How To Get Away With Murder: Top Or Bottom?

Seeing straight sex and romance represented on network TV is something heterosexual people have taken for granted, whether it's during a daytime soap opera or a prime-time drama. Worried about alienating audiences and advertisers, executives at the big networks have long trod this territory very carefully, erring on the use of benign depictions of gay couples and sexual encounters, if even shown at all.

Enter [Shonda] Rhimes' recent scene, which included two men enjoying anilingus, otherwise known as rimming. Believe or not, this may have been one of the best things to happen to television in a long time...

So it's a bums up from Mic.

I’ve kept up with HTGAWM so far not because it’s particularly good (Damages did the intimidating-yet-troubled HBIC, terrified-yet-ambitious underling, and mysterious-yet-intriguing flash-forward thing better back in 2007), but because the show is reportedly some kind of step forward in gay media representation. And, in its suggestion of same-sex analingus or showing of a fictionalized Grindr screen on primetime network television, that reputation may be earned to a degree. But the show’s depiction of gay sexuality, mainly through the adventures of first-year law student/dude whisperer Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee), have thus far persistently contained a nasty strain of bottom shaming—and that kind of retrograde mess is not progressive in the least...

But it's bums down from Slate.

Fagburn will let you, the viewer, decide for yourself...

PS It's being shown in the UK on Universal Channel, btw.

Update: See also, How To Get Away With Murder is changing TV, E! Online. They also give us, Remember these LGBT firsts on TV? A clickthru photogallery of US shows.