‘Fellow Travelers’ Spends Too Little Time With Its Messy Characters

The latest in pop-culture news, recaps, and reviews, plus close reads, profiles, interviews, and more from Vulture.com. [Brand Logo]( tv review [Good Sex Can’t Save Fellow Travelers]( The Showtime limited series spends too little time with its messy, fascinating characters and far too much time on Gay U.S. History 101. Photo: Courtesy of Showtime I should start by acknowledging that the sex scenes in Fellow Travelers are, indeed, very hot — not in the usual, politely deferential way you see gay sex in TV and movies, where the camera pans away to an open window or treats the bodies in action as sculptural objects. These are lived-in, character-revealing and -defining sequences. The series’ two main figures, a D.C. fixer named Hawkins Fuller (played by Matt Bomer) and a younger aspiring staffer named Tim Laughlin (played by Jonathan Bailey), meet at the beginning of the McCarthy era and become physically and, later, emotionally entwined just as anti-Communist fervor kicks the Lavender Scare into high gear. Hawkins, the more experienced of the two, cruises for men in parks and ignores them in the halls of government buildings afterward. Tim, whom Hawkins quickly nicknames “Skippy,” is less experienced but knows how to use his prettiness to his advantage. In one deft scene, he plays the sub to Hawkins’s top in order to get his lover to take him to an exclusive party full of political power players. The show gets that sex, for these men, is at once a risk, a venue for gamesmanship, and a totally natural need. It’s a thing that intersects with all the other aspects of their characters, excluding them from state power and uniting them as a couple at the same time. [read more]( The Latest TV Recaps • Lessons in Chemistry: [The Motherhood Equation]( • Billions: [Take the Money and Run]( • The Great British Baking Show: [Pies Are Squared]( • Loki: [Not With a Bang But a Whimper]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Stories We Think You’ll Like [Are We Sluts for Taylor Swift’s ‘Slut!’? There’s a lot riding on that exclamation point.]( By Rebecca Alter [How Much Press Can One Man Do? The Killers of the Flower Moon press tour is forcing Martin Scorsese to do things he’s never done — and it hits different, as he might now say.]( By Fran Hoepfner [Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous Ancestry Called Into Question A CBC investigation claims she was born to a white Italian family in Massachusetts.]( By Justin Curto [‘My Heart Rate Frickin’ Spiked Up’ Some Five Nights at Freddy’s fans have never played the game — they just watch streamers squirm.]( By Shannon Liao [Everything Jonathan Majors Has Been Dropped From Magazine Dreams, his Sundance bodybuilding drama, is off the 2023 release calendar.]( By Alejandra Gularte [Artforum Editor Fired After Publishing Call for Cease-fire Signed by Thousands David Velasco said he’s disappointed “a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.”]( By Jason P. Frank [Adidas Made Billions Before Addressing Ye’s Alleged Antisemitism and Harassment A new report details claims the sportswear company enabled Kanye West for nearly a decade.]( By Zoe Guy [Billions Creators Wanted Finale to Feel Like West Wing “We wanted to make sure we honor our characters in the way they honored those characters.”]( By Sarene Leeds [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Today’s Crossword]( 28-Across, Four Letters: Shawkat who was born in 1989. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty A newsletter of TV and movie recommendations. [Sign up]( to get it every week. [Get the Newsletter]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe]( | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved