[Fellow Travelers Recap w/ Joe Lipsett] "Make it Easy" Brings Tim and Hawk's Rollercoaster Series to an End

Each week Joe and Terry discuss the most recent episode of Showtime’s adaptation of Fellow Travelers, alternating between our respective sites. 

Missed a Review? Episode 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Spoilers follow for Episode 8 “Make It Easy”

JOE

It’s the end of the road for Showtime’s Fellow Travelers and I’m very curious to read your thoughts on the finale, Terry.

This limited series has been something of a rollercoaster in terms of its ups and downs. I think I finally settled into acceptance by the time the finale rolled around, because “Make It Easy” mostly worked for me. 

Sure, Marcus (Jelani Alladin), Frankie (Noah J. Ricketts) and Jerome (Jude Wilson) once again get short shrift, but we’ve come to expect that from the series. As a result, when the three are seen only in passing, I wasn’t surprised.

The finale predictably zeroed in on Tim (Jonathan Bailey) and Hawk (Matt Bomer) across two time periods: 1957, in the wake of McCarthy’s funeral as the pair reunite after Tim’s military service, and 1986, as Tim urges Hawk to help him stage an AIDS protest to force legislative change. 

The 1957 stuff worked less well for me. As you suggested last week, there’s another time jump so Tim’s service doesn’t contribute anything to the narrative. He’s simply back and looking for a job; seemingly nothing that happened mattered to him or the show.  

Ditto with Hawk caving to Lucy (Allison Williams)’ demands that he give up his apartment. As soon as it happens, Hawk randomly has access to her uncle’s old apartment, which he promptly uses for bruise-inducing sex with Tim. As always, the sexy times between Bomer and Bailey are great, but this is all just set-up for another round of betrayal by Hawk. 

At least Hawk’s final asshole move allowed us to see Mary (Erin Neufer) again. The brief glimpse of a friendship we saw between Tim and Mary back in the early/middle stretch was one of my favourite parts of the show and it makes sense that they’d grab brunch and gossip now that she’s back in town. 

I also liked that Mary, already the victim of Hawk’s backstabbing behaviour, immediately sees Tim’s rejection letter from his prospective State job in Refugee Relief for what it is. Tim has “become inconvenient” to Hawk and he’s been thrown to the wolves in M Unit. Her immediate understanding of the situation is a pitch perfect moment. 

Perhaps it’s just because there’s a note of finality to it or because it involved more of Williams, but the 1986 storyline worked better for me. Lucy finally confronts Hawk about their marriage and his “special” friendship after visiting Tim in the AIDS ward. I loved the moment when she surveys the area around Tim’s bed and realizes that Hawk has been sleeping there, as well as her rebuttal to Hawk that their marriage was over because she never felt desired in her life. It’s weird to say that I wound up feeling more for her character over the course of Fellow Travelers, but here we are.

Earlier in these reviews, I said that Williams was something of a utility player for the series, and she proved it doubly in this finale. With that said, despite feeling deep empathy for her 30 year sham of a marriage, I still bristled when Lucy asked the desk clerk on the AIDS ward if she should wear gloves. Between the line and her perfectly coiffed hair and expensive clothes, she was serving Nancy Reagan/Margaret Thatcher realness. 

Not everything about the series ultimately worked for me, but the performances definitely carried the day. The time jumps, the show’s treatment of POC queers, and its threadbare narrative often left me cold, but the period costuming and the three central performances were rock solid. After eight uneven episodes, Fellow Travelers earns a B- from me.

But Terry, I want to know how you felt about Tim’s declaration that Hawk is his “great consuming love” and that he has “no regrets”? Was Hawk returning home to an empty house or seeing his dead lover’s name emblazoned on the AIDS quilt impactful to you? Were you surprised how nonchalantly the series addressed Hawk’s test results? What about Lucy’s statement that she didn’t divorce Hawk because she couldn’t face the grief of Jackson’s death without his support? 

And how do you grade this unabashedly gay limited series? 

TERRY

Joe, this episode made me mad for a few reasons, all of which you kind of addressed in your questions to me. Before I get to that, though, I do want to join you in mostly enjoying this episode because it gave us confrontations between Lucy, Hawk and Tim. You’re right that she’s been a utility player for the series, and she brings Republican Wife vibes absolutely. You mentioned Nancy Reagan/Margaret Thatcher which is appropriate for the time – I wrote down, anachronistically, Laura Bush realness. I also sneered when she asked about wearing gloves, but I also, somewhat, appreciated it because it was a good character moment for her. 

Fellow Travelers never developed Lucy’s character much. Furtive and knowing glances, a quiet sense of desperation, and internal rage don’t necessarily create a character. But Allison somehow gave her more life than the script ever wanted to. She’s an observer; someone who doesn’t understand her husband or Tim and has been crushed by the realization that she’s never been desired by Hawk. I saw the scene of her in the hospital and asking cringey questions as a step in the direction of acceptance and trying to understand. As much as it’s easy now to be angry about how she reacted, if we were in that moment it wouldn’t seem as strange to an outsider. 

Hell, in 1996 90210 did an episode about AIDS and the fear of touching an AIDS patient. 

So while I, too, bristled, I thought it was a factual and of-character response for Lucy, followed up by her assertion that she stayed married because of the death of a child. Jackson’s death was more destructive than Fellow Travelers gave it screen time. Watching “Make It Easy” made me a little angry about the previous two episodes because of how little we get to see of the family dynamics and the histories. 

So indebted is the show to the first five episodes set in the 50s that the most visually striking moments invoke that time and place. From seeing McCarthy’s funeral where Miss Addison (Keara Graves) sneers “cocksucker” at Tim and Roy Cohn (Will Brill) escorting the coffin to even the AIDS quilt set in D.C., Fellow Travelers never left the 50s in its themes and storytelling. Which makes, for me, the 60s and 70s-set episodes feel even less material even though Jackson’s death was such a destructive element in the trio’s lives. 

The part that made me so mad, though, was the way Fellow Travelers tried to let Hawk off the hook. From the throwaway line that he is negative to Tim simply forgiving him for, let’s be honest, ruining Tim’s life…Hawk got away relatively easy from the story’s perspective. The idea of “great consuming love” is never interrogated. And Fellow Travelers jumps back to the late 50s to give us another betrayal from Hawk that is waved away simply because Tim sees Hawk and Lucy’s baby girl. 

Because we didn’t get to see much of Tim’s life post the 50s, his acceptance of having an all-consuming love that most people never have the experience of rings false. All we see are the times in which Hawk hurt him–either while squirreling him away at his family cabin or the way the 70s, drug-fueled episode positioned their relationship. Ultimately, Fellow Travelers’ narrative thrust is about Hawk’s journey from a deeply closeted man with a whole lot of internalized homophobia to living his life as an out gay man. It took the death of his love to do it…which sets Fellow Travelers in a weird bury your gays type of storytelling. Maybe it’s a subversive way of using that trope, as queer pain fuels not straight storylines, but a queer one…but it still made Tim’s death feel less emotional to me, if that makes sense. 

I realized while writing about this series that Fellow Travelers wasn’t the show I was hoping for. As a critic, it’s can sometimes be difficult to separate the “what I want” from what the filmmakers want and Fellow Travelers really tested me in that regard. I still don’t get the structure of it or the desire to focus so much on the 50s and then gloss over three decades of story in a few episodes. I wanted more. More of Marcus, Frankie and their experience of queer people of color. I wanted to understand more of Tim and why the show posits Hawk as his “great consuming love.” I wanted to know more about Lucy and Hawk’s relationship with his children and wife. And because Fellow Travelers didn’t have the time, the ability, the desire…whatever the reasons were…to dig further into paying off “Make It Easy”’s ultimate themes I don’t think the show was incredibly successful. 

Muddled storytelling mixed with fantastic performances and a whole lot of emotion, Fellow Travelers also gets a B- for me. The first five episodes were mostly fantastic. This last episode was “fine”, but man…I will just keep wishing we had more time to spend with these characters.