The Big Picture

Fellow Travelers sheds light on the echoes of homophobia and the lasting impact it has on individuals and relationships. Starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, this historical romance series focuses on their characters’ years-long relationship. The series fails to fully explore the experiences of transgender, queer, and intersex individuals during the McCarthy era, and sidelines the stories of Black and female characters.

When I was 18 years old, I landed my very first job at a construction company, often known as a place where homophobia is normalized. I was fully aware of it from the get-go, which is why I was extremely careful of how I walked, talked, and gestured. I listened to homophobic slurs throughout my whole time there, but I felt “safe” because I acted straight. One day, however, I heard one of my superiors describing a heated argument he’d heard from his neighbors, a same-sex couple. He was baffled by the notion that these two men had been arguing as if they were capable of having feelings for each other. I didn’t speak up, didn’t let him know how dehumanizing that was, partly because he was my superior and he could create a hard time for me at work if he’d wanted to, but mostly because speaking up would be equivalent to outing myself, and I knew there was no coming back from that. For those who have been through similar experiences, the Showtime series Fellow Travelers will hit uncomfortably close to home, reminding us that the echoes of institutionalized homophobia can still be heard to this very day. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing the series does well.

Based on the novel of the same name by author Thomas Mollon, the show centers around Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Matt Bomer), a man who is perfectly comfortable with his sexuality but believes that, during the Joseph McCarthy (Chris Bauer) era, he has no choice but to live a closeted life. That doesn’t stop him from striking up a relationship with Tim “Tippy” Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey), an idealist who’s starting to realize that the U.S. isn’t exactly the country that it advertises itself to be.

Image via Showtime Fellow Travelers A decades-long chronicle of the risky, volatile and steamy relationship between the charismatic and ambitious Hawk and the pious and idealistic Tim, two political staffers who fall in love at the height of the 1950s Lavender Scare. Through the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, the drug-fueled disco culture of the 1970s and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the two men’s fiery affair only intensifies despite the constant threat of being exposed and losing everything. Release Date October 27, 2023 Cast Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey Main Genre Romance Genres History, Drama

Hawk Is a Fully Developed Character in ‘Fellow Travelers,’ but Few Others Are
Image via Showtime

It’s pretty easy to understand the situation that Hawk is in. Working inside the U.S. government, he has firsthand knowledge of what is being done on a daily basis to the LGBTQIA+ community, and the fear that it provokes in him. Back in the ’50s, getting labeled as a homosexual was almost as bad as being labeled a Communist, and as McCarthyism started to grow, that distinction became increasingly less important to the powers that be.

In that regard, Fellow Travelers does a good job of illustrating how a state of paranoia benefits no one and establishes a witch-hunt culture in which people can’t trust each other, relationships get torn apart, and minorities always get the shorter end of the stick. The series also showcases how that means innocent people can and do end up caught in the crossfire — but this is where Fellow Travelers’ biggest problems start. Even though Hawk’s delicate position is made perfectly clear, and we can absolutely understand every questionable and even cruel choice he makes from beginning to end of the series, Fellow Travelers is quick to forgive and forget its main character throughout the episodes. Hawk is not a good husband, probably not a good father, and shows no remorse when needing to throw someone under the bus for his own benefit. But the show doesn’t want us to pay too much attention to that as it wants us to witness the beautiful and tragic love story that he lived.

That juxtaposition wouldn’t be a problem if the series at least presented Hawk as someone you shouldn’t admire. However, his good and bad actions are shown with equal measure, as if they could cancel each other out. That’s not the case. Some of Hawk’s actions are even criminal, and no amount of cute things he says and does to Tippy compensate for his past — not to mention the fact that his main romance is problematic as well.

‘Fellow Travelers’ Has a Romance Problem
Image via Showtime

Fellow Travelers goes out of its way to romanticize Hawk and Tippy’s relationship, to the point of ignoring – or barely acknowledging – that Hawk’s presence in Tippy’s life is toxic at the very least. Without giving too much away, the more time we spend with the couple, the clearer it becomes that Hawk is on a destructive path, is aware of it, and has no problem bringing Tippy down with him. The worst part is that it all seems done in order to create a path toward a heartfelt ending of a story that is pretty easy to predict. While watching a romance stretch for years is enjoyable, it’s ironic that a series with the intention of showing how our community has been systematically dehumanized and erased by the American government does just that to its supporting characters.

Fellow Travelers doesn’t seem interested at all in going too far down the LGBTQIA+ legend. In fact, it sits comfortably at the B and dips a toe into the T, which essentially reproduces an error that stories keep making. It ignores that transgender, queer, and intersex people existed at that time, but are constantly kept as footnotes. Making the McCarthy era and the HIV epidemic the backdrop of our stories is exposing how little regard society had for our community, but we can’t just do the same. This is why documentaries like The Stroll are extremely relevant to modern filmmaking, giving a voice and platform to people who have been silenced for far too long.

Marcus and Frankie Are Left Behind in ‘Fellow Travelers’
Image via Showtime

Fellow Travelers does the bare minimum in featuring Black and female characters. Take, for example, the Marcus (Jelani Alladin) and Frankie (Noah J. Ricketts) storylines. The former is originally presented as having similarities with Hawk when it comes to sex and affection, but changes throughout the series. However, we never witness that change, not in the way that we see every bit of Hawk’s story. For Marcus and Frankie, it feels like the series is keeping up with their stories only to check off some boxes, rather than fleshing out their romance. A similar fate happens to Lucy (Allison Williams), who is stuck in supportive wifey mode throughout the whole season and is forgotten about when Hawk’s story doesn’t need her anymore.

The same can be said about how Fellow Travelers chooses to depict the absurdities within the McCarthy administration in the ’50s. McCarthy himself and his posse are presented as one-dimensional Disney villains with scarred or weird faces (if you are familiar with Bauer’s work, you’ll be constantly distracted by his nose) whose scenes only serve the purpose of stressing how absurd the era was. Meanwhile, the victims are hardly ever given a voice. This would be the perfect setting to listen to powerful testimonials, but Fellow Travelers prefers to repeatedly underscore how evil McCarthy is and how his team is formed by hypocrites. We know that already — but more importantly, we have to remember that McCarthy rose to power with ample popular support, and reducing those figures to fiendish figures makes them seem like a thing of the past, while in reality they still exist and would take down our basic human rights in a heartbeat.

The ultimate proof of how insufficiently committed Fellow Travelers is to delving deeper into the backdrop it chose for itself is that, from one episode to another, there’s a time jump — and McCarthy is simply gone. All of a sudden we’re inching closer to the HIV-AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, and this time the series doesn’t have much to offer in terms of how badly the community was affected by it and how the stigma impregnated so deep within society that HIV+ individuals still face prejudice today.

All in all, Fellow Travelers is enjoyable enough if you want to follow a romance story without thinking too much about it. It provides enough background so you’ll understand why each character acts the way they do and will make you reflect at least a little on how cruel society has been to our community. However, it prefers to give the spotlight to and downplay the actions of a character that’s problematic at best to the detriment of giving space to other stories — something that an eight-hour series should certainly have room for.

Rating: C

The Big Picture

Fellow Travelers sheds light on the echoes of homophobia and the lasting impact it has on individuals and relationships. The show romanticizes the toxic relationship between Hawk and Tippy, ignoring the harmful effects it has on Tippy’s life. The series fails to fully explore the experiences of transgender, queer, and intersex individuals during the McCarthy era, and sidelines the stories of Black and female characters.

The premiere episode of Fellow Travelers is now available to stream on Showtime in the U.S., with the remaining seven episodes releasing every week on Friday.

Watch on Showtime