is straight, since 2013. But the role of Lucas has been played by numerous actors. Hansis is the latest iteration and is openly gay. Hansis, as we wrote about years ago here, made soap history as a young actor on "As the World Turns," playing Luke Snyder, son of Lily and Holden Snyder, as a gay youth from 2005 until the show ended in 2010. Luke and his boyfriend Noah Mayer (Jake Silbermann) were deemed the first gay supercouple in American soap opera history.


There's no way to overstate how dramatic the Luke and Noah storyline was, but it was incredible. Twenty years ago, there just was not the queer visibility that there is now on TV. That coupling and all it entailed was intense, which makes the choice of Hansis to play Lucas on "General Hospital" quite powerful.


We are really looking forward to what happens next as Brad seems to think there's still hope for the two to rekindle their "kindred spirits" relationship, no matter what Lucas said. On the October 11 episode, Lucas sort of made up with his estranged aunt, the often diabolical Ava Jerome (Maura West), so could Brad be next? Or will Brad's machinations in the lab get in the way?


Hallo-winners
The national queer holiday of Halloween has brought the queers to the kitchens on Food Network yet again in Halloween baking competitions like the "Halloween Baking Championship" and "Halloween Wars," both of which we watch every year. They are trés gay and lots of fun. "Halloween Wars" is hosted by out gay actor Jonathan Bennett and "Halloween Baking Championship" co-stars out gay chef Zac Young.

Halloween also means non-stop scare fests on the tube. There's a day-to-day listing, but we have some faves, too.
https://halloweenspecials.fandom.com/wiki/2024_Halloween_Special_and_Movie_Schedule

There are gay classics like Hitchcock's "Psycho," which is playing on AMC as well as the unbelievably scary "The Perfection," which is a stunning lesbian horror flick.


In "The Perfection," Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams) is a talented cellist who was forced to leave her prestigious music school in Boston, to care for her critically ill mother. She makes a play to return to her school after her mother's death and gets invited to Shanghai. There with Anton, the school's administrator, Charlotte sees her competition, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wells (Logan Browning), Anton's star pupil. After a night of clubbing, they return to Lizzie's hotel room and have sex.

That is when the horror begins. Charlotte offers a hungover Lizzie some ibuprofen, which she takes with alcohol, and the two go on a trip through rural China. On a bus after eating some street food, Lizzie feels sick and Charlotte offers her more ibuprofen. But then Lizzie throws up maggots and she and Charlotte get tossed off the bus.

Terror ensues. We highly recommend this incredible film and all of its wild queerness, but if you have trouble with the trailer, you will not get through this very intense film. It's on Netflix through October.


FX's "American Horror Stories: will premiere a five-episode Halloween event on Hulu starting October 15. "Huluween" will feature five new horror stories. The cast includes Debby Ryan, Michael Imperioli, Henry Winkler, Dyllón Burnside, Jessica Barden, and others.

"American Horror Stories" is a spin-off of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's "American Horror Story." The anthology series features a different horror story in each episode, and some of the stories reference the original series.
www.shudder.com

'The Boulet Brothers' Dragula'  

Is Halloween truly Halloween without drag? No. So treat yourselves to Shudder TV's "The Boulet Brothers' Dragula" in six seasons of wild fun. The show features monster drag artists from around the world competing for a chance to win $100,000 and the title of Dragula, The World's Next Drag Supermonster.

Each week, the competitors are tasked with horror-based makeup, design and performance challenges meant to test their skills and prove they have what it takes to remain in the competition. For the monsters that fail, grueling mental and physical Extermination Challenges await with horrifying and deadly consequences, until only the strongest finalists remain.

Scary monster
It's just weeks before the most consequential election of our collective lifetimes and somehow there are people still confused between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

We watched Trump talk about putting his opponents in camps or having the military take care of them in what he means is a military coup on Maria Bartiromo's show Sunday.

At every rally he's stoking racial animus and he's also trying to lure more Black and Latino male voters and squishy suburban women with his anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric which we wrote about in our different politics hat, and here.


Meanwhile, we watched Harris's Univision town hall in which she spoke directly to Latinx voters in an unscripted Q&A and her interview on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." She was so good that Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that she should be stopped from doing any more interviews.


How is this election a dead heat? And how are there undecided or worse, third-party voters, when every single pollster from MSNBC to CNN to Fox News has explained third party votes are proxy Trump votes? Did people learn nothing from 2016 and the Trump Supreme Court?

As it's LGBTQ History Month, it's a good time to look at how prior authoritarianism has harmed the queer community. We wrote about the Lavender Scare here and Trump has already clarified in all these interviews with right-wing talk show hosts that he wants to bring all that back. And for those who didn't get the mind-wipe about the Trump presidency, it was the most anti-LGBTQ in history. (Read here and here.)


If you're thinking about LGBTQ History Month and how all these issues intersect, we recommend watching the incredibly compelling Emmy-nominated, "Fellow Travelers," which is a powerful (and sensual) political love story as well as an indictment of the previously most dangerous periods for LGBTQ people, starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey. "Fellow Travelers" was named among the best TV shows of 2023 by Variety, The Washington Post and The New Yorker.


We also recommend watching the brilliant Colman Domingo as gay Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin in Netflix's "Rustin," produced by the Obamas. Domingo's performance got a bazillion fabulous reviews as well as nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and SAG Award for Best Actor.

So, for the ghouls in real life and just for Halloween scares, you know you really must stay tuned.


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