Out here in the present, season 3 of Black Monday wrapped last month, but in my Book of Rannells chronology, I’m back up to season 2. Since I’ve already reviewed all those episodes, I thought I’d revisit the relationship between Blair and a certain congressman (Blair/Roger-related spoilers.)
Given that Blair enters season 2 having only recently figured out that he’s gay, it’s not much of a stretch to guess where things are headed when his lobbying efforts put him in the path of Roger, a “family values” conservative whose support is crucial in passing bank deregulation, which will make Blair and Dawn’s trading shenanigans easier and more lucrative. At first, Roger seems like a hard sell, straight-talking and no-nonsense, impervious to Blair’s schmoozing efforts. Blair is thrown into a tizzy as he frantically tries to race through his talking points while Roger is deigning to give him the time of day, but it soon turns out that there are other, sexier ways to secure Roger’s vote.
So, yeah. Republican congressman whose marriage is a major part of his brand, whose father-in-law is a fire-and-brimstone televangelist making bank, turns out to be secretly closeted? Not too surprising, especially when he’s played by Tuc Watkins, Andrew Rannells’s costar from The Boys in the Band (and real-life boyfriend, though I didn’t realize that until partway through season 2.) We can see where things are going to go: Blair and Roger get embroiled in a steamy affair that they have to hide from Roger’s wife and father-in-law, clinch moments where Roger has to decide whether his feelings for Blair mean more than his image/reputation, etc.
But even if the track is clearly laid, it’s still an interesting journey to watch the characters go through it. I always enjoy Blair’s laughable efforts to “butch it up” (there’s a scene where he casually refers to a golf club as something like “the old whacking pole,” and it kills me,) and the romantic angst over their secret relationship is predictable but effective.
What I really like are how the darker, more selfish aspects of the two characters show up in relation to one another. Blair and Roger both genuinely care about each other, but they’re both also using each other – Blair to get the deregulation bill pushed through the House, Roger to fund his reelection campaign with money from Blair’s firm. All their interactions are half genuine, half mercenary, but even as each uses the other, both feel so hurt at the notion of being used by the other. When Blair feels that Roger is just treating him like a walking wallet, he’s devastated (and I’ve been following Rannells’s work long enough to know he gives excellent devastated-face,) and his hurt leads him down a rash road.
Things between these two are clearly headed for implosion nearly from the beginning. That might at first seem to be because they appear so different, but actually, it’s because they’re both so similar. There’s some emotional chicken involved (shades of Marvin and Whizzer from Falsettos,) where neither wants to be vulnerable enough to let on how much they care, which only leaves both of them insecure about where they stand with the other. And ultimately, both are self-serving above all else. Incapable of putting the other first, it rips them apart in the end. Roger breaks Blair’s heart and Blair, in a moment of emotional impulsivity, lashes out in a way he can never take back.
I will say, though, that the final end to their relationship really bugs me. Blair’s retaliation against Roger is to give Roger’s father-in-law proof of their affair, which the reverend then leaks to the press. Roger, in part because of the implications for his political career and in part because he assumes Blair was the one who released the video, hangs himself.
I alluded to it at the time, albeit without spoilers, but I found that so disappointing. Black Monday has so often been a show that keeps you on your toes, that zigs when you think it’s gonna zag. To have the final nail pounded into a queer relationship with a closeted gay man’s suicide isn’t the shocking cliffhanger the episode seems to think it is. Instead, it’s regrettably typical. Even though, as I said, Blair and Roger’s relationship starts from a very familiar beat, it moves in much more interesting directions throughout their time on the show together, and I don’t like that they’re given such a clichéd Tragic Gay End.
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First of all, Hot Toys is doing a premium Wenwu action figure for Shang-Chi? I should not be looking at those pictures. I already have one very cool Wenwu figure that guards my Doctor Who DVDs – I do not need a $250 1/6-scale figure, no matter how hyper-realistic it is. (Those eyes, though….)
More nice words from other cast members. I like Simu Liu’s story about how nervous he was about accidentally hitting Tony Leung Chiu-wai during their fight scenes (with Leung trying to reassure him during rehearsals,) and Fala Chen has some really lovely things to say about working for him. There’s also a brief Leung sighting in this goofy on-set video of Awkwafina shuttling some of her costars around in one of those golf-cart-looking vehicles that they use on movie sets. Leung and Awkwafina have pretty much polar-opposite energies as celebrities, which makes for an awkward but sweet little exchange between them – a man after my own introvert heart!
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