[Fellow Travelers Recap w/ Joe Lipsett] "Bulletproof" Ups the Tension as It Becomes Clear that No One is Safe

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

Miss a review? Episode 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Spoilers follow for Episode 2 “Bulletproof” 

JOE

Episode two of Fellow Travelers is a nice expansion of the premiere, doubling down on most of the main plot threads, while deepening the emotional beats. The focus is still principally on Hawk (Matt Bomer), but there’s good stuff here with Tim (Jonathan Bailey), as well as Hawk’s assistant Mary Johnson (Erin Neufer) and reporter Marcus (Jelani Alladin). 

The historical background for “Bulletproof” is the trial and eventual execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg around 1952-1953. The coverage of the married American couple who were spies for the Russians (shades of The Americans) provides a real life anchor to an episode that deals with various characters turning on each other to save their own hides.  

As we anticipated last week, the McCarthy hearings - and the M Unit investigations - are heating up which means asking queer people to inform on each other…just like we see with the Rosenbergs and her brother, Donald. It’s not exactly subtle, but thus far subtlety hasn’t been Fellow Travelers strong suit. 

That’s fine because an episode like “Bulletproof” is more concerned with taking big emotional swings. Tim has rejected his Catholic upbringing to pine obsessively over Hawk (I love how he uses every interaction with Mary and Marcus to ask about his absent lover).  

Tim is becoming close friends with Mary, whom he learns is secretly living with her girlfriend Caroline (Gabbi Kosmidis) when he attends games night with her queer friends. It’s a night of reprieve for Tim, who cuts loose playing charades and briefly makes a connection with an unnamed queer man. At least until it all comes crashing down: Tim learns the man is celibate because his faith is more important than his sexuality. Over the rest of the episode we also see Mary’s relationship come under scrutiny because Caroline refused the advances of a male colleague. 

The fall-out is quick and severe: Hawk forces Tim to write a break-up letter to Mary - his “beard” at the start of the episode - and cut off contact. Mary then uses the letter to convince the investigators of her own heterosexuality, throwing Caroline under the bus (though it seems that the other woman has already moved back in with her parents in Ohio? The order is unclear).  

This betrayal also opens a rift between Tim and Hawk. The latter is incensed that Mary would take such a risk and his cynical, emotionally closed-off reaction (Hawk effectively disavows love in favour of personal protection) is a wake-up call for Tim. Never mind the fact that Marcus already warned him that pursuing Hawk will only hurt him. 

Of course the other thing we learn in “Bulletproof” is that Hawk is dealing with his own personal betrayal from a loved one. We’re introduced to his mother Estelle (Rosemary Dunsmore), who pleads with Hawk to apologize to his dying father in order to get back into the family will. It seems that Hawk’s father saw his son’s first gay dalliance with the tennis boy and cut him off; something that Hawk ultimately refuses to apologize for. 

His scenes with Estelle are far more impactful than the charged encounter with his father. Sure, it’s satisfying to see Hawk refuse to bow down to the patriarch for money, but it’s much more meaningful to see how Hawk both shares and refutes his mother’s approach to relationships. They would both rather take the “easy” path - she to stay in a life of luxury; he to go to the gay speakeasy rather than be with Tim, which he later describes as “hard”.  

But there are some lines that Hawk won’t cross (bigotry, it seems) that clearly distinguishes him from his mother. 

Of course it’s easy to have principles when your life isn’t under a microscope. By episode’s end, when Hawk learns from Senator Smith (Linus Roache) that his bachelor status is being questioned, Hawk immediately goes to Lucy (Allison Williams) to propose. It would seem that everyone has something to lose. 

Thus far Fellow Travelers appears to be making the argument that the ones you love are the most likely to hurt or betray you. So while we may judge Mary and Hawk for their actions, the series has already proven multiple times that these were exceptional times for queer people.  

There were risks everywhere and once Roy Cohn (Will Brill) and his people got on your scent, you were in big trouble. Simply being queer was dangerous; acting on that queerness meant opening yourself up not just to heartbreak, but potentially also political and financial ruin.  

Over to you, Terry: what did you think of episode two? Are you interested to see more of Marcus’ burgeoning relationship with drag queen/server Frankie (Noah J. Ricketts)? What about his subplot feeding Bobby Kennedy (Ben Sanders) information about Cohn’s lackey, David Schine (Matt Visser) who is revealed to be a draft dodger?  Did you get a bit of a gay vibe from Lucy’s brother Leonard (Mike Taylor) or is he just abusing substances? And finally, is the back and forth between the 50s and 80s still working for you? 

TERRY

You hit on most of the beats that really resonated with me, Joe. “Bulletproof” is a bit heavy-handed in its metaphors and themes, right down to the title. You asked about spending time between the 50s and the 80s and, frankly, I don’t need the 80s-set drama. Maybe it will build to something meaningful as Tim and Hawk visit for, presumably, the last time. Maybe it will create an emotional catharsis by the end. I don’t really know, but I hope so, because it’s not completely working for me.  

The scene I’m thinking of, in particular, is after Hawk phones his wife to tell her he’s coming back home tomorrow and then wades through a throng of shirtless gay men at a bar. While standing at a table, a bowl of condoms and an AIDS pamphlet staring him in the face, a pair of younger gay men come up to him with one calling him a daddy.  

They have a little banter back-and-forth and Hawk asks him whether he’s afraid of AIDS. The young gay man is completely oblivious to the destructive power of the disease and says that he works out and that he’s young, dumb and full of cum. Obviously, Hawk sees a lot of himself in this young man. A fearlessness that has stretched from the first episode into this one.  

He has a bronze star. He’s untouchable. And then, of course, Hawk has to vocally spell it out in case we aren’t paying attention: it’s not so much that he (or the young kid) is bulletproof. There’s always going to be fallout. There’s always going to be collateral damage.  

“Bulletproof” plays with this concept, as you mentioned, showing the way in which queer people are forced to turn on each other. That having queer friends or being associated with anyone not white and straight is a liability. The anger bubbling up in Hawk when he calls Mary and Caroline foolish for living together does a much better job of highlighting the episode’s titular examination than Hawk blatantly stating it as an off-handed comment in the 80s. So, too, does the conversation between Hawk and Senator Smith concerning McCarthy’s desire to ruin the senator.  

“Let them look,” Smith tells Hawk upon finding out. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”  

Even Smith is operating under the assumption that he is bulletproof and therefore there’s no concern for McCarthy or his lackeys to dig into his skeletons. But “Bulletproof” tears at these ideas over the entire hour, which culminates in Hawk’s own gamble for protection in Lucy.  

This also brings in Lucy’s potentially queer brother, as you mentioned. I’m unsure at this moment if he is queer or not; however he also provides a character moment for Hawks as the two of them both want to shirk their family’s legacy.  

The way Fellow Travelers contrasts this opening where Leonard wants nothing to do with his father’s wishes with Hawk’s own daddy issues works wonderfully and, if Leonard is gay, it would work against Smith’s statement that he has nothing to hide. All of this makes Hawk’s comment in the 80s feel reductive in the face of a litany of reasons the episode provides to prove that “bulletproof” does not equate to “safe.”  

Marcus provides another intriguing angle for Fellow Travelers to explore because, let’s face it, he deals with much more adversity than the war hero Hawk or even the pious Tim. It’s fleeting, but the moments where Marcus is with his fellow Black men, also reporters who work for different papers and have to scrounge together money for rent, are full of danger. As Fellow Travelers did with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, it also does with Langston Hughes, a poet and suspected Communist who, as one of Marcus’s friends says, is rumored to be queer as well.  

While it’s not known whether Hughes identified as part of the LGBTQ+ community (his primary biographer suggested he was asexual), scholars do find queer undertones in his poetry. Some even believe that it was because of his precarious position and the need to rely on black churches and their faith that he remained closeted.  

So it’s important and thematically interesting that Fellow Travelers includes his McCarthy Senate hearing in the episode. Whether he was queer or not is moot for the sake of “Bulletproof” as it uses him and his fantastic poem “Kids Who Die” to make a point about those in power.  

One area that’s really throwing me for a loop is the political intrigue. Names are dropped and people are briefly introduced, sometimes without names, and it makes me rush to the internet to figure out what’s going on. Fellow Travelers’ attempts to be both a star-crossed lovers story and an examination of political intrigue in the 50s is on shakier ground in this capacity. I’m curious to see where Marcus’s plot to feed Kennedy information about his rivals will go, but honestly I’m much more interested in the expressions of queerness and the story developing between our leads.  

If there’s one thing that Fellow Travelers has shown so far, it’s the importance of queer safe spaces…and how ephemeral they can be. To show Mary’s circle of friends, dancing with each other and playing Charades, only to dispatch the joy mere scenes later, Fellow Travelers tells us no one is safe. And while I’m excited to see what develops between Marcus and Frankie…I’m fearful for what’s going to happen at this queer club.  

All in all, Fellow Travelers continues to impress with its characterizations even if some of the dialogue and themes are a little too on-the-nose. When it’s working in the subtleties and allowing the viewer to put the pieces together, it reminds me just how fantastic it can be.  

We’ll find out where episode three goes when we hop over to Queer.Horror.Movies to discuss the ominously titled “Hit Me.” 

Fellow Travelers airs Fridays on Showtime