When I see people discussing Fellow Travelers, it annoys me just how little Frankie and Marcus come up, despite how central they are, not just as characters, but also as the foil relationship of Hawk and Tim. At the start of the show, Hawk and Marcus are very similar men, rigid, detached, hiding, but over the course of the story, they both fall madly in love with their respective lovers with one glaring difference; where they end up. As we know, Marcus and Frankie was a happy old ‘married’ couple raising their adopted son and in a world so against them, they are as out as they can be. But, that’s not just an 80s progressive San Francisco thing. Even in the flashbacks, Marcus, even without directly coming out, is more or less honest with his father and about his feelings for Frankie and is very honest with Frankie about them, making it very clear that Frankie is his soulmate and won’t marry a woman. Hawk is, of course, on the opposite end of that. He will hide his feelings for Tim, like he has a gun to his head, cloaking any confession in vagueness and half-truths, while obviously marrying Lucy to hide his true nature, thus breaking both Tim’s and his own heart over and over again, over the course of decades. Now, I’ve talked before about how people underestimate that magnitude of Hawk’s fear for being gay in such a time period, but again, let me make clear that that doesn’t mean he isn’t a coward. He very much is. And for a while, so is Marcus. When the Cozy Corner is raided, he abandons Frankie and flees. A moment of panic that he deeply regrets and Frankie ultimately forgives. The point is that he changes and grows for that and realizing that his love is worth more than the safety and security he gets from living a lie. Hawk, by contrast, never gets there. Again and again, he gives into his own feet and internalized homophobia (ironic, given how shameless he seems and that Tim is the one with the Catholic guilt) but, that’s sort of the point of Hawk, isn’t it? He’s a good actor, even to himself. Even when he spends his life cheating on Lucy, fully aware he is a homosexual, no denial involved there, just a lot of lying. And it is out of fear, as much of a confident man as Hawk presents himself to be, he is fearful. He is the embodiment of Tim’s quote from the 60s. “I’m scared I don’t have the courage to do the right thing.” And at the end of the day… Hawk just doesn’t. He’s too cowardly and at the same time, too selfish. He wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants Tim all to himself, but he also wants the safety and comfort his married, heterosexual family life brings him. As Marcus said; “You have a beautiful family, a beautiful life. I hope it was worth it.” And in the end… of course it’s not. Because, as much as I am sure Hawk loves his family, it’s still all based on a lie and he still loves Tim and deep down, always will. It wasn’t worth it because at the end, once Tim is gone and Hawk finally finds it within him to be honest with himself, it’s too late. Sure, there is some solace to be had to know how he and Tim felt about each other, to tell it openly to his daughter, but the damage is done and Hawk will spend the rest of his life paying for it, while Marcus lives his old age happily with the man he loves and the found family he created (Jerome lives, despite his diagnosis. You cannot change my mind). In the end, for Marcus, love won, because he was brave enough to work for it. I would honestly give up a lung for a mini series of their own. It’s the real romance of the show, while Tim and Hawk, while romantic and loving and beautiful isn’t truly a romance, but a tragedy, because there is no happy ending to be had, there.
