Commentary: McCarthyism makes us agents in our own destruction. ‘Fellow Travelers’ shows how
The second episode of “Fellow Travelers,” Ron Nyswaner’s steamy melodrama of queer life in midcentury America, concludes with Langston Hughes’ “Kids Who Die,” a poem to sting the back of your throat. Marcus Gaines (Jelani Alladin), Senate correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier, has already made a connection with Frankie Hines (Noah J. Ricketts), bartender at D.C.’s hottest underground haunt, but it’s this recitation that makes their communion complete — as surely as a kiss might, or a sly wink, or a secret handshake.
Still, it’s another of the poem’s stanzas, unspoken here, that points most forcefully to “Fellow Travelers’” project. The American screen’s finest, frankest ever
