Matt Bomer‘s character in Showtime‘s new collection Fellow Travelers, Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller, is a person who likes to take issues. Specifically, lovers, and he likes to take them onerous. In Fellow Travelers‘s premiere episode, “You’re Wonderful” — now streaming on Paramount+ — we watch in flashbacks to the Nineteen Fifties as Hawk stalks potential hookups like a hunter would prey. Early on, he units his sights on Jonathan Bailey‘s earnest younger Catholic Conservative Tim Laughlin at an election occasion and approaches like a panther, closing in on the milk-drinking lad from a number of angles. First, Hawk’s a pleasant face to Tim, then knowledgeable fixer, and at last the older conflict hero is ordering his “boy” across the bed room. Tim is completely happy to take orders from the good-looking Hawk, however by the tip of the primary episode, the emotional bond the lads are reluctantly forming threatens to upend the fragile stability of energy between them.
Fellow Travelers is a present in regards to the intersections of forbidden love and coveted energy. It follows the decades-spanning love affair of Hawk and Tim, two Washington D.C. politicos compelled to maintain their romance behind closed doorways. The first episode of Fellow Travelers introduces Hawk as the last word energy participant out and in of the bed room, exploring his penchant for taking management in all areas of life. He is aware of the way to maneuver in Washington in addition to he can deliver a lover — be it Tim or a random hookup picked up on the park restroom — to heel.
The intercourse scenes in Fellow Travelers are refreshingly steamy not simply because they function two brazenly homosexual actors exploring homosexual intercourse via a queer lens, however as a result of they play out as expressions of energy. Which is completely becoming for the present’s themes and its story.
Based on the guide by Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers opens within the Eighties. An older Hawkins Fuller and his spouse Lucy (Alison Williams) are holding a lavish occasion with mates, grownup youngsters, and grandkids to rejoice their upcoming diplomatic transfer to Milan. That’s when Hawk’s outdated buddy Marcus (Jelani Alladin) reveals as much as share the information that Hawk’s actual real love, Tim, is dying of A.I.D.S. in San Francisco. While Hawk offers with this information and decides to make an impromptu journey to his estranged lover’s deathbed, we lower to how the lads first met throughout the rise of McCarthyism and fell in love regardless of Tim’s Catholicism and Hawk’s points with emotional intimacy.
Part of how they fall in love? Sex.
After hooking Tim up with a gig in Senator McCarthy’s workplace, Hawk reveals up at Tim’s lowly room in a boarding home. He pretends he was going to ask the youthful man to dinner, however Tim has to say no as a result of he’s already boiling a can of hen soup on his hotplate and it’s a sin to waste meals. Hawk hovers round Tim, quizzing him about sins. If it’s a venal sin to waste a can of soup, what sort of sin would it not be in the event that they had been to kiss? After the 2 males share the soup, and a dialog about Tim’s previous sexual experiences with a priest, Hawk goes in for the kill.
Hawk doesn’t use blindfolds or handcuffs to manage Tim. Simply his confidence. Hawk begins to undress Tim earlier than calmly ordering him to not solely take Hawk’s trousers off for him, however to fold them. It’s a request that instantly makes it clear Tim is able of service. Hawk is in command.
And if the facility dynamics weren’t clear to the viewers but, as Hawk takes Tim within the mattress — thrusting his hand down the youthful man’s pants to pleasure him — he asks Tim, “Are you my boy?” Tim may be very a lot Hawk’s boy.
Of course, we didn’t even want this scene to know that Hawk likes to dominate within the bed room. After assembly Tim, he goes to a park rest room and picks up a trick named Eddie (David Tomlinson) for the night time. When we see them in mattress, Hawk may be very forcefully pounding into the opposite man and slapping him onerous. After each males end, Hawk instantly shuts down any extended connection, giving Eddie a faux identify and leaving.
But there’s one thing completely different about Tim. Hawk not solely returns to Tim’s place — radio to muffle their moans in tow — however lets his “boy” persuade him to tag alongside to influential gatherings, and later a homosexual membership together with Marcus. Tim is in a position to do that by taking part in the coquettish submissive, begging Hawk for the invite whereas sitting in his lap…after which later sucking on Hawk’s entire foot.
It’s nonetheless early days within the collection, but it surely’s clear by the tip of the Fellow Travelers‘ premiere, that Hawk and Tim’s relationship may very effectively seesaw in energy earlier than the tip of the collection. Not solely does the Eighties model of Tim ignore Hawk’s pleas to see him — leaving Hawk patiently ready for an indication — however the closing embrace we see within the episode is just of the 2 lovers hugging one another.
Power performs is perhaps what connects Hawk and Tim sexually, however their love threatens to place them on equal footing.
Fellow Travelers Episode 1 is now streaming on Paramount+ and can make its debut on Showtime on Sunday, October 29 at 9 PM ET.
