Matt Bomer: "Fellow Travelers"

There are things I'd change in "Fellow Travelers." The Jelani Alladin story feels generic; also, it seems to have been grafted onto the actual plot, without a compelling reason. (I'm only three hours in. Maybe I'll change my mind.) Also, when Roy Cohn addresses the ghost of his mother--as a way of cramming in information about his disfigured nose--I feel like I'm watching a thesis video for an undergraduate "film studies" class.

All that aside, I'm happy to spend a few hours with Matt Bomer's "Hawk." This guy seems to be Thomas Mallon's response to "Don," from "Mad Men." It's a gay Don Draper! Hawk has decided that love isn't an option; the best choice is to marry the boss's daughter, then fuck young men on the side. In Joseph McCarthy's climate of terror, it isn't possible to be idealistic. Hawk will toss people under the bus to survive; he sacrifices one young man to HUAC trials (or "HUAC-adjacent" trials), and he helps a lesbian colleague to betray her own girlfriend, so that she can hang on to her housing. Hawk is sort of repellent--but we can understand why he acts the way he acts. Also, the script seems to ask: If you were in this guy's shoes, are you sure you would behave differently?

A stranger comes to town. Hawk's occasional lover, Tim, becomes outspoken; he is a bit too jokey, in public, when he refers to Hawk as an "uncle." He gets drunk and sings love songs--in a quiet restaurant. He talks--a bit too much--about trading the seediness of DC for a "free" life in Rehoboth Beach, and we can see that he is a source of stress for Hawk. This is doomed love; Hawk's entire world is at stake.

All this is like a TV version of "Carol"--which is something I didn't even know I'd wanted. But now I know. It's a favorite in this house, at least for the first three hours.

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