Fellow Travelers (Series)

A forbidden gay love of epic proportions stretching from the Red Scare of the 1950s into the early years of the AIDS epidemic under Ronald Reagan is the best way to describe this 8 part Showtime series. Just like holocaust stories, there remains a cultural need for narratives that foreground the AIDS epidemic; but this show does it with a lot of love between its two leads accompanied with a lot of sex scenes relying primarily on its two very very charming leading men. The series efficiently sketches out the wide variety of ways a wide variety of queer people coped, copulated and compromised. Constantly going back and forth between multiple timelines, the show keeps you on the edge of your seat.

The story spans decades so I am just gonna try and give just a basic premise. Matt Bomer plays Hawk, working for a senate in the government with high ambitions and likely a suitable groom for the senator's daughter Lucy. Hawk is but player and leaves no opportunity wasted to have flings with various men. It doesn’t bother Hawk that he has to hide his anonymous encounters with other men. For him, life is a performance in which the ends justify the means. Things change when Tim (nicknamed Skippy) comes into his life.  A young, fresh transplant to the city with big dreamy eyes and a chance encounter leads to Hawk getting him a job. Hawk also helps him overcome his queerness and accept he is gay an love it for all his inhibitions. Son a love story begins. But we are told very early thatches love story doesn't end happy. Years later in the 80s we see Hawks as a grandfather preparing to move to Italy of this government job with his wife Lucy. Yet when he gets the news that Tim is dying of AIDS in San Francisco, he takes off for California, despite having reason to believe his old love doesn’t want to see him. Now, we as audience have to go through and discover the sequence of events that led them to come close as lovers and what eventually rove them apart and what after this? During this 30-40 years timeline we get to see he answers grounded in the social and political realities of the eras that the show tries to travel in: the Lavender Scare ’50s give way to the radical ’60s, the debaucherous post-Stonewall ’70s, and the double devastation of the ’80s AIDS crisis and the Washington’s silence in the face of a plague that wiped out a generation of queer men.

The show will invariable be compared to 'Angels in America', which I think is a bit unfair. This series try to cover so much more behind this majestic love story as its core. Savvy, selfish Hawk and self-sacrificing Tim are like magnets, but their views on how to survive in a world that hates people like them are mutually exclusive. The leads Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey are so compelling in this almost 8 hour show and take us through the journey of a love story, a rudimentary history lesson and lots of drama. It is an also the kind of story about what it means to simultaneously spend a life completely with someone while entirely separate from them. There is so much that happen in the three and a half decade that these two men are on and off with one another. I am sure I will miss to remember most of these but you can see both these men go through their own journeys. While Hawks in th mean in charge of his own life and even others around him, we see him not hesitating to let his love go and marry a woman Lisa to advance his career because that is what he wants. We see him become a strict father, how Tim shows him th light, but a tragedy strikes and Hawk goes into the destructive spiral of drugs and alcohol and sex in fire island. His strong wife Lisa meanwhile being a witness through this whole ordeal. Meanwhile, Skippy's arc is no different. From working for the government, to shattering views about politics, he joins military, then becomes an activist, he seems his love Hawks betraying him on more than couple of occasions but some strong bond of love still keeps them connected and trust me you have to watch it to believe in it. It is a very complex, intimate, captivating and visually stunning portrait of anguish and desire between two men and people surrounding them.

Almost first 4 episodes show us a lot more details about the political side of the whole thing. The show spotlights the devastation and ruin caused by senator McCarthy’s rampant societal bigotry and homophobia. Personally, maybe this was a little too detailed for someone like me who doest have that much historical context. The famous Advocate Roy Cohn makes an important presence here as well, a prominent figure in the Angels in America story as well. The last few episodes were more my kind and something that I cherish.  There is a parallel side story of Hawk's journalist black gay friend, who is constantly facing homophobia and racism and how he falls for a nightclub drag performer. I wish we could have sen more of their love story. And then there is a brief mention about this lesbian couple and how some people'e personal lives were being torn apart by the politicians.

This must have been a very ambitious show to make. Not just because of the timeline it is trying to cover, but also the events it is trying to capture. The historical drama moves well beyond the physical, forcing the viewer to look not just at some of the most atrocious moments in American history but at ourselves and the people who put our souls at ease. It is an opportunity of a lifetime of its lead actors and I have to say that both of them pass with flying colors. Their relationship shifts over the decades, but their erotic intimacy and attraction reverberate off the screen, showcasing a euphoric and profoundly moving connection. Highly recommended. (8.5/10)