David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. HBO’s next sex scandal
Chris Albrecht, HBO’s former head, may be gone but his legacy of adventurous-often-to-the-point-of-crazy programming endures: In September, “Tell Me You Love Me” will premiere. “Tell Me You Love Me” concerns three troubled couples and their oft-aggressive (or, by contrast, non-existent) sex lives, and their therapist, played by former National Endowment for the Arts head Jane Alexander.
It’s an instant provocateur thanks to its extremely frank depiction of sex and lack of timidity when it comes to displaying its characters’ naughty bits (or, at least, nominally convincing prostheses). Sex, here, however, isn’t intended to be titillating, at least not completely; it comes from a place that seems borne more of desperation to connect to something, someone, than out of good, old-fashioned porn-level lust. (Alexander’s character, with her husband, has the show’s most satisfying trysts.) The show offers HBO’s best, most obvious transition from its smart, primetime programming to its late-night, “Cathouse”/“Real Sex”-style shows.
Think Ingmar Bergman’s devastatingly bleak “Scenes from a Marriage” meets the short-lived but hilarious Bravo couples-therapy comedy “Significant Others,” and you’ve got “Tell Me You Love Me.” Albeit with precious few, if any, laughs – hell, my life is far grimmer than these characters’, and I can still manage a few jokes a day. Still, viewers should find it an evocative, provocative show.
But here’s the rub (using the term ill-advisedly, given that several characters engage in auto-eroticism): Watching this show can be hazardous to your reputation. A friend told me of his wife (an entertainment journalist) watching episodes of the show at their home; since they don’t have central air, she left windows open. The frequent lurid auditory emanations from the show’s soundtrack actually forced her to explain to her neighbors that she’s not a pervert. He also said he watched a women’s match from Wimbledon while she watched an episode and the orgiastic grunts from both shows seemed to echo/comment upon one another.
Worse, consider my situation: I share a duplex with my landladies. Imagine my having to explain to them that what I was up to was actually professional, not prurient, lest I flirt with eviction (hey, we run a clean ship in Echo Park).
(I’m watching a scene in which they’re banging headboards, gnawing G-spots and smacking backsides as I type, but I’m also considering the sage works of Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival” to maintain my level of intellectual respect as all this is going on.) (I’ve loaned my landladies screeners in the past (they’ve enjoyed upcoming shows like “Mad Men” and “Damages;” imagine my surprise when they didn’t request this one.))
So, today at TV Press Tour, the cast and creator of “Tell Me You Love Me” will discuss their show. Here’s the over/under (again, bad choice of words, but there you go) on how many questions will be of the moralistic “Do viewers really need to see this?”/prurient “Is the sex real?”/wacky “How is your onscreen partner in the sack?” variety: 1:1.
Comments
Oh honey, if you think they're gnawing G-spots, perhaps you should pay a bit more attention. On the other hand, if they really ARE gnawing G-spots, then I take my hat off to the oral gymnasts.
Posted by: Suzy Q | July 12, 2007 4:01 PM