If you were watching How to Get Away with Murder on Thursday night, you may have noticed some sexy sexy scenes, including one between two men. Even at 10 pm EST, that’s not particularly commonplace on network television. But if Shonda Rhimes and HTGAWM creator Peter Nowalk have their way, it will be.
So spoilers for those who were not on the HTGAWM open thread last night: there was both cunnilingus and gay sex in the premiere of the show, which might be a new network television record. But according to Nowalk, Rhimes and her crew are so successful they’re basically untouchable and can do whatever the fuck they want: “We never got any pushback about [the sex scenes] from the network.”
In this interview with E!, Nowalk says a lot of other comforting things that are nice to hear from someone who is deciding what depictions of humans you get to see on your television set. He explains that there will be lots of gay relationships with sex because “It’s part of life”:
“I knew I wanted to push the envelope, especially with the gay sex,” Nowalk explained to me. “And to me, writing the gay characterization and writing some real gay sex into a network show is to right the wrong of all of the straight sex that you see on TV. Because I didn’t see that growing up, and I feel like the more people get used to two men kissing, the less weird it will be for people. I just feel like it’s a lack of vision that you don’t see it on TV, but ABC has never had a note about any of the weird stuff in the show, so I’m gonna keep it going.”
This is a novel approach in television to some degree and should be noted and celebrated. But the E! article these quotes come from takes it a little far, managing to imply that gay sex (or maybe even women getting theirs, since we saw a bit of that last night too) is more graphic or inappropriate for children than straight sex.
PUT YOUR CHILDREN AWAY THEY MAY SEE SOME IMPLIED ANAL LICKING BETWEEN TWO MEN ALSO IT IS 10 PM AND THIS IS AMERICA NOT SPAIN SO THEY SHOULD BE ASLEEP.
Image via ABC
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