This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
This week:
- It’s time this holiday movie got its due.
- Jonathan Bailey just broke my heart.
- Give Danielle Brooks everything.
- I’m sorry, who is playing a grandma???
- A major announcement.
An Award-Worthy Performance
The finale of Fellow Travelers is now streaming, ahead of its Sunday night airing on Showtime—a conclusion to one of the year’s best series that is gorgeous, devastating, and cathartic in equal measure.
The story of a tortured-yet-beautiful romance between two men over decades, the show waltzed through those emotions throughout the entire season, as Matt Bomer’s Hawk and Jonathan Bailey’s Tim weather the historical circumstances that prevented their deserved happily ever after. Bomer’s nuanced performance as an infatuated, conflicted man is the best work of his career, and, in the emotion-packed finale, Bailey is a revelation. Across multiple timelines, he showcases how intertwined grit, defiance, and joy in spite of darkness are for gay men determined to make their lives mean something in a world that actively works to strip them of dignity.
The series spans Hawk and Tim’s meet-cute during the Lavender Scare and McCarthyism-led panic of the 1950s through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. The final scene, set at the unveiling of the AIDS Memorial Quilt at the National Mall in D.C. that might as well have been an anvil plummeting straight onto my heart, it shattered me so much.
There are two images in the final episode that have seared into my brain since I first watched, tableaus charting the arc of a doomed, yet life-changing relationship. First is Hawk and Tim slow dancing naked in the privacy of a secret apartment and, later, Tim’s head nestled on Hawk’s chest as they take a post-coital nap—moments of bliss stolen in a society that won’t allow them that pleasure. Then there’s a mirror of that position decades later, when Hawk climbs into Tim’s hospital bed to cradle him, as Tim struggles through a rough night during his last days battling AIDS.
The power of those moments is amplified by Bailey’s performance. In the earlier timeline, his wide, giddy eyes betray a man fully aware of his good fortune to be so madly in love, cognizant of how precarious and fleeting the feeling could be and determined to live in the splendor of it. Later, as he faces death, his resignation to fate is not one of defeat, but a catalyst for clarity.
So much of his life was impacted—some might say ruined—by his inability to move on from his connection to Hawk. But in a sensational monologue delivered after Hawk questions how much pain he’s caused Tim, Tim corrects the narrative: “I spent most of my life waiting for God to love me. And then I realized the only thing that matters is that I loved God. It’s the same with you. I’ve never loved anyone but you. You were my great, consuming love. Most people don’t get one of those. I do. I have no regrets.”
Bailey’s performance of this monologue stunned me. It is spoken with such certainty, an outpouring of a lifetime of emotion funneled into a searing, pointed declaration. He’s speaking to not only a complicated romance with his lover, but also on behalf of generations of gay men whose great loves were colored and, it often seemed, marred by the misfortune of the times in which they were kindled. That’s the revelation that Tim, through Bailey’s delivery, speaks to: There’s no misfortune when it comes to love; we may now be aware of the hideousness with which society treated (and still treats) the gay community, but how dare we assume that the love found was any kind of misfortune.
I’ll be thinking about this episode, that monologue, and Bailey’s performance for a long time. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
A Touching Moment Between Great Actors
Since we’re in the crying mood after that Fellow Travelers episode, allow me to keep the tears flowing by directing you to this video of a Q&A following a recent screening of The Color Purple. (Watch it here.)
Reviews for The Color Purple are still under embargo, so I can’t say too much. But if you’ve seen Danielle Brooks, who plays Sofia, on award lists, just know that, my God, does she deserve to be there.
Danielle Brooks and Corey Hawkins attend ELLE's Women In Hollywood Celebration at Nya Studios on December 05, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Kayla Oaddams/FilmMagic/GettyIn this clip, Brooks’ co-star Corey Hawkins, who plays her husband Harpo, speaks to the full-circle moment, as the two first met when they were in Juilliard together. His speech is a beautiful testimony to his decades of conviction in Brooks’ talent, and his belief in celebrating the opportunity she’s been owed in an industry that systemically shuns the artistic gifts of Black actors who look like her.
Brooks is visibly overwhelmed and emotional in the clip, as she listens to Hawkins. It’s easy to understand why.
You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me
It has come to my attention that Melissa Joan Hart, who I grew up watching on Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch and who is not that much older than me, is playing a grandmother in a new Lifetime movie.
In response, I would like to file criminal charges against Lifetime. I will be suing them for emotional distress. I will be getting the FBI involved, as such an egregious act is clearly an active threat to society, and I will be reporting the network to Homeland Security, as this is absolutely an act of terrorism. The United Nations will also be hearing from me, as this must be some sort of human rights violation. Taylor Swift’s silence on this matter is deafening.
The New York Post reports that “fans are livid: ‘I feel attacked.’” To which I say: same!
It’s Time to Come Forward
I suppose I should settle what’s been something of an internet mystery this week. It is I who wrote the third book that Gwyneth Paltrow can’t remember, but loved. Once the title comes to her, I’ll finally share with you all what the book is so you can read it too.
What to watch this week:
The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy: My mothers have finally returned. (Now on Peacock)
American Fiction: This movie is the equivalent of a cinematic stick of dynamite. (Now in theaters)
Zone of Interest: A chilling, yet brilliant Holocaust drama pegged for major Oscars attention. (Now in theaters)
What to skip this week:
Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire: It’s almost admirable how egregiously this movie rips off the Star Wars franchise. (Thurs. on Netflix)
Wonka: A lot of reviewers liked Timothée Chalamet’s new Willy Wonka movie. Our critic very much did not. (Now in theaters)
