Big Picture Big Sound

You may not have seen "Tell Me You Love Me", but you've probably heard about it. If you've passed a water cooler recently and overheard the words "HBO" and "sex", it's likely someone was talking about "Tell Me You Love Me", HBO's latest "groundbreaking drama" which features a standard array of relationship woes interrupted by extensive amounts of simulated sex. And I don't mean "TV sex" or even "movie sex" - you know, the kind with entwined hands and strategically-placed sheets. No, I'm talking about full-on, warts-n-all, hey-I-see-a-penis sex. It seems in an age desensitized by excess, the only way to be "groundbreaking" is to bring porn to the masses.

Well, congratulations, HBO, you've done it. You've "broken new ground" - you've "pushed the envelope" - you've done all those other phrases that are supposed to represent brave artistic achievements unfettered by conservative censorship. And yes, HBO, after all these years, you've actually out-Skinemax'd Cinemax.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the once and future Home Box Office. In recent years, they have created some of the best TV around. I couldn't get into "Carnivale" or "Deadwood", but I'm a loyal "Entourage" fan and I watched every second of every season of "The Sopranos" right up to its perfect ending (spoiler alert: he's not dead). But "Tell Me You Love Me" is simply not good television. And the worst part is, it could have been. There is certainly room for a show that speaks frankly about intimacy (as "Tell Me" purports to do), but as anyone who owns a video camera knows, watching ordinary people having sex doesn't make good TV. It actually brings the show to a grinding (pun intended) halt. It's not as though the sex serves some purpose to drive the plot forward; everything stops and the couple simply does it (sometimes from start-to-quickie-finish). There's an old joke about men who say they read Playboy for the articles, or watch porn for the plot. I got news for you, HBO, that's a joke. If there's a way to mix plot and hard-core sex, no one's found it yet.

Nothing is conveyed during those precious moments of shock-value screentime that couldn't have been done with a simple suggestion of intimacy followed by a cut-away. Remember the days when an on-screen couple would kiss and the camera would pan to the fireplace (spoofed so masterfully during a parachuting embrace in 1984's unfairly-ignored Zucker Brothers gem "Top Secret")? I never thought I'd say this but I miss the cut-away. We didn't need to see it; we got the point.

But now, thanks to series creator Cynthia Mort ("Roseanne"), we don't have to waste precious energy on our imaginations. We can watch the young couple coupling uncomfortably in the front seat of a car, or the wife stroking more than her husband's ego (complete with what those in a different industry would call the "money shot"). It's interesting to note when the psychiatrist played by 67-year-old Jane Alexander goes down on her husband, we see nothing. There are some lines even HBO won't cross. Psychiatrists having sex?? Blech.

The actors, bless 'em, give it their best. Ally Walker in particular does some fine work as Katie. Ironically, she's the only character not having sex (her husband isn't interested and somewhere along the way, it seems, she forgot how to masturbate).

I'm no prude, mind you; I'm all for some good old fashioned porn if the opportunity arises (again, getting my pun on). I don't get offended easily and, in fact, I'm not "offended" by "Tell Me You Love Me", per se. If people want to watch moderately attractive actors getting jiggy with it, more power to them (for me, I always wonder what their significant others must feel). No, what offends me is what this show represents: a blatant gimmick for the sake of ratings without a thought for good storytelling. The grand irony of the whole "Tell Me You Love Me" affair is that for all the sex, nudity and simulated masturbation, what's really been exposed is HBO's basest instincts. It is TV. It is HBO. And it is just about the ratings.