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Lunchtable TV Talk – Nurse Jackie: The walking dead

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Addiction is a hard thing to face for addicts – and even more for those who love them.

Science on addiction is evolving – Dr Carl Hart at the forefront of publicizing it, but many voices and study results are showing that addiction is not all about chemistry. Addiction is, in fact, not what we think it is.

Of course I’m all for discoveries that help us better understand the nature of addiction but would also appreciate knowing on an individual level: if addicts lack connections and relationships and a sense of community and connectivity – and that partially explains what they are doing – how can an individual help? How does an individual, the non-addict in the addict’s life, cope? Every study in the world, every book in the world that explains what addiction is does not change the day-to-day challenges of living with, loving or trusting an addict.

In the many seasons of Nurse Jackie, at once dramatic and comedic, we have seen a flawed but high-functioning addict in the form of Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco). Other than her hidden identity as an addict, we only know Jackie as a nurse, a wife and a mother – but mostly a nurse, and as we go into this final season, we can see her struggling against losing this key piece of her identity. She is willing to fight for it – harder and stronger than she ever fought for her family or her sobriety.

I have written before about Nurse Jackie, first with regard to the increasing difficulty of relating to or sympathizing with Jackie.

“I used to have a lot more sympathy for and interest in Jackie, but like most users – users of drugs and of people – Jackie has become extremely hard to like. Some of the antics in the hospital where she works are still interesting enough, and the cast is still a joy to watch, but it is painful to watch how people are affected by and duped by her lying (which grows worse and worse, despite a brief moment of sobriety). It’s hard to say where this will go in its next season, as last season ended with an unexpected revelation from her husband.”

At the time I had very little direct experience with this sort of thing. This changed last year. As someone who loved and cared for an addict, it was not like anything I imagined. But, as a recent article about Nurse Jackie described, the show is one of the few accurate portrayals of addiction. It’s rough, somehow unpredictably painful even if the pain and challenges are predictable, and it opens a door to caring unconditionally for the recovering addict even if never quite being able to trust them again. Addicts sometimes feel a bit like the walking dead.

And where the early seasons of Jackie offered a bit more comedy (the show was never necessarily designed as a comedy, even if it had its moments), showing unbelievable events with few, if any, consequences, each subsequent season has escalated with its drama and equally escalated consequences.

Taken as a whole, the earlier parts, where Jackie is managing the balancing act of nurse, wife, mother along with addict and girlfriend/affair partner with her hospital’s pharmacist (direct source to her poisons), show the “good part” where the addict thinks they can and will manage flawlessly. Every season, she takes bigger risks to maintain her high and continue to conceal her growing addiction. And things inevitably spiral out of control. In the background of Jackie’s personal travails, we also see the challenges of the American healthcare system, its understaffing problems, its bureaucratic problems, humanity versus automation and the general frailty of human relationships when strained by outside forces. I am sorry this is the last season, even if it feels like the right time for it to go.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Bates Motel

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At first I avoided Bates Motel – for no real reason. I had no expectations going in, and I did not realize until I started watching that the formidable Vera Farmiga is one of the main players. This makes Bates Motel automatically worth at least trying out. Then realizing that Nestor Carbonell is the town sheriff seals the deal.

While I could spread on thick layers of superlatives about Farmiga’s range and talent, I would rather write a brief love letter to Carbonell. I love how he pops up frequently and, of course, is very different in each role – as quality acting requires. Whether he is hero, villain or somewhere in between (as is the case in Bates Motel), he delivers. But what I love about him most of all is looking back on his comedic role in the gone and mostly forgotten Suddenly Susan in the 1990s. A starring vehicle for Brooke Shields (and also starring Judd Nelson and Kathy Griffin), the show was usually stolen out from under Shields and the rest of the cast by Carbonell as Luis Rivera and the late David Strickland as Todd Stities. Together, this duo stole many scenes and kept me watching even when the show was annoying (and believe me – it grew increasingly so). (Interestingly the show also humanized Shields a bit for me – and I had never really cared much for her work before.)

Sadly, Strickland committed suicide at the age of 29 in 1999 (RIP) – but Carbonell, happily, was just getting started. He has turned up everywhere – both in one-time guest roles in popular TV shows and in longer-term appearances, such as a role in one-time network ratings juggernaut, Lost.

With Farmiga and Carbonell at the helm, Bates Motel really seems to work and stand out. Even the sometimes overly dramatic tone and plot are deftly managed in these actors’ hands. Many of the other actors are all right – kind of a go-to list of every non-descript Canadian actor who turns up in every Canadian or Canadian-produced show (for example, Ian Tracey as “Remo” – I stared at him for ages before realizing he was one of the stars of the Canadian legal drama Da Vinci’s Inquest – something that was never shown any time that I lived in the US but did turn up on late-night TV in Iceland). While the actor who plays Norman Bates, Freddie Highmore, should attract more accolades, there are times that his character’s awkwardness and mental illness feels a bit too ham-handed and overacted, making me think that while the part is well-cast, there is a bit too much “putting it on” that does not feel authentic. Highmore manages to balance innocent, sheltered, overprotected son with increasingly unstable, mentally ill “psycho” quite well – he is fantastic at “creepy” – but nevertheless isn’t really the star of the show.

Without the main cast working well together, though, the show would not be nearly as addictive as it is (and it has been addictive). Once I started the first season of ten episodes two days ago, I could not stop and am already caught up (we’re nearing the end of season three).

Lunchtable TV Talk – Fresh Off the Boat: Really fresh?

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Each week,I get a few laughs from Fresh Off the Boat and like a lot of people have given a lot of thought to how it’s possible that this is only the second sitcom in the past 25 years to focus on an Asian American family. The first, All American Girl, fronted by comedienne/actress Margaret Cho, did not last long and was probably the victim of the wrong timing. Many shows don’t find an audience, a voice or popularity – not because of their themes but because they just don’t find their footing in the right place or time. All American Girl was that show.

Fresh Off the Boat, focusing on a family of Taiwanese immigrants who move from Washington D.C. to Orlando, is the first show to try to take the Asian American immigrant experience mainstream on network TV. It’s got its stereotypes and sometimes falls back on racial/immigration-related tropes, which could be mined for cheap laughs or could serve a bigger purpose of highlighting those tropes in order to make fun of the stereotypes. Either way, the show usually transcends the awkwardness that could come of the stereotypes and if it gets the chance to have a second season, it might grow into something much more genuine. As an introduction to the kinds of things immigrants may face when they move and adapt to the United States, the show offers a glimpse into what it might be like. It being a half-hour comedy, it will look for laughs more than in-depth understanding or insight into immigrant life or integration. But the issues highlighted begin to show some key points – how immigrant parents struggle with how their children are more products of their new environment than the culture from which they came, how cultural clashes are inevitable, how an immigrant’s own perspective, habits and taste change.

Inspired by a memoir written by Eddie Huang, who has been highly critical of how the show handled the source material, it is hard to tell, if given the chance, whether the show will redirect itself to address some of Huang’s concerns. I wonder, reading some of Huang’s ire about the show, whether it is more a matter of the process and creative stifling from the network – what else could one expect from one of the big three? Can the show and the network come to a place where creativity does not clash with buttoned-down network demands? When you sell off the rights to your work, you can criticize but you have signed away creative rights. Right?

I think Huang could be right – not only that the show does not follow his own memoir closely (in which case maybe the show shouldn’t claim to be based on it) but also that the show isn’t really representative of the immigrant experience. But does that mean it is not valid? That it is not in fact fresh? Is it enough to start with just to get more diversity on the screen, even if the stories are more an overbaked caricature of that diversity? Could it be a stepping stone to something better to come?

Lunchtable TV Talk – Community: Magic is gone

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In the beginning, I loved, recommended and defended the beloved but difficult TV show Community to anyone who would listen. I bought the DVDs and sent the boxsets to people I thought would like it. My advocacy grew louder and more vociferous the more the show was threatened. But after the controversial departure of original show creator, Dan Harmon, the one season made without him completely lost it. It was already a show that many would argue had “lost the plot” because it was so complex and strange – but it had been, until Harmon’s contentious exit, beautifully, creatively messy – or at least seemed messy. It was always well thought out and tightly executed with intricate in-stories, meta humor and extensive pop culture references, which meant that deeper understanding could be possible but even on the surface it could be enjoyed. There is not much point trying to describe it in its glory days – you just have to watch it yourself.

Without Harmon, though, the show lost its vision and became increasingly boring and tiresome. I continued to watch, but I was relieved when it was canceled. Honestly, though, by the end of that dreadful season, I was not even excited to see that the show had been resurrected from cancellation by Yahoo! Screen (yet another non-TV channel coming along to offer original content as an original distribution method). Dan Harmon was brought back to run the show, and I have been watching, but the magic is gone. I actually hate it now and dread watching, but I keep doing it out of habit hoping I might see some of the magic again. But it’s just not there.

For a truly enriching viewing experience, watch seasons one through four and skip the rest.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Daredevil

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There is already a lot of press about the murky, dark, dramatic, gloomy, moody and brooding Netflix offering, Daredevil. I won’t add much to it. I loved the lead, Charlie Cox, in his ill-fated role in Boardwalk Empire, and he’s almost as great here. It speaks to his abilities that I did not recognize him at first – he seemed that different from his role as Owen Sleater in Boardwalk. I can say I have never liked Rosario Dawson better. I can’t explain it, but I really liked her in this. I don’t like Deborah Ann Woll – from Jessica in True Blood onwards, she is just not a very good actress, and if anything, seems to be getting worse. Everything else occupied me to the degree that I could not stop watching until I was done with all 13 episodes.

I was ready to go to sleep at one point, but the transition between episodes five and six shows the masterful level of suspense this show can creates, which forces the whole binge-watching phenomenon (“Just to see what happens, then I will stop” or “Just one more episode”. Famous last words.)

I liked it, but maybe my enjoyment has been tempered by the fact that my USB thumb drive died – and I only managed to extract about a quarter of the data it contained. Oh, it hurts.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Battle Creek: Embattled

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Even if Battle Creek gets the axe (which seems pretty likely right now), the first half of its one and probably only season has been entertaining. I recognize that I pull out the “entertaining” word an awful lot. It suffices often enough for these shows that don’t knock it out of the park but pass the time reasonably and pleasantly. But average adjectives are just about all that distinguish TV shows that fail to distinguish themselves.

Battle Creek’s cast should have done half the work by virtue of its experience and talent. The cast, anchored by comeback kid of sorts Dean Winters (best known for playing “Dennis”, Tina Fey’s on-off, loser boyfriend in 30 Rock, “Mayhem” in a long-running series of ads for Allstate Insurance, Ryan O’Reilly in the disturbing HBO prison drama, Oz as well as Rescue Me and Law & Order SVU) as Detective Russ Agnew, comes together within the beleaguered Battle Creek, Michigan police department. They’re led by the multitalented Janet McTeer as their commander, and the police department has basically no resources with which to work. In comes Josh Duhamel as dapper, charming FBI agent, Milt Chamberlain.

The story, with this group of actors, should gel better. The premise pits two very different detectives with two different perspectives on investigative work and on life against each other, but forces them to partner up. Agnew is cynical and distrustful (and his reasons for being this way become clear in the course of the show); Chamberlain, at least from what we have seen in the few episodes we’ve seen, is cheerful and trusting (but we don’t get a very good look at what motivates him or is behind his actions). They work together, improbably, to solve crimes, and the acting should complement the story – but I don’t feel like the show has unfolded a compelling enough story for us to care or to make people watch.

It’s unfortunate because there is potential. Its DNA has a little bit of Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul); guest casting has been clever and fun (a superb and hilarious as well as topical guest appearance from the great Patton Oswalt as Battle Creek’s mayor – a terrific comedic send-up of Toronto’s former mayor Rob Ford; Candice Bergen as Detective Agnew’s con-woman mother).

The actors – both regulars and guest stars – have done their part with the material they have, but the show itself, so far, has not been tight enough, has not been more than middling. If given a chance, I imagine that the show could hit its stride (many shows have surprised us after slow starts in their first seasons). Now it’s just a matter of Battle Creek getting that chance.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Togetherness: The ark of the ache of it

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The ache of marriage
-Denise Levertov

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion
and are turned away, beloved,
each and each

It is leviathan and we
in its belly
looking for joy, some joy
not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. I spend a lot of time thinking about marriage as an institution. It is not something I ever really wanted, and as I have become older, it seems less than desirable and more of the “ball and chain” that it’s classically described as. Not being a religious person or in need of some kind of monetary or tax benefits that might come from legal marriage – and not being particularly sentimental – marriage is not a priority. That said, I also think a lot about marriage and the equality of access to it. If someone – anyone – wants to marry, s/he should be legally permitted to.

Fie on Love
-James Shirley

Now, fie on foolish love! it not befits
Or man or woman know it:
Love was not meant for people in their wits;
And they that fondly show it,
Betray the straw and feathers in their brain,
And shall have Bedlam for their pain.
If single love be such a curse,
To marry, is to make it ten times worse.

But then, I see a nuanced TV show like HBO’s Togetherness and wonder why anyone would want to sign up for marriage. The ache of marriage is fully alive here. I wasn’t totally into the idea of Togetherness when I read about it. It sounded like an unfolding tableau of overprivileged ennui, as middle-class midlife boredom clashes with midlife identity crisis. People stop being individuals, give up on their dreams, are stuck in the humdrum of daily life. This is at the heart of Togetherness, and could easily have been either as dull as HBO’s Looking or as self-indulgent and preachy as the recent miniseries The Slap. But Togetherness walks the tightrope and avoids conventional appearances – largely because of its cast, and the handling of its creators, the seemingly ubiquitous Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, and Steve Zissis. It could easily sink to a whiny, pretentious semi-sitcom focused on a 30-something married couple with two small children. They seem to have everything a young couple, Brett and Michelle (Mark Duplass and a transcendent Melanie Lynskey) could want – the marriage, the happy family, the house and the white picket fence. Against this “stable background”, Brett’s best friend (an out-of-work, down-on-his luck actor, Alex, played by Steve Zissis) and Michelle’s sister (Tina, an event planner, played by Amanda Peet) both move into Brett and Michelle’s place temporarily, and this change seemingly upends the bored equilibrium Brett and Michelle have settled into.

Both “sides” see the beauty of the other side. Alex and Tina, who have a really powerful chemistry but keep denying it, represent the initial spark we all recognize that comes from the beginning of a relationship and envy what Brett and Michelle have – but only because they are not trapped by the constraints. Brett and Michelle envy the freedom Alex and Tina have, and start to search outside the relationship for diversions – not necessarily diversions that lead them to infidelity. But just other entertainment, other sparks, ways to find their way back to who they used to be before middle-aged family life.

The bottom line, what I took away, what Togetherness imparts, with some humor and humanity, is that whether or not we are “together” with someone, we are still alone. We swallow so much of ourselves, not because someone else forces us to, but because we let some of ourselves go naturally with the march of daily responsibility and priorities. In following this path, sometimes when we are together with someone, we are more alone than ever.

“Together Alone” – Crowded House

Lunchtable TV Talk – Wolf Hall: “You’ve made a mistake threatening me, sir”

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Any history buff is well and truly familiar with the story of Henry VIII and his many wives. There have been many books written and movies and TV shows made about his reign. Most recently The Tudors provided a sexed-up look at Henry and all his wives. The latest to take a new tack with much of the story is Wolf Hall, which is told more or less from the perspective of historical figure Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell is portrayed as perfectly dull and unassuming – and Mark Rylance looks exactly like these historical portraits of the real guy. It is something of a revelation when this modest man saunters in and so politely threatens people, such as when Harry Percy claims he has a binding marriage contract with Anne Boleyn, which would prevent her marrying King Henry.

Yes, politeness and decorum mixed with menacing threat: Cromwell will get someone to “bite the bollocks off” Percy if he refuses to quit his claim to Anne.

It is Rylance as “the ruffian” and cunning lawyer Cromwell that keeps the story moving forward and keeps me interested. Despite the brilliance of his wielding the law and persuasive powers, Cromwell appears fair, even if King Henry calls him out at one point, threatening, “Do I keep you for what’s easy? Do you think I’ve promoted you for the charm of your presence? I keep you on because you are a serpent. Do not be a viper in my person.” The balance is struck as well as it is thanks to Rylance’s subtle performance. Damian Lewis as Henry VIII seems a bit miscast – and it is rather a small role. I tend to think he has worked well with what he has here, but despite the story revolving around him, it is not really about him. Lewis is always excellent as a sniveling tyrant, much as he showed in the miniseries, The Forsyte Saga. He even showed us some of this indecision in his conflicted self-destruction as Nicholas Brody in Homeland.

Rylance’s performance, combined with writing that projects modernity onto an age-old story, bringing intrigues and political machinations to life, make Wolf Hall one of, if not, the best fictionalized pieces on this era. It would not seem logical that something like this would garner high viewer numbers, but in fact, Wolf Hall appears to speak for itself in that regard. A persuasive aspect of Wolf Hall that initially draws one in is its attention to historical detail, which is no accident. But it is the rich and refined performances that elevate this show to greatness (such as those of Joanne Whalley as the cast-aside Catherine of Aragon, Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn), none more so than Rylance’s performance. (It may be more surprising to viewers because Rylance is not well-known outside of theater work, although I remember him from the small-scale but somewhat controversial film from Patrice Chéreau, RIP, Intimacy (2001), which featured actual sexual acts between the actors. It raised a lot of eyebrows, as if it were pornography or just lasciviousness for the sake of raising the film’s profile. The film, though, showed exactly the tawdriness and neediness of this sexual affair between the two main characters – again, elevated by Rylance’s performance alongside New Zealand actress Kerry Fox, who as recently as 2012 was still defending her performing a real sex act in a film from more than a decade earlier.)

Rylance is a respected stage actor, and as I felt – and later read – his being virtually unknown to television audiences created a double blindside. We the viewers don’t expect this committed, understated yet powerhouse performance – and most of the characters that Cromwell comes up against underestimate his cunning and influence… but definitely should not.

Lunchtable TV Talk – House of Cards and Veep – Politics

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I can’t add much to the feverish discussion surrounding the latest, much-anticipated release of House of Cards episodes on Netflix. Similarly, I won’t be eloquent about HBO comedy Veep. Both have been around for a few seasons – and in both cases, the new seasons began with the stakes higher than ever for the main characters, Frank Underwood and Selina Meyer, respectively, because both had since last season, ascended to the presidency of the United States.

House of Cards is a drama predicated on a lot of underhanded and often illegal machinations and dealmaking. Veep is a comedy predicated on the idea that vice presidents are little more than puppets who appear for photo-ops and toe the party line. Each show has its strengths – particularly their stellar and varied casts (as I have written before – I will watch things just because I like the actors in it). These shows are no exception.

Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright head a cast that includes quite a few great performers. I happen to love Molly Parker, and her Jackie Sharp seems genuinely conflicted at times about balancing the need for honesty and humanity against the requirement to lie and scheme to achieve upper-echelon power. Michael Kelly’s continued portrayal of Doug Stamper as a shady operator, willing to do whatever it takes, has been riveting. I also enjoyed seeing Lars Mikkelsen (brother of Mads Mikkelsen of Hannibal fame) playing the Russian president to idiomatic perfection – “it’s a lot of work being a Dane trying to do a Russian accent” (naturally adding a tick in the checklist of even more Scandinavian men appearing on TV). There is a lot of drama, a lot of intrigue, and there are many unlikable people and actions here.

In that sense, I didn’t always enjoy the latest season. Wright’s performance as the First Lady is as commendable as her spot-on work throughout the series – she commits to and embodies Claire Underwood completely. But the story about her husband naming her as US Ambassador to the UN felt a bit half-baked to me. Even if such a move is possible, it seems so unrealistic and highly risky given the stakes pitted against her inexperience. Her demand that the president yield to her, reasoning that it is “her time”, might be authentic, if petulant and crybaby in tone, but the outcome feels forced. Nothing good comes of it.

Meanwhile the troubling trajectory Doug Stamper is on feels quite genuine, even if unrealistic, and Kelly embraces it with aplomb. He doesn’t just lie down and die when the president distances himself. When he is no longer in the inner circle, he finds ways to ensure he will get back there. Not pleasant ways, but sometimes chilling and always manipulative schemes to get him the information, leverage and power he needs to return to the president’s side.

Veep is of course, for the most part, a horse of another color. Despite superficial similarities, the shows – their casts, their tones, their drive, their stories, their purposes – could not be more different. In previous seasons, all the characters bring something special, comedic (sometimes embarrassingly comedic) to the table and present a farcical take on (vice) presidential politics. Headed up by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is really in her element here, as vice president (now president) Selina Meyer, the cast is made up of characters both overly driven and egotistical who compete with each other to try to win favor with the VP, as is the case with Anna Chlumsky and Reid Scott. Both are smart and want to be at the forefront of Meyer’s campaigns and staff – and often ended up, for lack of a better term, “eating shit” on Meyer’s behalf. Tons of other great characters played by great actors – nothing more notable that I can add. (I am so happy to see Patton Oswalt on the show as the new VP’s chief of staff. Oswalt’s showing up everywhere these days, and I love it: Justified, a hilarious episode of the beleaguered Battle Creek, voiceover in The Goldbergs, voice work in BoJack Horseman, a role in Brooklyn Nine-Nine… and he is still something to miss about United States of Tara!). It’s a funny show, and keeps getting funnier – while House of Cards feels like it’s sliding.

All of that said and done, if you want the best political drama ever to be on TV, it’s Danish and includes the aforementioned Lars Mikkelsen: Borgen.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Cucumber: “It’s a gay TV!”

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After enduring the tiresome and boring Looking on HBO, I wondered if it were possible to find something funny, real, sad, multidimensional and human on television that was just a normal but engaging depiction of gay life. Not caricatures, not some empty, juvenile idea of what gay life is. Something that feels like a genuine slice of life in a gay/LGBTQ context. And Cucumber is it. At least partly. Nothing is ever quite the whole package.

Cucumber’s creator, Russell T. Davies, brought us groundbreaking TV content in the past, such as Queer as Folk (the original UK version of course, which featured the now well-known Charlie Hunnam of Sons of Anarchy and Aidan Gillen of The Wire and Game of Thrones. Davies delivers in Cucumber (and in the accompanying, more lighthearted, half-hour program, Banana, which focuses on younger, secondary characters) all the things viewers could have hoped for in Looking. (Incidentally, Davies praised Looking and explained his view that perhaps it just went over viewers’ heads and that those who did not get it are “dumb”. He thought it was brilliant, but I don’t see it and don’t think there was anything deep to understand. Cucumber and Banana together deeply explore the themes, both comedic and tragic, that Looking could have elucidated without being a whiny, self-serving drag. It’s kind of Davies, though, to give Looking so much credit. Looking broke some new ground in certain areas – story for another time – but was not remotely relatable. Maybe the fact that we are left to compare these very different shows to each other is the bigger issue – TV shows that depict gay life aren’t a dime a dozen. Maybe there is a whole new paradigm we should be exploring.)

I care about these characters (both those in Cucumber and in Banana). In Cucumber, they can be frustrating, infuriating, silly, charming, funny, heartbreaking, showing the full range of their lives, relationships, fears – whether it is fear of and anxiety about sex (“Sex is for sexy people and the rest of us can just give it up.”), fear of aging, fear of being alone, fear of feeling and so much more. (Not everyone agrees, of course, as there was some backlash about Cucumber when it originally aired in the UK, with viewers finding “the characters unsympathetic and unwatchable. For others, the drama was inconsistent and tonally weird”. I can see those complaints, but at the same time don’t think it’s possible to create anything to absolute perfection. Unlikable, tonally weird or not, and unclear on whether it’s “light” or “dark”, Cucumber does not always walk the tightrope delicately. Both Looking and Cucumber, as the aforementioned article from The Daily Beast notes, are “about gay discontent at a time when the prevailing social winds—marriage equality, growing acceptance—seem to blow in another direction”. In contemporary entertainment channels, Cucumber is still better than anything else of its kind, which, if nothing else, should inspire storytellers and networks to raise the bar.)

Cucumber‘s most shocking episode, and the catalyst for where Henry (the main character) ends up, begins with Lance (Henry’s long-term partner until the show begins) wandering in the grocery store, where all of the episodes begin. It ends up revealing the timeline of his life and is actually so powerful and separate from the overall narrative in many ways that it could almost stand alone without the context of the rest of the show’s seven other episodes. You would not necessarily need to know the characters or the story that led to this point to feel his angst, his joy, his uncertainty, his humanity, his pain, his fear and his untimely end.

It reminded me, strangely (not in tone or theme but as a storytelling device) of a disjointed episode of Hell on Wheels that focused on the character Elam Ferguson (Common) after he had disappeared the previous season to go look for lead character, Cullen Bohannon. It also ushered in the surprise ending of a well-loved character. We suddenly see, near the end of the next season, that Ferguson, who had been mauled by a bear at the end of the previous season, survived the attack and is being nursed back to health by an Indian tribe. The entire episode is like a self-sustaining capsule that looks and feels nothing like the rest of the series. (Mr Firewall happened to be visiting when that episode aired, and it was the only episode he had ever seen, so he did not get an accurate impression of the show at all.) The idea of taking a character out of the normal run of things, away from the rest of the ensemble, and telling a tale that is uniquely his makes these episodes highly unusual.

Cucumber succeeded in creating a tense, terrifying and real hour of television while Hell on Wheels devised a very slow-moving tale of recovery that falsely led us to believe that Elam would even have a triumphant homecoming (we were misled/cheated. Elam does return in another episode and has gone so completely mad that he is gunned down like a rabid dog – so what was the long road to recovery episode even for?).

Cucumber‘s near-standalone episode six was heartbreaking. Lance was so desperate to please and to find someone he loved that he first spent nine ambiguous and somewhat unsatisfying years with lead character, Henry, who spewed hateful, vile stuff at Lance as they split up, ultimately told Lance that he had no spine and that Lance would wait for him to return. And when that relationship really ended, Lance pursued a conflicted, identity-crisis-ravaged, violent caveman who could not admit his own sexuality or accept even his own sexual curiosity. The Twittersphere came alive with a lot of “It’s 2015 – why do gay characters have to succumb to violence?” exchanges, but such statements ignore the realities that sexual minorities (or perhaps all kinds of minorities) face. Society has seemingly moved forward – legally and on a superficial level – but there will always be haters (whose hatred is really for themselves above all, even if it is unleashed on others). It’s a universal this sense of wanting something so much that ignoring danger makes sense. Hope springs eternal. Is the one night with a handsome man really worth it? Lance gets a warning – “go home, go to bed and sleep. You could walk away, right now… never look back. But he’s so damn handsome.” Devastating when you know what’s coming.

I’d say that though the show is focused on 46-year-old Henry, facing a midlife crisis and struggling with a stagnant relationship, Lance is its heart. Henry moves out of their common home into a warehouse apartment with two younger guys whose sexuality is a lot more open and fluid, which introduces the very different generational dynamics at play in the gay community. But Lance is what we care about and hope that maybe, just maybe, Henry will come to his senses and go back to Lance. When we lose Lance, we lose the sappy American idea of the “happy ending” reconciliation and see Henry grieve on all the different paths grief takes.

As stated, with a dearth of content on TV that focuses on the daily minutiae of LGBTQ life, comparisons between mostly dissimilar shows with only a similar theme in common are inevitable, e.g. Cucumber and Looking. The look that both take at discontent and dissatisfaction is telling in, as quoted above, a time when gay marriage is closer to becoming legally sanctioned in a majority of western countries and gay/LGBTQ relationships are becoming more openly accepted. Does this acceptance take away from or redefine the gay identity – usurp what many gay individuals need to feed their perceptions of themselves (e.g., young Dean, who features in both Cucumber and Banana, pretends to be alienated from his unaccepting, homophobic family, but we learn that he actually has a very accepting and loving family. He seems resentful of the fact that he cannot shock them with his being gay or “sexually subversive”). Does it change the foundation of what LGBTQ people thought their lives would be?

“Many of the arguments against marriage equality in the United States, an issue that may soon be settled nationally, have centered on the idea that admitting same-sex couples to the institution would irreparably alter it. But making marriage an option for those couples inevitably changes LGBT life too, if only by widening the scope of experiences available to lesbian, gay and bisexual people.” … “Advances towards equality still leave us, no matter who we are, with our own very human, very personal problems.”

LGBTQ on TV: Let’s not get it on

Maybe this is partly the point. Gay sex, gay identity, gay openness is not shocking enough to the average person any longer. I don’t want to diminish the reality of homophobia (the aforementioned “Lance” episode of Cucumber illustrates tragically that homophobia in all its forms is alive and well). While having sex probably does not define any individual or group, many people have long tried to insist that the LGBTQ experience is only about sex. When we reach a point at which it no longer shocks a wide swath of the population, and characters like Cucumber’s Henry are somewhat sex-averse (he has never tried penetrative sex, which is an unusual plot point, in that it flies in the face of what most non-gay audiences would imagine about gay men, and gets to a question recently addressed in an article on Salon), it is no longer just a story about people having sex.

The Salon article asserts that TV’s gay characters are a fairly sexless bunch, and that gay sexual lives on TV are too tame. It’s tempting to overreact to this article – to claim that shows like Banana and Cucumber, and for example, HBO’s Six Feet Under, have not shied away from gay sexual encounters at all (any more than any show in America at least – real, non-commoditized sexuality and nudity are still something of a taboo on American TV).

The article argues that the sexlessness is attributable to America’s squeamishness about seeing gay sex (or overt suggestions of it) on mainstream TV. Is this true? Does mainstream America at “family time/prime time” (i.e. before 22:00 in the evening) want to see overt sexuality from anyone? Plenty of innuendo but nothing explicit, so it is hard to say. Similarly the argument rests on the idea that Cam and Mitchell, Modern Family’s married gay couple, are so innocuous and sexless and appear to barely like each other. They are popular and easy to cheer for as gay characters because they pose no threat. While this might be true (because other characters are sexualized to some degree in the same show), it is still a primetime show, so nothing is overly sexual in its time slot. If you move a little later in the evening, you get the openly bisexual Nolan Ross on Revenge or Cyrus Beene on Scandal. And even ABC Family’s The Fosters, while presumably less “alarming” to middle America than gay men, focuses on a mixed-race, married female couple who are not only affectionate with each other but openly discuss their struggles to make time for sex with the demands of their careers and large, and always growing, family.

It is true that a lot of the best, most realistic, LGBTQ characters and couples don’t appear on mainstream, network TV – certainly not the most sexually active and adventurous characters. But cable channels (particularly paid channels, like HBO and Showtime) have always led the way with groundbreaking content, and in this sense, this is not an exception. Showtime’s Shameless gave us a truly fresh perspective on the subject with its improbable young couple, Ian and Mickey. HBO’s True Blood gave us a glimpse at very different kinds of sexuality in general, not just the out and proud sexuality of Lafayette. But various characters are changing the face of TV in subtle ways: Captain Ray Holt in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a black police captain who faced both racism and homophobia in his work and who enjoys a loving, long-term interracial relationship with his partner; Omar Little the Robin Hood-like criminal in The Wire; David and Keith in Six Feet Under – another interracial relationship that came to be only after the uptight David could accept his own sexuality; Kevin and Scotty in Brothers & Sisters (and eventually Kevin’s Uncle Saul, who comes out quite late in life); Callie Torres and Arizona Robbins in Grey’s Anatomy; John Cooper in Southland; numerous characters who live unhappy, closeted lives because of the times they live in (Thomas Barrow in Downton Abbey, Sal Romero in Mad Men along with many other subtle and ambiguous characters who have come along throughout the seven season run of Mad Men, Nurse Mount in Call the Midwife). I did not always buy everything these characters did, and sometimes the stories involved them could feel a bit “placed” and token in nature. But it is encouraging that, slowly, this array of LGBTQ characters has become the new norm.

We have come a long way from the Jodie Dallas character in Soap, who started as a gay character who offered to have a sex-reassignment operation to be with his ultra-masculine football player boyfriend. Advertisers threatened to pull their support for the show, and for a while the show stood its ground. But eventually Jodie had relationships/flings with women and fathered a child. While he as a character maintained all along that he was gay, his character was a lightning rod in that he did not satisfy gay rights groups (justifiably concerned that the character would appear stereotypical or at the very least not representative of the gay community) and he did not make conservative groups happy simply because the character existed. But the character was a kind of pioneer – and we can at least see that the variety and depth of representation has changed a lot since the late 1970s when Soap was on the air.

With everything else that has changed in how the LGBTQ population is seen and accepted and has changed in how entertainment is produced and consumed, we should be able to think more creatively about how to produce and present things outside of the standard template.