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Category is … Vogue!
Pose is back to grace our televisions with storytelling still not often seen on network or cable TV, and if the second season premiere is any indication, this is going to be another season filled with laughs and tears … and probably more tears than laughs. When we last saw the family of the House of Evangelista, everyone was on good terms. Pray Tell had met a new man, Ricky was about to embark on a tour with Al B. Sure!, and Elektra, with a new job as a hostess at a fancy restaurant, found herself grateful to be accepted by Blanca into the House after being abandoned by her own ‘children’ (after being dumped by her Sugar Daddy when she had her bottom surgery).
But now in the new year of 1990, that harmony has hit a bit of a sour note for some. On one side, Blanca is on Cloud 9 with the popularity of Madonna’s newly released single ‘Vogue’, believing the song will bring greater visibility to the ballroom community. Pray Tell thinks she’s fooling herself that ballroom will go mainstream. Ricky is due back from the tour, so we didn’t see much of Damon this week. Angel and Lil Papi seem to have a thing going (there was no mention of Stan or his wife). The only real tempest brewing in the house is with Elektra, who comes and goes as she pleases, disregarding the one House rule of Friday night family dinner, always walking in late and insulting the food. But Elektra seems to have a fancy new outfit, jewelry and furs every time she’s home and the House is starting to question how she’s affording such extravagant finery on the salary of a restaurant hostess. That will come into play as the season moves forward.
The episode kicked off with a real gut punch though as Pray and Blanca went to an island to pay their respects to a friend who had died from AIDS. This was an emotional and heartbreaking moment, tough to watch if your life has been touched by the scourge of this disease in any way. Having lost my best friend ten years ago, these reminders of him and what he went through hit me very hard. It’s shocking and terribly sad to see how AIDS victims were treated back then at the early stages of the epidemic. As most of the dead were gay men shunned by their families, there was no one to claim the bodies so they were buried in mass graves in plain wooden boxes, still treated as if even being near the dead body could infect you. And if the mass grave wasn’t heartwrenching enough, seeing the hillside covered with heart-shaped rocks with the names of the dead painted on each one was overwhelming. It seems almost as if this was possibly where the notion of the AIDS quilt was born.
But the spectre of AIDS did not end with that scene. Pray Tell has been to nearly 300 funerals of the fallen, and Blanca has just learned that her T cell count has dropped below 200, which now classifies her as having AIDS. Luckily she has a friend in Judy Kubrak (new series regular Sandra Bernhard), the former nurse at the AIDS ward at the hospital who we met last season, now working in a clinic. Judy tells Blanca that she needs to start taking AZT, but Blanca says that’s just for rich people. Judy gives us another heartbreaking moment when she reveals a network of wealthy white people whose dying wish is for their meds to be given to the less fortunate when they die, and how Judy and others visit the dying patients to pay their respects and gather up the meds. For now, this is all that Blanca has to keep her alive and Judy is going to make sure she stays alive … but this puts a very dark cloud over Blanca and the series as the infected did not have a high survival rate once they were diagnosed with AIDS. Judy keeps promising Blanca that something new will come along, she just has to keep herself healthy until it does.
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The episode also spotlighted the early stages of the Act Up movement, which had already started raising money to combat the disease and the institutions that were basically condemning the sick, looking at them as less than human. Judy dragged Pray Tell to a meeting of the group which was planning a ‘die in’ at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, spotlighting how the church was one of the biggest culprits in turning its back on those in need simply because AIDS was seen as a ‘gay plague’. Not wanting to get involved at first, Pray Tell was quickly swept up in the movement, hoping to organize the House as a group to attend the die in. Of course the one hold out was Elektra who wasn’t interested in getting a mug shot. Again, the episode gave us another glimpse into the harsh reality of the situation as the protesters peacefully took their places on the floor of the church, which was quickly and violently interrupted by the police rushing in to remove the offenders. These are things that actually happened and now, especially during Pride Month, it’s important for the younger folks out there who didn’t live through this to be reminded of what the LGBTQ+ community faced 30 years ago. (And perhaps those people who want to know why there isn’t a ‘Straight Pride’ month should take a gander and get educated. If your community has never faced discrimination and hatred like this, then be thankful you DON’T need to have a month to recognize the past and the fight that continues to this day.)
It wasn’t all tears though. Angel seems to have moved on from Stan and with Blanca’s encouragement has entered a contest to be a modeling agency’s New Face of 1990 (as the episode name-dropped a couple of well-known names in the NYC area at the time, like WNBC’s Sue Simmons, I’m assuming the woman whom Angel referred to as Miss Ford is Eileen Ford, head of one of the most well-known model agencies of the time). Angel doesn’t believe she’s the type of woman the agency is looking for, especially if they find out she’s transgender, but Blanca pushes her to apply. Not too impressed with Angel’s Polaroids, Miss Ford does see something in the young woman, especially with her talent of vogueing (a term which was born from the poses of the models in Vogue magazine that were translated into dance moves and poses), and helps her out with getting some professional modeling shots from a photographer friend. The images were stunning (and there’s no denying Indya Moore is gorgeous and a natural when it comes to striking a pose) but Angel ran into trouble when she didn’t have enough to pay for the session. The photographer, however, seemed to know her secret and made a deal with her — take some photos for his ‘private collection’ and they’d call it even. Humiliated, Angel disrobed completely for him but when Blanca and Lil Papi found out, they all paid a visit to the photographer that did not go well for him. They got the photos and the negatives, and surprisingly, Angel made it through to the finals of the competition. But will Miss Ford learn of the violent attack on her friend, or perhaps Angel’s reality, and put the kibosh on the whole thing?
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It wouldn’t be an episode of Pose without some ballroom action and Pray Tell announcing ‘Category is …’ and one of the categories was French Revolution Realness. Miss Elektra came out in her Marie Antoinette get up and stunned even Pray when her attendants rolled out a guillotine to behead the queen. It was impressive to say the least, but it totally rubbed him the wrong way, calling Elektra out for spending all of her time trying to snatch another trophy rather than supporting her family and community at the die in. He smashed her trophy on the floor and had to exit the ballroom before the back of his head exploded. That, naturally, led to Elektra storming away from the House of Evangelista and back to her former children Candy and Lulu, blessing them with her presence and setting up more conflict with the Evangelistas. We knew that peace and harmony wasn’t going to last long.
It was a great kick-off for the second season, proving once again that Pose is must see TV.
What did you think of the season premiere? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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