Season 1, Episode 6: “The Dating Game”
There are producers on this show who deeply, deeply want you to believe that Caitlyn Jenner and Candis Cayne are about to start dating.
That’s the main takeaway from the latest episode of “I Am Cait.” They do appear friendly and affectionate with each other — but are the two dating? Are they interested in dating each other? If either answer is “yes”, both are hiding it well. The more likely scenario, of course, is that the show would like to gin up a romance and is attempting to force romantic chemistry onto the two — Cait is prodded about possibly being attracted to Candis, and the show finds all sorts of ways for them to spend time together.
It feels awkward and goes nowhere. The most cringe-inducing moment is when the two are made to fill out questionnaires from a matchmaking service that will supposedly help them find loved ones. The man from the service suggests Cait is the type who should date her best friend, which is the producerial equivalent of your drunk co-worker falling on you at the staff party and bellowing “Ain’t he a looker?” at the guy you take lunch breaks with.
Dating takes up most of this episode, though it’s not all Cait-Candis business. Populating the hour are various trans women who talk about the trials of dating while trans. These scenes are better.
Candis shares stories of men who were terrible to her, and she and Chandi Moore talk about how trans women are mistreated in romantic relationships, how they are often viewed as endlessly sexual and willing to put up with disrespect and unlove. What they hit on is real — trans women are told to be grateful for any conditional affection we receive. “Some guys think we’ll just go for anything, as if we don’t have standards.” says Chandi, who continues by saying those same men think trans women will tolerate terrible behavior. Yup.
We also sit down at a dinner at Zackary Drucker’s house, and a row of trans women talk about the difficulties of love when the pool of people willing to openly date a trans woman is so small. It’s funny and painful — my favorite laugh/cry moment was from a woman whose date didn’t realize “I’m TS” meant that she was a transsexual. He canceled the date when he figured it out. At this, everyone nods knowingly.
In two other quick scenes, we visit a camp for trans youth and go along with Candis on a doctor’s visit in which she and her doctor discuss the difficulties of finding a doctor who knows trans health care. More real stuff; also over almost instantly.
It’s been such a consistent theme. Whenever “I Am Cait” dips its toe into interesting, tough territory, it stays there for about 20 seconds of screen time. Then we switch to scenes like Cait advising Candis to buy a Porsche (which, after we’ve heard about how Candis has long struggled finding work, is Condescending Wonka-worthy).
For all its ungainly missteps, there are blips of genuine progress on this show that every mainstream media organization could stand to take lessons from. But that’s also the problem — they’re blips.
Is this because of the demands of the medium? Well, yes, certainly a reality show on E! is not where I have ever parked my hopes for groundbreaking transgender-themed media either, which already exists and thrives outside of Hollywood. But it is frustrating to see glimpses of thought-provoking material in an unlikely venue, then consistently see it submerged and devolve in favor of kitsch, even if the schmaltz-y scenes are fun sometimes, though they’re less so this week.
Jen Richards, one of the trans women who has appeared frequently on the show, said as much, by tweet last night: “So many of these conversations are just truncated, clumsy versions of really engaging, nuanced real discussions.”
That’s how it reads on screen too. Learning of deleted scenes like this one about H.I.V. and the group Translatina don’t help. Chandi also posted on Twitter her misgivings about this: “cant believe this scene was taken out … this is the heart of where things are happening.”
The contrived romance-angle notwithstanding, Candis is continuously the best thing on “I Am Cait” — she’s at ease, she’s funny, she’s willing to be truthful about harsh realities and be comfortable yet raw about it. I hope directors and producers are seeing this too. What is so upsetting about non-transgender actors getting transgender roles (often in the wrong gender, to boot — Eddie Redmayne in “The Danish Girl” and Elle Fanning in “About Ray” being the latest bearers of this exasperating tradition) is that trans actors like Candis are passed up for these parts.
I’d love to watch more movies she starred in. I’d watch hourlong episodes that centered around any of these women. I’d watch that whole dinner if they let me! And that’s the heart of the paradox that is “I Am Cait,” why it pulls me emotionally, in opposite directions, every time I watch it: This show excels when its star is off to the sidelines.
Lose the matchmaking part at least, please?