‘Fellow Travelers’ Review: Secret Loves
metroweekly.comFellow Travelers unfolds volumes of engaging plot and story in its eight hour-long episodes. At the center of it all are Hawk and Tim, two well-matched yet wildly different men, who meet and become lovers in McCarthy-era Washington, D.C.Impeccably played by Matt Bomer and Bridgerton fave Jonathan Bailey, Hawk and Tim live an intense, forbidden love.
The show, from creator Ron Nyswaner (Homeland), based on the novel by Thomas Mallon, traces the pair’s turbulent relationship across four decades, against a dynamic backdrop of historic events, including the anti-Communist witch hunt led by Senator Joe McCarthy and henchman Roy Cohn.Both infamously viperous real-life figures appear prominently as characters, with Will Brill as Cohn and Chris Bauer as McCarthy providing nuanced villains in the season’s first half.The crusading duo has every left-leaning bureaucrat in Washington quaking in their wingtips from fear of being labeled a “Commie,” when they decide to also go after the gays and lesbians purportedly overrunning the ranks of federal government workers.McCarthy and Cohn’s vicious, secrets- and lies-fueled campaign to purge any seemingly queer person from government heats up just as romance heats up for Hawk, a Senate Relations official at the State Department, and Tim, an idealistic poli-sci grad fresh to D.C.Their affair, maintained to Hawk’s specific protocols for secrecy, offers an illuminating look at life in the closet during the Eisenhower ’50s, particularly for anyone in Washington, man or woman, who wished to hold on to a high-profile position in government.Hawkins Fuller, is just such a man, although, as one episode explores in detail, he considers himself bulletproof.
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