Welcome to the Weekend Binge. Every Friday, we’ll suggest a binge-able title designed to keep you from getting too stir crazy. Check back throughout the weekend for even more gloriously queer entertainment.
The Soap: Dawson’s Creek
In case Election 2020 has you down, exhausted, or feeling a bit dirty about 68.7 million Americans who still somehow think Donald Trump is a good idea, never fear: the landmark teen soap Dawson’s Creek has landed on Netflix this week.
Dawson’s Creek invited gasps and grumbling when it hit the airwaves back in 1998 for its depiction of teen sexuality. The good looks and talent of Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Joshua Jackson and Michelle Williams attracted the show a loyal audience. The series’ real gravitas, however, came in its depiction of LGBTQ characters, including teenagers coming out and finding love. Actor Kerr Smith played the character of Jack McPhee beginning in Season 2; the third season would see Jack have his first kiss with another boy (the Season 3 finale, in case ya wanna fast forward), with Smith becoming the first actor in the history of US primetime network television to have a passionate kiss with another man. Go figure that writer Greg Berlanti–who would go on to direct The Broken Hearts Club and Love, Simon, as well as executive produce Riverdale, The Flash, Arrow and a host of other series–created the character of Jack when he landed a writing job on the show’s second season.
Hormonal, lurid and groundbreaking, Dawson’s Creek offers up just the nostalgic, cotton candy relief we need right now in the midst of election madness. Watch it…and care about some fictional problems for a while.
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Streams on Netflix & Hulu.
cubcmh
Didn’t Jack kiss Will three months before this??
DarthKitsune
I legit thought that was Julian McMahon.
Oranos
It’s Julian in that photo, yes.
Joshooeerr
The first gay male kiss on UK TV was sometime in the early 80s (Eastenders, I think). The first on Australian TV was 1973 (on Number 96). An interesting measure of just how conservative the US was – and remains.
JeffBaker
Don’t forget: “That 70s Show” beat out Dawson by a few months when Topher Grace was kissed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt! (I love the episode: a “straight” acquaintance kissing me by surprise in the car when I was in College was actually my first time! (We jumped into the back seat! 🙂 )
ShowMeGuy
There have been countless *male on male* kisses on television……but the first one where BOTH guys were wanting to kiss….. makes all the difference.
TheDefiler
I’d’ve thought there was a US primetime kiss somewhere in Soap (1977-81) and a daytime one in a soap well before this.