But in the end, isn’t that Hollywood‘s big idea? Imagine a world in which, thanks to a string of lucky breaks, women and queers and black people and Asian people and people who’ve been arrested by vice squads suddenly had it within their power to change the kinds of movies Hollywood makes. Imagine a world in which, thanks to innovative business and PR maneuvers, the first of these movies winds up being a big hit. The resulting story isn’t a matter of “Well, if Rock Hudson had simply come out of the closet we wouldn’t have had all those problems”—it’s speculative fiction, a sort of social-justice steampunk (imagine Dick’s early invention of the wide release as the equivalent of an armored blimp or whatever) in which values of diversity and acceptance battered down the doors years before they did IRL. I get it. I enjoyed it. I had a good time at the movies, so to speak. Action!

I reviewed the season/series/not sure finale of Hollywood for Decider. It was a fun show!

Directed once again by Janet Mock, it’s maybe the most Hollywood episode of Hollywood yet. Take the opening sequence, for example. Avis vows to provide security for the cast and crew, who’ve come under threat by the Ku Klux Klan. Ernie, the old pimp benefactor of Jack and Archie, refuses their and Rock and Raymond’s offer to go back to work to make up Meg‘s budget shortfall, instead calling in all his old employees for a week-long binge of sex work in order to raise the money for them (and earns a major role for himself in the process). You gotta love a series that takes that old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “hey kids, let’s put on a show” vibe and funds it with prostitution!

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Hollywood for Decider.

The speed with which Hollywood can shuffle between all these storylines and all these modes—the personal, the artistic, the political—isn’t trivializing any of them, I don’t think. If anything, it’s arguing that these factors are all fundamentally inseparable. The big test of the show, I think, will be whether it argues that success in one sphere equates to success in the others. Does making a politically worthy film make the film good, or make the filmmakers good people? Can great art affect political change, or do we settle for it in lieu of political change? I don’t know how Hollywood will answer these questions, especially with just two episodes to go. But my butt will be in the seat until I find out.

I reviewed episode five of Hollywood for Decider.

I agree with the basic thesis advanced by creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan and their co-writer and director for this episode (“(Screen) Tests”) Janet Mock, I really do. Representation matters. Culture sends messages people receive and act on. Hollywood is not nearly so powerless when it comes to what the public will accept and pay for as they make themselves out to be every time they shy away from roles for women and queer people and people of color, both behind and in front of the camera. They’ve got all the power in the world where that’s concerned.

But the idea that they’re more powerful than the goddamn government in terms of their ability to ameliorate oppression and suffering…well, that’s kind of why we’re in the mess we’re in right now, isn’t it? Generations of liberal politicians downplaying expectations, winning the culture war for the most part but ceding vast swathes of the body politic to the sworn enemies of women, of queer people, of people of color. I want Ace Studios to cast Camille, the right woman for the role, same as Roosevelt does. But I also want the government to pound Jim Crow laws into dust, which government and government alone, motivated by mass action, has the power to do.

I reviewed episode four of Hollywood for Decider.

I’ve never quite seen Hollywood‘s blend of earnest social-justice anachronism and dirty-minded played-for-laughs smuttiness before. I certainly never would have guessed it would go down like peanut butter and chocolate. But here we are, three episodes into a seven-episode run, and I’m enjoying every dick joke and every impassioned speech about standing up for who you really are. Sometimes—like when Henry tells Rock he reminds him of what it was like to truly care about someone, declares that he’ll make Rock the biggest movie star in the world, then makes him have a threesome with Roy Calhoun and Tab Hunter—I’m enjoying them within the same scene. That’s Hollywood, baby!

I reviewed episode three of Hollywood for Decider.

“Sometimes I think folks in this town really don’t understand the power they have. Movies don’t just show us how the world is, they show us how the world can be. And if we change the way that movies are made—you take a chance and you make a different kind of story—I think we can change the world.”

As mission statements go, Hollywood could not make it plainer. Through the voice of Raymond Ainsley (Darren Criss), a neophyte director and a half-Filipino man who passes as white, Hollywood co-creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are making their position clear, or at least it seems that way for now. You chip away at the kind of people who make it to the screen here, you chip away at the kind of people who make those decisions there, and before long the world will remake itself in Hollywood’s new image.

I reviewed the second episode of Hollywood for Decider.