FX strikes a ‘Pose’
Drag ball culture struts onto screens.
One of the central “houses” in the world of Pose, Ryan Murphy’s new FX drama about LGBTQ communities and drag ball culture in 1980s New York, is known as the House of Abundance. But the series is its own house of abundance, a sometimes overstuffed extravaganza brimming with feeling, style and glitter.
Pose (Sunday, 9 ET/PT, ★★★☆) is a bold and colorful show, with (as FX has been quick to publicize) the largest cast of transgender actors in a regular series. But Pose is more than an act of stunt casting. It needs these actors, and LGBTQ writers, to tell the stories of the young, mostly black and Latin gay men and transgender women who flocked to the city, sometimes after being kicked out of their homes and living on the streets.
Pose’s great strength lies in its writers’ love for their subjects, in the delicate and realistic way the series shows their pains and joys, from facing discrimination to earning a trophy at a ball.
Pose eases viewers into its world, offering a user-friendly pilot episode. The drag ball scene is slightly different than drag shows seen on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
The contestants “walk“in various categories, and drag isn’t limited to men dressing as women. They are often members of those “houses,” self-selected families who live together.
Pose focuses on Blanca (Mj Rodriguez), a transgender woman who, after being diagnosed with HIV, decides to pursue her dreams and rebel against her house mother, Elektra (Dominique Jackson), and start her own house, hoping to pass on the care and protection she received to other young people.
Her first “child” is Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), a gay teen and aspiring dancer who has been sleeping in Central Park since his homophobic parents kicked him out. Blanca’s House of Evangelista also includes Angel (Indya Moore), a transgender sex worker who captures the eye of her john, Stan (Evan Peters), a white, suburban Trump Organization employee.
Aside from Peters, Kate Mara (as Stan’s wife) and James Van Der Beek (Stan’s boss), the cast features mostly unknowns, with a breakout performance by Moore as Angel. She is torn between the life and family she has — earning money on the street and at Times Square peep shows, walking in the balls, living in a house — and the one she wants — the picturesque suburban life Stan has and feels constricted by. Moore is enthralling, and her chemistry with Peters is electric.
For all its glitz and costumes and shade, Pose is a soapy drama about families, identity and often-tragic relationships. It’s an emotional series that sometimes suffers from an overabundance of sentiment and unrealistic dialogue, a common problem in Murphy’s series.
The connection to President Trump, while period-appropriate, feels a bit forced, and designed to give the show a topicality. But name-checking is not necessary for relevance: Some LGBTQ people still struggle with discrimination and trying to carve their places in the world, even if things have improved a bit in the past 30 years.
Pose also has similarities to other Murphy shows: It’s big, it’s loud, it’s unapologetic and it has an ample sense of fun. Just like the balls.