Clean Slate, on Amazon Prime, stars Laverne Cox of Orange is the New Black as Desiree, a trans woman who returns to her small town in...ulp...Alabama.... after transitioning. Alabama? I was afraid to even drive through the state. I'm going jump right into the deep end with Episode 1.5, where Desiree wants to go back to church. Whoa, someone's going to quote the Book of Leviticus
Back Story: Desiree was dumped by her boyfriend and lost her job as a gallery coordinator in NYC, so she moves back to Mobile, Alabama to stay with her best friend, the closeted Louis (DK Uzoukwou, who played a straight guy on Insecure, but may be gay in real life).
She hasn't seen her Dad Harry (George Wallace) for 17 years, and she hasn't told him that she is trans. When she drops by, expecting angry reprisals, he is surprised for about 30 seconds, and then becomes a super-ally. So their estrangement was all on her?
Rather elitist, Desiree looks down on heavily-tattooed ex-con Mack (Jay Wilkinson), who works at Dad's car wash, and rejects him when he asks for a date.
Next door neighor Miguel (Philip Garcia, left) doesn't appear in this episode.
Scene 1: Dad comes down to breakfast to see Desiree ready for church. "You're sure you want to go? You hated it before?" "I liked the music and the picnics. It was the threat of eternal damnation I disliked." She wants to go to support new choir director Louis. A gay choir director in a fundamentalist Alabama church?
Scene 2: The Slate Family Car Wash (clean slate, get it?), which also has a snack bar. How long do these car washes take?
Mack and his totally nonchalant preteen daughter ("What's your pronoun sitch?") run the place on Sunday morning, but they wonder why, since almost everyone in small-town Alabama is in church at that time.
At church, Desiree gets nervous, so she sits in the back row, and when the Preacher (Keith Arnold Bolden) asks for visitors to stand, she keeps still. I always hate that part, too. Ella (Telma Hopkins, whom I know from Gimme a Break) isn't having it, and drags her to the front row to sit with the Girlfriends of Grace.
They have a standard Black Church service, with everyone singing along to the hymn without checking the hymnal.
Scene 3: At the car wash, Mack's daughter wants to know why he never goes to church. He explains that it's a con: when he was in prison, he had the choice of joining white supremacy gangs or hiding in the chapel, so he hid, and became so good at the con that they called him Reverend Mack.
Daughter suggests a nefarious scheme to get some cars into the car wash on Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, the church service ends. Choirmaster Louis tells Desiree that he had to turn his phone off after she recommeded going on Grindr, because it kept pinging: "Those dudes are thirsty!" Boyfriend is up for a fun Sunday afternoon.
On the way out of the church, the Pastor hugs the women and shakes hands with the men -- and Desiree! She and Girlfriend of Grace Ella are both mortified by the snub.
Scene 4: Desiree lying in bed, being depressed: 27 minutes of bliss followed by a transphobic snub. Girl, if that's the worst you get at a fundamentalist church in Alabama.... wait, 27 minutes? Or services took an hour and a half: 30 minutes for announcements and songs, 45 minutes for a hellfire sermon, and 15 minutes for the altar call. Dad tries to convince her that it wasn't a snub, the Pastor doesn't hug women unless he knows that they'll be ok with it, but she insists: the Pastor thinks that she is a man.
Meanwhile, Ella and the other Girlfriends of Grace are squacking mad. They discuss how to get back at the transphobic Pastor: maybe withhold the after-church food that they always provide. No pot roast, no lamb chops, no deviled eggs. We never got food after the service.
And Choirmaster Louis can start a choir boycott. Back story: Louis is Girlfriend of Grace Ella's son.
Louis doesn't want to do it, but Ella forces him, or she'll revoke her Amazon Prime password (product placement, just like in the old days when they stopped the story to drink Maxwell House Coffee).
Dad offers to go speak to the Pastor "man to man."
More after the break
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Scene 5: Mack and his daughter pass out fliers, targeting people unlikely to be in church: a kissing heterosexual couple, two men fighting, and some prostitutes. "While the others are cleansing their souls, we'll wash your cars on Sunday mornings." That's it? I thought they were going to dump mud on the cars or something.
They stop for lunch. Daughter is discouraged because everyone just throws the flier away. Post them in taverns and brothels. And change the wording and post them in synagogues and mosques. Oh, right, this is Alabama, Jewish population 0.2%, Muslim 0.5%
Mack cheers her up with the story of Karate Kid. He sings "You're the best around/ Nobody's gonna get you down," and everyone in the restaurant applauds and takes the fliers.
Scene 6: Dad in the Pastor's office: "They're all up in arms, claiming that you didn't treat Desiree like a woman."
Pastor counters that he doesn't like being made a fool of: "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. If he has gone against God, he has gone against me." I knew Desiree would face transphobia eventually, but why didn't the Pastor yell at her from the pulpit?
"She's just being who she is," Dad argues, and the Pastor responds by kicking him out. Of your office, or out of the church?
Scene 7: The Copper Trough restaurant in Mobile, Alabama. Ok, that explains it. The Google AI says that Mobile is the most gay-friendly city in the state (so it's #1,304 overall?)
She meets with Choirmaster Louis, and asks why he hasn't texted her since Sunday. He's upset about the church ladies planning action over the snub. Plus she's drawing unwanted attention to him; he's about to get outed by association. "I'm not about to tear down every wall I put up to protect myself, just because you're here for a hot second."
They get into a debate about which is harder, being gay or being transgender, when Ella and Dad show up to join them. It's going to be an awkward dinner.
It's an awkward dinner, with Desiree sniping at Mac and disapproving of the church ladies' plans to take action against the snub: you can't fight every microaggression, or you'd be fighting all the time.
Dad reveals that he stole the Jesus figurine from the Pastor's car. Ella is delighted, but Desiree is upset; "None of this is about me. You've made it all about you!" Well, maybe they want to resist the Pastor's authoritarian attitude in general. She insults Owner Earl's mac and cheese and stomps out.
Scene 8: On Sunday morning, Desiree skips church, because "The Pastor don't take kindly to my..kind." She is surprised to see the car wash busy
Mack's Daughter gives her a pep talk out of Cobra Kai, and she decides to go to church after all.
She enters after the service has already started. Everyone turns to stare. Wait -- they were fine with a trans woman last week. Pastor glares, and Choirmaster Louis looks nervous. "Oh, no, she's going to out me."
Pastor tries to continue his sermon, but Louis announces that the choir has a new song to perform:
Hold me now, it's hard to say I'm sorry _- I just want you to stay
After all we've been through, I will make it up to you
And how is this religious?
At the end of the service, Desiree walks past the line of people waiting to get a handshake/hug from the Pastor, stands next to him -- and suddenly half of the congregation shifts to wait for a handshake/hug from her! So it's transphobic/non-transphobic lines?
Scene 9: Mack, his Daughter, Desiree, her Dad, Ella, and Louis having lunch at the Copper Trough. Desiree admits that the snub hurt more than she let on. Owner Earl (Jon Gabrus, left) stops by so Desiree can apologize for dissing his mac and cheese, and recognizes Mack from prison: "Your sermons got me through the darkest time of my life." So even though it's a con, church helps people? Well, some churches. Not my childhood church, with everything from earthquakes to teen pregnancy blamed on homa-sekshuls.
Beefcake: None. I have to go down the cast list to find Liam Dean (top photo) as a bartender, Marcus Adair, who has a profile on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, as a doorman, and Zavier Andrew (below), not as a named character.
Heterosexism: None. I think Dad and Ella are dating, but they don't do as much as hold hands. This is a remarkably wholesome program: no bedroom activities are ever mentioned. Even the ads that Prime is putting in now (after charging you membership) are selling dogfood and baby moniters.
LGBTQ Characters: Louis and Desiree, of course. Louis gets a boyfriend later in the season.
My Grade: A month into our fall into fascism, we need this show as an escape, and as a model for the future. In 4 years or 40 years, the orange regime will be over, and we or our heirs will have the opportunity to "make America kind again." A
See also:
Julian Lerner: Six-pack abs, co-stars' bulges and d*cks, a lot of premiere parties, and Alabama
Marcus Adair: Footballer, mercenary, Jabari warrior, n*de model.
The Top 10 Hunks of "Orange is the New Black"
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