Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Showtime/Getty
After the whirlwind, practically non-stop fuckfest that was the first episode of Fellow Travelers, we viewers needed a moment of comedown—the cigarette after the sex, if you will. If the series were to throw its gratuitous, pearl-clutchingly great sex scenes at us for an entire hour, eight straight weeks in a row, we’d eventually grow tired of it (even as great as that sounds). Instead, the Showtime drama slows down a bit in its second episode, just enough for everyone on both sides of the screen to catch their breath.
Now, do Jonathan Bailey’s hands slap against Matt Bomer’s bare ass cheeks while Bailey blows him from the front, just five minutes into the episode? Yes. But there is more narrative-building here, I swear! Going from foot-sucking and kinky sex games in the premiere episode to a single offscreen blowjob in the next is a big step toward making Fellow Travelers much more than the sex scenes the show wisely used to attract viewers. Now that the show has built an audience by luring them in with a little lewdness, it can focus on commanding its dance between carnal lust and gripping drama, which it does with a strong sophomore installment that deftly builds on the hype of its premiere.
At the end of last week’s episode, Hawkins (Bomer)—later in his life, in 1986—heard the payphone ring inside of the San Francisco diner where he was waiting for a call from his old flame, Tim (Bailey), who is dying. We learn at the top of Episode 2 that the call was not from Tim, but rather his sister, Maggie (Edie Inksetter). Tim has sent Maggie in his place to reiterate that he doesn’t want to see Hawkins, after Hawkins broke Tim’s heart while the two of them carried on their covert relationship during their time in mid-twentieth century Washington D.C.