Some series that I choose not to
watch are, at least initially, tied to my identity. I didn’t watch Atlanta
Murphy has always been an expert at
portraying the outsiders in our culture, so despite not being black, he is the
perfect showrunner for Pose. And he picks up the second season right
at the cusp of the AIDS crisis – we open the season with Pray Tell (Bryan
Porter, absolutely magnificent) attending the funeral of another gay man who
has died of the disease (the number is close to 250). The disease has struck
the community as well – Blanca (MJ Rodriguez) has recently gone from HIV
positive to having full blown AIDS. In an effort to fight this, a fellow gay
physician (Sandra Bernhard) advises Blanca to begin raiding the medicine
cabinet of rich white men who have died of the disease – something that was all
too common in the early days of the disease. And she convinces Pray Tell that he has “to do
something with his rage… or else it’ll eat you alive). This includes a
real-life ‘die-in’ at the Church
of Cardinal O’Connor
Other members of the clans are
having their own adjustments. Elektra (Dominque Jackson) has recently taken up
a job at the Hellfire Club as a dominatrix at an S & M club. The darkness
of this came very clear in the last episode, when a client OD’d in the stirrups,
and she found herself rushing first to Blanca, and utterly rejecting the idea
of doing the right thing, and then to another stripper, where it became very
clear just how low on the totem pole the black woman ranks with law
enforcement. What she eventually ends up doing would not have been out of place
on Breaking Bad, but there is
something so horrendous about it that Elektra, who has the boldest face of the
group, has trouble sleeping weeks afterwards.
In a world this oppressive, its
hard to find joy, and that it was the ballroom shows are for – acts of defiance
that even hidden in the outer limits they stand for something. Yet there are
signs that there may be hope – Madonna is entering the mainstream, and we see
just what she really meant to the gay community back then. And there are minor
triumphs that give hope – Blanca opens a boutique with a lady slumlord (Patti
LuPone channels her inner Leona Helmsley) and manages to win the initial
skirmish. And Angel, her daughter struggles to win a photo shoot with Esquire
and fails, yet manages to win a job as the face of a department store makeup
chain. In one of the more joyous moment of the series, the family goes to a
drugstore and sees Angel in the makeup aisle.
I can imagine a lot of people will
be upset just at the idea of this series, but that is the point of Pose (and indeed, much of Murphy’s work
in general) We need series like this, not just because it employs gays and
trans actors of color, but because they’re a part of society then – and now –
that we want to forget exist. And they may isolate the mainstream, but the idea
shouldn’t. I had doubts about the series in general and Billy Porter in
particular being considered for Emmy nominations; within a few minutes of
Season 2, they were completely eradicated. Murphy has always been a man who
embraces extremes, and this is one extreme the community he should be glad he
found. And if this is truly his last series for FX, he picked a hell of a show to go out with.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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