One particular scene that stood out was the bloody murder of rentboy Randy ( Matt Bomer) in Dandy Motts’ ( Finn Wittrock) backwoods hideaway. While Asylum was considered one of the most gruesome seasons, Freak Show, at times, has just been grotesque (and somehow still wildly entertaining). With the current season of AHS, Ryan Murphy has pushed the limits of what fans are willing to tolerate. There’s no doubt we’re in a post-Jack ( Will & Grace) world. Both Orange Is the New Black and Transparent found creative freedom on online streaming networks (Netflix and Amazon, respectively) to tell stories that would have been unheard of a decade ago. Of course, not all the best programing was found on cable (or even traditional TV formats). On HBO’s Looking, we finally saw characters that were just as flawed - and sometimes as boring - as us.
With How to Get Away With Murder, Peter Nowalk pushed the boundaries for gay sex in primetime. The development of more gay characters led to some astounding moments on TV. Michael Patrick King brought back The Comeback after nearly a decade off the air, on Faking It, Carter Covington explored the complications of sexuality and high school, and Jill Soloway reinvented the family drama with a transgender matriarch on Transparent. “I think you need to include people from all walks of life and that’s really, for television, such an immediate thing,” Greg Berlanti, creator of The Flash, the CW’s record-shattering series featuring multiple gay characters from the comic book universe, told Outearlier this year.
That expansion of options may be, in large part, due to the fact that there are a number of openly gay producers behind some of TV’s biggest hits.
It felt like this year, more than any in the past, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and queer audiences had a lot more options to choose from when it came to finding characters (and queer-themed shows) on TV to which they could relate.