I am, quite famously, a major proponent of holiday episodes. So, when Fellow Travelers Episode 4 rolled around and began with that old, familiar tune of “Joy to the World,” I just about shot out of my seat. This is Fellow Travelers, after all: a show that’s as much about sex itself as it is about the trouble that our most carnal desires can cause. When I picture the confluence of this show and the holidays, I am expecting to see chestnuts as much as I am, well… chest and nuts!
While Episode 4 doles out plenty of old-fashioned, ’50s-era Christmas cheer, it also dispenses an abundance of dramatic tension. Think of this episode’s hard-to-swallow realities presented alongside the sex and romance like the fruitcake on the dessert table (and I do mean fruitcake; yes I’ve waited four weeks to make that pun). It’s a somewhat unpleasant sight when you just want to savor all of the much tastier holiday treats, but without that fruitcake, it would be harder to admire the decadence of everything surrounding it.
This week’s episode puts us right outside the door of the M-305 office, in which Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee of Investigations conducts its work rooting out supposed communists and “subversives” (which, again, is largely just code for “queer people”). We watch as a man leaves the office and loosens his tie, presumably having just lost an entire career of work because of mere suspicion about his sexuality. There is no verbal exposition granted to the viewer as to what’s going on in this scene, but the implication is patently clear. Plus, I’ve seen the first episode of House of Cards, I think I know what it looks like when a television show is about to shock me with a suicide.
Although the moment when this man walks into oncoming traffic is predictable, it’s no less shocking, made even more so by the dichotomy between the cheerful onlookers doing their holiday shopping and the sight of a dead man who will never experience another Christmas.
A brief time jump forward into the 1980s reveals that Hawk and Tim’s friend Marcus is still living with his longtime partner, Frankie. The two men have taken up residence in the queer haven of San Francisco alongside Tim, using their apartment as an occasional sanctuary for young queer kids. The group gathers to watch their “old friend” Roy Cohn—or “that bitch,” as Frankie refers to him—on 60 Minutes, during which Cohn vehemently denies that he was dying of AIDS.
This floats us back to the ’50s, when Cohn and McCarthy are at the height of their powers. For Cohn, that means demanding special privileges for David Schine, who is drafted into the army despite Cohn’s vehement disagreement. Cohn demands that Schine have special boots, a penthouse apartment from which to do his day job, and weekend passes—all of which suggest the kind of intimate relationship between Cohn and Schine that the two men are supposedly working against. In response to Cohn’s demands, the army issues a memo to McCarthy’s office, saying that they will bring charges against his subcommittee if these asks don’t cease. If these charges are pressed, McCarthy’s entire office may be investigated in front of cameras, for the public to watch. If you know anything about how McCarthy’s reign of terror ended, you know that this is when he really started to sweat.
Meanwhile, Hawk is sweating too, after a letter from McCarthy’s subcommittee appears on his desk, summoning him for an interview. He has no idea who has tried to out him and why, only that his once bulletproof facade isn’t so fortified anymore. Hawk—the suave, snake-like creature that he is—nails the verbal exam, talking and literally walking enough like a straight man to please the subcommittee, at least for that day. He’ll need to come back for a polygraph, which sends Hawk and Tim into a fit of worry.
This episode is so gripping because it shows us exactly what Hawk can do with his steely disposition, and Matt Bomer is particularly great at being menacing. When the official conducting his subcommittee interview tells Hawk that they’re seeing an average of one suicide per week, he stares back and inquires, “Do you ever worry that someone will kill you instead?” It’s chilling, and a minuscule victory for audiences watching who wish these characters could fight back without losing it all. And when Hawk later learns that it was one of his office’s assistants, Miss Addison (Keara Graves) who outed him to McCarthy’s people after finding the book Tim left on his desk with the inscription “you’re wonderful” inside the cover, he spits venom at her too. “You’re right, Miss Addison,” he says, whispering in her ear. “I am wonderful. So why don’t you just suffer? Merry Christmas.”
Ah, that’s right, it’s Christmas! We almost forgot. Luckily for us, we’re treated to a warm and wonderful scene of Tim and Hawk during their last visit before the holiday. Hawk works information out of Tim, stroking his chest under Tim’s Christmas sweater to learn about McCarthy’s empire falling apart. But it’s not solely an info-trading session; Hawk returns the favor by giving Tim a blowjob, and Tim finishes by cumming in Hawk’s mouth. Hawk lifts his head to stare up at Tim, before leaning in—load still in-mouth, mind you—for a kiss. It was at this point I was slapping my desk. By golly, I can’t believe they did it: a Christmas episode with a snowball. How seasonal! God bless Fellow Travelers.
But it’s not all sex, either. Hawk gives Tim a pair of cufflinks with Hawk’s initials on them, and sweetly asks Tim what they would do if they could spend Christmas together. The two men share a few feats of silence together before Tim tells Hawk that he can’t remember ever being this happy, and I tell my doctor to please refill my Zoloft stat.
Hawk takes his polygraph test and mostly succeeds, trying to conjure images of a copy of Time magazine with a stately, middle-aged woman on the cover. (I’ll be frank with you: This is a time-honored tradition that persists among not-yet-out gay men today. I used a similar method in middle school.) Meanwhile, the army confirms that they will press charges against McCarthy’s subcommittee after Cohn refuses to back down, and Cohn receives the third-party evidence procured by Hawk in Episode 3 about McCarthy having an alleged affair with a male army vet.
Cohn is immediately fired up. He believes that McCarthy’s betrayal of him is a move to protect the senator’s own secrets. Despite Cohn’s secret affair with Schine hiding in plain sight, Cohn is undeterred from his vitriolic hunt for subversives. After all, if he can convincingly out people in his campaign’s pursuits, Cohn will appear to be straight as an arrow to the prying public.
After his polygraph exam, Hawk tells Marcus that he passed it with the absence of guilt. “Guilt cranks the machine,” he says, “and I have none.” It’s a sweet moment—nodding to the state of his relationship with Tim—but a fleeting one. Hawk can’t outrun guilt through the years, and we learn in the ’80s that remorse is half the reason he’s come to visit Tim. Hawk feels horribly for how he treated his lover over the last three decades, and also sees this as a chance to take care of someone again. When Tim suggests that playing the nurse doesn’t suit Hawk, he regrets his words, and the two men make their first allusion to Hawk and his wife Lucy having lost a child.
Tim’s choice of words were out of anger over Hawk being unwilling to get into contact with the California governor’s chief of staff. Tim wants to be introduced to fight for an AIDS anti-discrimination bill that’s in limbo and needs the governor’s signature, but Hawk worries that doing this will jeopardize the life he’s built with his family back home. In his typical fashion, Hawk leaves in a huff, and later returns to find that Tim has had a seizure and is in the hospital.
Suddenly, the gravity of Hawk’s own selfishness—the same egocentrism that built his happy life with a wife and grandkids, and eventually shunned Tim—hits him like a ton of bricks. Or, perhaps more accurately, a ton of coal. I suppose it was a bit naive to think that Fellow Travelers might reach its halfway mark on a happier note after this episode began so grimly, but this is a great reminder: Christmas will never be quite as sweet as we’re expecting it to be.
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